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Art and Gigantism
 The
trouble with the sea is it’s so BIG. Artists sensitive to this fact, and
with only modest egos, generally do what Hokusai did in The Hollow of
the Deep Sea Wave off Kanagawa. They give Neptune his due. The wave
with its curious talons is seen higher than Mt Fuji, while the fishermen
in their boats below are tiny and cowering—you have to look hard to find
them. This was a landscape tradition showing insignificant men and women
dwarfed by mountains, sea, and sky. Man is nothing. Nature is all.
Today a more heroic tradition prevails. An artist with ego is just as
likely to regard the sea as a challenge. No sooner does he find a wave
than he has to ride it—figuratively speaking at least. And if some
well-endowed arts committee invites works for a sculpture competition on a
prominent headland beside the ocean he feels obliged to show how clever he
is; how unintimidated by Neptune; how with a bit of engineering skill, and
by flexing his artistic muscles, Man can upstage Nature any time.
For a big setting, a big work, with all the nuts and bolts and couplings
scaffolding needs.  Lots of art today is showmanship, and since thousands of visitors to Bondi’s
annual exhibition paused to stare wonderingly up at the skeletal maze
poised perilously above them, from that point of view Jarrod Taylor’s
“Structural Wave” was a success. It loomed and threatened. Unlike
Hokusai’s message, Taylor sounded as if he were saying to both nature and
gravity: You are nothing. I am all.
 There
was also a giant deck chair, a giant fried egg, giant limpets, giant
goldfish, and a giant sea urchin looking as if it was about to take over
the world. Hypertrophy here seems to have had a variety of motives—most of
them frivolous, and all pointing to the fact that without a huge increase
in scale no-one would even notice the artist’s work. “Recliner Rex” and
“Big Chook” are jokes. But since much cultural performance today takes
itself rather too seriously there’s certainly a place for humor here and
there.
This is especially so when textual glosses by the sculptors themselves
tell us how Artist 1 wants to “question our attitudes toward death”, or how the work of Artist
2 “references Alex Seton’s iconic limestone faces to explore the ongoing
relationship between a sculpture and a space.” Though I feel such
utterances should be kindly treated. On the one hand because few artists
seem to have ‘an ongoing relationship’ with language (or not with prose);
on the other because what they say often mimics the derelict nonsense
written by professors of Fine Arts.
* * *
Historically, monumental sculpture has always been associated with
despotic excess: political megalomania and hypertrophic art went hand in
hand. This was strikingly so in Egypt long before Mt Rushmore came
along—and Borglum’s work is an anomaly. For the most part the impulse to
erect colossal images of political leaders is alien to both the European
peoples and the democratic tradition—where the cost is borne by citizens
who want to know why. In this connection it is noteworthy that inside even
the tallest European cathedrals the religious statuary is of generally
human scale.
 Elsewhere,
however, especially east of the Mediterranean, huge images of kings and
gods have been a feature for thousands of years. The giant heads atop
Anatolia’s Mount Nemrud, all that remains of statues 20 to 30 feet high
built by King Antiochus of Commagene, are the most revealing—the pure
essence of oriental despotism in stone; those on Easter Island are the
most mysterious; those erected under Stalin the most haunted by terror and
dread.
For the grossest example of artistic megalomania in recent times—an
example combining showmanship and sheer imperial ambition—one need look no
further than the perversities of Christo. At the time of his saffron
takeover of Central Park earlier this year he was said to have “caused a
buzz on four continents” — and that’s a bigger empire than King Antiochus
ever ruled. Sad to say, his influence on those who feel a need to wrap
things lingers: the same pitiful ambition was displayed at Bondi.
 Sandstone
cliff randomly patterned by wind and sea is a delight enjoyed (and much
photographed) by walkers and joggers and visitors of every kind. To anyone
aware of natural form and color it’s a miracle of unintelligent design.
Especially remarkable is a large and isolated rock along the way. So what
should be done? Preferably of course nothing at all. But this was an
outing for artists—including one who hadn’t heard that Christo has moved
on to other things—so it was promptly tied up in ugly orange rope. You
turned your eyes away, surprised such an affront was even permitted, and
hopefully gazed out at the healing waves.
 The
poet Vachel Lindsay once said that even the worst photoplay could be redeemed
by “noble views of the sea”. Perhaps an effect of this sort was in the
minds of the organizers of this sculpture show too. Some of it did need
redeeming, and one likes to imagine that redemption was the effect the
ocean had. But noble views of the sea are just as likely to remind
audiences of the strange ignobilities of the human scene as well.
* * *
Today (apart from Christo) our interest in scale also has more innocent
sources. It probably owes something to the intellectual world we now
inhabit, a world newly aware of both the microscopic sub-universe
(“there’s room at the bottom” said Richard Feynman once, foreseeing
smaller and smaller iPods holding larger and larger files) and the
macroscopic super-universe of the cosmos. Images from both micro and macro
worlds are constantly before us, with bacteria on television vying for
attention alongside beetles the size of dinosaurs, and dinosaurs alongside
Jupiter’s remote and exotic moons. Once novel and revelatory, the Eames
brothers’ Powers of Ten is how we now look at life.
 Koichi
Ogino’s granite fish are my kind of thing. Strong shapes. Solid forms.
Attractive texture. Not too naturalistic. Not too serious. Not trying to
impress. No visible or audible message, and if the artist wants to remind
us in his comments that we are all living things together… well, that is
both unarguably true and fine by me. These are shapes that magnetically
draw the passer-by, and hardly anyone could resist extending a friendly
hand. Real fish are cold and slithery things and not fun to handle.
Koichi’s granite fish probably did more to make these creatures from the
sea appealing than hours of earnest environmental pleas. No child could
resist them.
 The
wooden sea urchin was more ambiguous—here gigantism again looms in a
threatening way. From the top it looked harmless enough: the round shape
was dominant, and children playing nearby gave the warm timber
construction a friendly feel. But moving closer the outer form of a sea
urchin was no longer seen. It resembled an enormous spider crouching to
attack. It became all legs; arachnophobia whispered fearfully. ‘On the
Staircase’ by the Danish artist Keld Moseholm is a playful bronze that
faintly echoes Escher. Diminishing figures ascend diminishing stairs to
oblivion.
* * *
 Bondi’s
Sculpture by the Sea is part cultural event, part family
entertainment. Men and women and children who wouldn’t normally visit
galleries have a chance to see what passes for art in our time—and there’s
plenty that’s passable enough. The setting near a popular beach ensures
that if the kids don’t like sculpture then they can swim and play ball
games instead. On a nice day in early summer the sun shines, the sea
breeze blows, an amiable atmosphere prevails—encouraged by the whimsical
intent of many pieces—and it would be foolish to take it all too
seriously. For most visitors it’s an outing by the sea.
 Yet
the problem raised by Vachel Lindsay’s observation remains. Perhaps “noble
views of the sea” introduced into some negligible movie script are
redeeming. Perhaps they can have the same effect on miscellaneous
assembled sculptures too. But you can’t deny that the grandeur of sea and
sky and coastline also puts humanity and its vaunted artefacts sharply in
place. That’s how Hokusai saw things, I suspect, and I’m inclined to think
Hokusai was right.
Bondi Beach
December 2005
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