Update! Tikis on the Move!

There's been a development in the Tiki War. I wandered past this familiar fellow a couple days ago - but now he's living somewhere else! Now he dwells on Harriet, just south of Lake. How did he get here? Was he offered to the residents as a gift (just as he was offered to me), or was he just deposited here in the dead of night? He's now partially fenced in by some tiki torches. Are they intended to keep him safe from passers-by, or to prevent him from wandering away? Its not clear.

He's definitely in good company. His current digs are a house I already held in high regard: The Lair of the Blood Gnomes. Its hard to see from this photo, but the door to this house is framed by some really excellent garden gnomes. They're gigantic, and one of them appears to have blood dribbling down his chin. Now that these gruesome statues have joined forces, the neighborhood may never be safe again.

Don't Stomp the Sculpture

Amasa and I wandered past this spare, abstract sculpture the other day. It sits in front of what I think is a bank, on Hennepin, near the river. I don't know what its intended to represent, or who made it. At any rate, it is apparently highly prized by the bank authorities. Amasa and I were ordered away from the sculpture by security guards. They may have been at least a little justified in doing so - the picture here reveals Amasa attempting to kick it to pieces. The guards also informed me that I can't take photos of the sculpture. So, here are some images, in direct disregard of the sculpture-viewing rules. I must confess that I find the photo ban puzzling. What harm is it intended to prevent? It seems to put the artwork in a weird limbo. Does the transfer of the artwork onto a secondary medium change its status? And if so, shouldn't we be allowed to touch it (as long as its not kicked to pieces)? For a four year old, this is the most primal and intense way to enjoy something - climbing all over it. But if we can't enjoy it as an "image" or as a jungle gym, just how should we enjoy it? As a holy relic? I was reminded of those religious rules against depicting the sublime. Does the artist want it so protected? Perhaps. But if so, that's too bad. Amasa probably had more fun with this thing than anyone has for years, at least until the guards chased us off.

Tikis in the Urban Jungle

Here's some nice found statuary. This gruesome visage temporarily haunted a yard on Garfield, between 32nd and 33rd. As I was taking this picture, the owner came out her door and told me I could have it! With deep regret, I had to turn her down - I live in a small apartment, and a royal fellow like this needs room to roam. The owner explained that she was having tiki wars with her neighbors, occasionally sneaking this eight foot giant closer to their door. The neighbor heard our conversation, however, and yelled a retort from his porch. The giant remained silent, in stoic nobility.

He's no longer in front of the house on Garfield. I like to think that the owner snuck him into someone else's yard in the dead of night.

A Fellow of Infinite Jest

"a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times... Where be your gibes now, your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning?"

This is The Happy Chef, on the north side of Mankato, Minnesota, next to highway 169. When I lived nearby, about ten years ago, visitors could push a button on the base of the statue, and it would tell some really bad jokes. All I can remember now is something along the lines of "Why isn't there any ice left in your glass at the end of the meal? Because your water gets hungry and eats the ice!" The button doesn't work any more, which is too bad. There were quite a few Happy Chefs throughout the midwest at one time, but this is apparently the last Happy Chef restaurant to still have a statue. I believe the Mankato location was also the original one, also.

Size Matters: Rodin on the Plains

Did you realize that The Thinker is actually quite tiny? He’s about the size of a garden gnome, but lots less jolly. I recently traveled to see an exhibition of the works of Auguste Rodin at the Hillstrom Museum of Art in St Peter, Minnesota. The Thinker was in attendance, as well as thirty or so other of Rodin’s finest. I was struck immediately by his size. I had been given the impression that he’s a rather larger fellow, and in retrospect I wonder if my mental image had been unduly corrupted by The Thinker’s appropriation by Jesse Ventura’s gubernatorial campaign. It was immediately clear that Le Penseur, as Rodin referred to him, was not sculpted with the WWF in mind.

I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but the size had me a little disappointed, at least at first. And I’m sure that my trip to the exhibition only dramatized the contrast. I drove over an hour through the prairies of southern Minnesota: wide open spaces under a not-quite-endless-sky, hurtling past all that American bigness. Leaving behind the mini malls and office parks of the southern suburbs, the space gives way to orchards and car dealerships, train yards and fields, and, finally, not much of anything. Perhaps the journey altered my expectations – we actually drove under the shadow of an enormous Jolly Green Giant billboard cutout just outside of Le Sueur. So, walking into the museum I was really caught quite off guard.

There are actually several larger versions of The Thinker, made at various times after the appearance of the original plaster cast in 1880.[i] I was quickly made aware that The Thinker’s continued life in the popular vernacular has outgrown his scale. The image is re-invented so frequently that that it was striking to realize that’s its myth originated in such a tiny, singular, and seemingly delicate form.

I was even more surprised to find that I wasn’t looking at the original Thinker at all. Apparently there are complicated rules governing the reproduction of Rodin’s works – if I understand things correctly (which I may not), up to twelve casts can be reproduced from the original, at any point in time. So, even though Rodin died quite a few years ago, casts can still be made up until the magic number. Any reproductions beyond a dozen, however, fail to be authentic. I really think this seems a little odd. Why twelve? And wouldn’t size matter? The original Thinker is apparently 182.5 cm in height, which means that the one I saw in St Peter matched up pretty closely. But its size has nothing to do with its authenticity, which is guaranteed instead by the numerical order of its production – some of the large Thinkers are also authentic, but are closer to 2 meters in height.

Does this leave anyone else confused? The calculus of Rodin reproduction can get pretty complicated pretty quickly, and I’m not sure what it’s all indicative of anyway. At any rate, I wondered at the significance of this little thing I was looking at. Why had I traveled all this way to just to see this tiny reproduction? It wasn’t even original (but it was, perhaps, authentic, if you can keep up with the math). And would it really have been more impressive to see the original anyway? Would I have been able to tell the difference?

In telling a friend of mine that I had been to see The Thinker, he suggested that sculpture-watching was perhaps not all that compelling a sport anyway. I could mark it off my checklist, but what could it offer beyond that? Actually, though, I did find more in the sculpture than I anticipated would be there. The subject of The Thinker is not just a man lost in thought, caught in a quiet moment of distraction. He’s considering very serious matters indeed. The piece was intended to be a small component of a monumental portal to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Rodin titled the work The Gates of Hell - and the thinking subject was originally intended to be Dante himself, considering his great poem (though in its final form The Thinker was not intended to have a specific identity). In the portal, The Thinker’s gaze doesn’t seem to be focused anywhere, except perhaps inwardly. This is indeed striking, because as he averts his eyes, immediately in front of him, a man falls hopelessly into Hell.

The image of The Thinker is often understood to be an immediately recognizable representation intellectual activity, but a close look at the sculpture reveals that this misses the point. The Thinker sits in such a terribly awkward pose – his elbow is on the wrong knee for instance – that its clear that his mental dilemma leaves him physically distraught. Surely, Ventura didn’t wish to project the image of a man thinking about the fires of damnation (but would it have changed your vote if he did?).

The Thinker sits precariously. His brief life is nigh at and end, and he well knows it. With that in mind, the tiny sculpture I saw at the Hillstrom somehow seemed more significant. What was this tiny lump of lead and bronze I was looking at? Was it really a work by the hand of Rodin? No, it wasn’t. And so it seemed all the more unlikely that this tiny figure should yet persist, encased in glass, attracting the curious from across rural southern Minnesota. Its delicateness seemed to signal all the more its unlikelihood. It managed to stave off its own oblivion, for at least a little while, and I was surprised to find that it somehow made me feel a little more cheery, wondering at this Rodin, that was hardly a Rodin at all.

[i] For a great discussion of the various casts see http://www.penseur.org/