Made of brass, i can withstand a lot, i was put outside, and, given a prominent place, the top of the steps to the museum’s old main entrance, that’s been closed for many years. These aren’t exactly the stairs in Rocky, but it’s a better museum. I’m, in this bubble called University Circle, a unique and large cluster of hospitals, universities and cultural institutions, for sixty years surrounded by often ruined and poverty-filled neighborhoods, that began as something much different. Now, with the expansion of education and culture, the empty spaces and decrepit buildings, are being redeveloped in the usual reinvention of retail, luxe housing bought cheap. With gentrification, natives finally get real
grocery stores, roads are improved and property values rise, as do taxes.
I’m here, 24/7, it’s completely different out here, than in there. I keep that to myself, how could they know? Even in a cultural, guarded oasis, at night, people feel they can express themselves, sometimes radically, anonymously.
At 1:00 a.m. on March 24, 1970, dynamite was placed and blew me off the pedestal. Look at my feet and lower legs, they’re gone. The museum should be honored for not rehabbing me, instead, creating a document of the times (1970) by simply putting me back on top of the pedestal.
Inside, they treat the art with such deference and care, bringing it out of comfy archival storage for a show, every once in awhile. Compared to my build, much art is not really archival, but delicate, so i understand, but, i’m naked out here,and, the running joke has always been that i’m not thinking, but trying to remember where my clothes are. Such empathy. Let’s just say this, I value memory as part of thinking. With any coming apocalypse, i may still be here, although buried under the rubble of a cultural institution. Who would be left to remember civilizations’ great creations? Can you imagine someone blowing upa Van Gogh? There would be nothing left.
It could all be gone in a hit of an asteroid, war, a bombing, of course, or thenewest plague. Enjoy it while you can, is what i came up with. Anything that comes along, Mr. Rodin made sure that I would be prepared and last.
I think about the truth of things, and, i happen to be, one of the things. I’m not bronze-like, nor virtually so, but solid, Not fluid, unlike concepts, that became part of art the last 100 years, since the urinal. When things have a point of reference, or, are real, it cannot be used as freely as an ideology.
Mr. Williams said “no truth, but in things” which leads to me to think positively about post-facto thinking, Perhaps, that’s why i’m outside.
Thinking as a meataphor for art? And thinking differently, the new aesthetic. This quote, “The introverted thought architect dwells behind the moon that is taken over by extroverted technicians.” (T.A), seems fit for the times.