Sea and Sky

 

Saint John has a seaside sculpture walk. This is one of the sculptures, randomly chosen.

Why? What is the point of this?

The point of art is to express beauty. This is not beautiful. None of the sculptures along the walk are beautiful. 

You will object that I am a Philistine who cannot appreciate an abstract sculpture. But that is not quite the issue here. An abstract sculpture is less likely to be beautiful, but it might still be beautiful. Any building is an abstract sculpture, and some architecture is beautiful. I.M. Pei’s purely abstract forms are nevertheless beautiful. A well-cut gemstone is beautiful. 

This sculpture, and all the others along this walk, lack the obvious elements of beauty, as defined, for example, by Saint Thomas Aquinas: symmetry, proportion, or balance; clarity; and integrity or a sense of completion. Most modern sculpture seems to deliberately violate all of these elements, actually striving to look off-balance, incomplete, and indistinct in form. 

The point of it all seems to be to protest against beauty itself. 

Why on earth would anyone want this in a public installation? And, worse, why on earth would anyone want to actually pay for having it?

The present sculpture is titled “Sea and sky.” Nobody needs even a beautiful sculpture simply to express “sea and sky.” We can see both plainly enough. We need art solely to express the unseen. 

And there it is, in perfect irony, obscuring the pedestrian’s view of sea and sky. 

It illustrates how decadent our culture has become.

For contrast, some beautiful public art in Saint John: the war memorial.

Public Art

Nelson's Column, Monttreal

Okay, people are saying they are offended by statues. 

The remedy is the same as with freedom of speech: if you disagree, put up your own statue. Just as, if you disagree, you do not try to silence the other, but counter his argument.

Like many other places in the former British Empire, Montreal has a Nelson’s Column, commemorating the great British admiral.

In Dublin, they blew theirs up, to express their distaste for English rule.

The Quebecois, surely, had more reason to feel offended, since, after all, it was France against which Nelson won his victories. But they hose the civilized Canadian way. Instead of tearing Nelson down, as they surely could have any time in the past hundred years, they put up another statue nearby, of Vauquelin, a French naval hero of the Seven Years’ War. Both ethnic groups get their heroes. 

The Confederate statues, like them or not, are important memorials for some Americans of their history. If seeing them offends some, it is equally true that seeing them come down offends others. Mutual respect requires that they stay.

But by all means, all other groups ought to feel free to fund and erect their own public statues, then, of Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King, or John Brown, or Nat Turner, or Sitting Bull, or Pontiac, or, really, anyone else..

More public art is good. Less public art is bad. More free speech is good. Less free speech is bad.

This is not complicated.