Photo of the Day: Swings at Lincoln Center

This past Wednesday, heading over to a matinee event at Lincoln Center, I was surprised to see this set of bright-red swings across the plaza. I didn’t recall ever seeing it before. Indeed, it was only just installed and is temporary.

"Mi Casa, Your Casa 2.0" is an interactive artwork, a series of open, house-shaped frames, each roughly 8 feet wide and nearly 10 feet tall. Designed by Mexico-based studio Esrawe + Cadena, it’s open to the public as part of Lincoln Center’s Big Umbrella Festival.

The piece only lasts as long as the festival, through April 26. On the warm, sunlit afternoon when I took this photo, many visitors were taking advantage of the installation while they still could at this New York entertainment and cultural mecca.

Photo of the Day: ‘Railrider's Throne,’ Columbia University Subway Station, NYC

Several weeks ago, before meeting a friend for lunch in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, I passed through a spot extremely familiar to me from my days as a commuting student at Columbia University.

This time, on the 116^th Street downtown subway platform, I noticed a quirky sculpture. Believe me, this was the last thing I would have expected to see when Columbia was still trying to recover its equilibrium a decade after the 1968 student takeover of the university—or, even more recently (and disastrously), when city services were still reeling from New York’s narrow escape from bankruptcy in the fall of 1975.

In other words, it was a gray, dingy atmosphere, where the idea of people smiling over public art was more a matter of satire than satisfaction.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw this artwork in steel on the platform, depicting an oversized chair. "I wanted to create a whimsical environment that allows the commuter to feel special as opposed to alienated," observed sculptor Michelle Greene.

In my case, mission accomplished, as I took out my iPhone to photograph this piece of public art.

But that wasn’t the end of my surprise. I found out from the Website for the Metropolitan Transit Authority that Railrider's Throne was created in 1991. I had passed through this station a number of time in the three decades since then, but somehow hadn’t noticed it till now.

Go figure. I can’t.

Photo of the Day: 2nd Look at ‘Vessel,’ Hudson Yards, NYC

A year and a half ago, when I put up my first post on “Vessel”—a piece of public art at Hudson Yards in the shape of a honeycomb—it was a little too early in the structure’s life for many visitors to start climbing it.

Such is not the case now. A week ago, when I happened to be in the neighborhood (the Javits Center, for an industry function), I noticed, from a distance, a good number of people on several levels in Vessel.

You will not catch me any time soon in the upper reaches of this, however. Acrophobia keeps me ground, as it did Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. I am well aware of my limits…

Photo of the Day: ‘Vessel,’ Hudson Yards, NYC

Several weeks ago, on a tour of the Hudson Yards project now taking shape in Manhattan, I viewed from the south, through an atrium, this massive sculpture. I was so taken by it that last weekend, on a quick walk back to the area, I took this shot, from street level from the north, of “The Vessel.”

As you see, British designer Thomas Heatherwick created this piece of public art (at the center of the skyscrapers) in the shape of a honeycomb. 

But, while Heatherwick has compared it with the Eiffel Tower, this, unlike that French iconic structure, is meant to be climbed—154 interconnecting flights of stairs and 80 landings, or, in effect, a mile-long open, walkable latticework.

Photo of the Day: Johnson’s ‘Right Light,’ NYC

“The Right Light” indeed. Even from a middle distance, coming from Third Avenue on East 34^th Street, I thought for a second that this bronze sculpture by J. Seward Johnson, Jr. was a real man. It turned out to be Johnson paying tribute to another artist, as the latter stands with his easel, paintbrush, and canvas, waiting for the right moment.

Photo of the Day: ‘Van Gogh’s Ear,’ at Rockefeller Center, NYC

Does the installation in the middle of this photo I took late last week remind you of Vincent Van Gogh’s ear, Faithful Reader? I must confess that the thought never occurred to me, though plainly it had for Berlin-based art duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset.

You might accuse me of being an artistic philistine. But wait! I can explain! You see “Van Gogh’s Ear” in this photo up front, with that helpful headline. But I saw it in Rockefeller Center from behind—and after I had heard that the female stars of the Ghostbusters remake had been seen in the vicinity of my building in the area.

My first thought, then, was: Oh, this must be some sort of promotion for the new movie. This must be the creature that slimed Bill Murray, and is now getting rid to do the same thing to Kristen Wiig. Little did I know that it was a sculpture in the form of a swimming pool set upright.

See how impressionable people can be? I’m afraid that my imagination was running in a direction that the artists didn’t foresee.

Fortunately,  they have been around to set me—and perhaps a few others—straight. “The title Van Gogh’s Ear plays on the mythological versus the ordinary,” Elmgreen and Dragset are quoted in a press release on the Web site for the Public Art Fund.  “We thought it was a perfect name for a swimming pool of this shape. It opens up the possibility for a different perception of the form itself. And like the myth of Van Gogh cutting off his ear in despair, the dislocated pool will hopefully make people wonder ‘why?’, and pursue their own reasoning behind this inexplicable scenario.”

Well, okay. Thanks for clarifying that.

Next, this exhibition goes to China. One can only imagine how they will view it.

Photo of the Day: Collective Self-Portrait in Gotham

A week ago, passing across midtown Manhattan’s Duffy Square, I was startled to come across what is being called “participatory public art.” Last week’s issue of Time Out New York included the “Inside Out Project” among the city’s examples of “outdoor art.”

What was happening was this: At a specially designed photo booth in Times Square, passersby could have their pictures taken, then have these black-and-white self-portraits overlaid on a backdrop created by the artist JR. (Question: “JR? You mean the guy in Dallas that just died?” Answer: I don’t know if this artist is into hats, but he’s French, so my guess is the Texas city is not his style.)

These posters, I had read, would be on display through May 10. Yesterday morning, I wondered if the project had come to a premature end, as I saw street cleaners mopping up the remains of these posters. Why were they sweeping these up? Because of the rain beginning to fall? Because new portraits needed to be made? Or because they couldn't last?

But this afternoon, I saw a whole new set, ready to replace the old images.

It’s almost Whitmanesque, this celebratory Song of Ourselves. Sadly, though it might be public art, it’s also, at heart, ephemeral art, too. The black-and-white posters seen here are already history. The image you see on your screen now is the last evidence of their existence.