Art in the park (and everywhere else)
Conceptual artist Roxy Paine took ideas about nature and industrialization to create steel trees and a steel rock, artworks housed in the museum called Madison Square Park. The tension between nature and industrialization were obvious in Paine’s works: the real trees and rocks surrounding the artificial trees and artificial rock; the material used to make the artworks, steel, which is made from natural raw materials but becomes steel through a man-made process. The artist sought to contrast nature and industrialization in his works, a theme we are all familiar with in this city. The whole city can be seen as a museum, with its many parks and trees and its many skyscrapers as artworks depicting this tension between nature and man. This tension is everywhere around us: when we walk on a sidewalk with trees on the side, when we are in Central Park and we look up to see skyscrapers in the backdrop, or when we admire the blue sky, lost in a daydream only to come back to our city life. Although Paine did an admirable job in portraying the tension between nature and man, the audience did not have to look any further for this tension than in their everyday life as a New Yorker.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Lol. I would pass by Madison Square Park every day and would never think so deeply as why the steel trees were in there. The man vs. nature of yours is actually very true though. I like that idea of yours.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
It wasn’t totally my idea- I saw this tension but I got a lot of help from the little blurb provided by the artist.