September 24, 2007
The Dreamer Deferred
Pedaling through Golden Gate Park the other day, we noticed the conspicuous absence of the giant purple half-head that has graced a lawn near the de Young for a few months. We had all kinds of mean things to say about the head (adolescent pseudo-profundity, like something constructed for a Led Zeppelin album cover), but on the other hand, we smoked enough pot in high school to think, hey, awesome, a giant half-buried purple head with a 1000-yard stare!
Its proximity to the DeYoung led us to decry the Burning Man-ification of the art world -- we figured there was some connection between the museum and the purple head. Turns out that the head was, in fact, made for Burning Man, but its appearance in the Park had nothing to do with the arts establishment. The Black Rock Arts Foundation installed the head -- known officially as "The Dreamer" by Pepe Ozan -- as part of an experiment to "to explore the issues and challenges associated with placing artwork created for the Burning Man festival in new contexts." The issues and challenges, apparently, include extensive damage to the artwork itself: the sculpture was removed ahead of schedule, leaving a bare oval in the turf, like a featureless dirt CAT scan.
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I guess the homeless get annoyed by Burning Man too.
They also had to cut the ears off because kids could climb up to the top. This thing is not art unless you are deeply stoned, and I'm sad that they had to ruin some lawn to display this turd.
On the other hand, a purple paper head is every bit as much "art" as is "Some Old Dead Bitch's Closet" which was the last big show at the DeYoung.
"Some Old Dead Bitch's Closet"
Hee!
Is the DeYoung metastacizing?
I liked the purple head! I had friends from out of town and although it wasn't the best public art I've ever seen (the bandshell in the panhandle was so much cooler) it was nice to show people that weird stuff just appears here for no apparent reason, and that's okay.
When I first saw it I thought it had to be Don Fisher in an encore of the bow and arrow at the Embarcadero, which is equally bad.
see, i love cupid's bow, but that's a losing argument. alas.
Stonehenge!!
I'm surprised they had to cut off the ears because kids could climb to the top. I can't imagine any little kid going anywhere near that thing.
dude, that's way more pink floyd than zeppelin.
Oh, hee for f***ing sure. Good work jwb.
I thought the head was great! I was just as shocked to see it gone as I was to see it there in the first place.
I think its a good thing when the city promotes the local arts community by allowing public installations like this, or the bandshell, or the mini-golf down on Hayes Green. It may not be the "best" art, but its not any worse than some of the permanant sculptures around the city.
Hopefully we'll see more of it next summer.
Hell yeah, jwb!
(and I am pro-Cupid's Bow, too, Brock.)
Up with public art! Say, what if RecPark just put fences around the homeless encampments and declared them a ongoing performance art exhibit?
Cover the head with Nan Kempner's clothes. Now that would be art. And it would get that craptacular donor-fellating exhibit out of the DeYoung. Kill two birds with one stone.
I can imagine the tagline now: That giant purple head, it sure was one stylish giant purple head!
We love hands on art. Back in the old days, when security was looser and anyone who didn't fit in wasn't immediately arrested as a terrorist, friends used to make junk sculptures and sneak them into the garden of the Houston Fine Arts Museum, just to see how long it would take to find them in the dumpster. There's GOT to be some of that going on in SF - art just for the hell of it - but it's hard to find under all the attitude sometimes.
I'm disappointed I didn't see it. But really any Pepe art project is incomplete without one of his famous (infamous?) operas.