Michael Moynihan: Personal taste is neither consistent nor logical
picture: Urban Cork On Buckley, Unveiling Sullivan Laura Keogh Sculpture In By Right) Holly Plattenbaustudio At Clare Megan And City, New Donnacliffe, Street To The A Mirror (left Of Cornmarket
Last week in this corner of the newspaper I began with Paul Lynch, winner of the Booker Prize.
I was remarking on Lynch’s perspicacity with his vision of a fascist Ireland in his novel, , given the recent street violence in Dublin. Recognising the achievement. Saluting the winner. You know the drill.
Today I return to Lynch partly because of the extraordinary reaction to his win from some quarters, which I only really noticed after I’d filed my column. Mean-spirited responses to Lynch’s win have appeared in some English periodicals, while a few people mewled pointedly on social media because — checks notes — the book they were expecting to win did not.
It’s easy to dismiss these contributions as wrongheaded and spiteful, but something needs to be acknowledged: subjectivity. Personal taste isn’t consistent, measurable, or logical. All of us have experienced a level of unbridled enthusiasm for something which is only matched by our amazement when another person doesn’t share that enthusiasm.
Who hasn’t felt some version of the Kenneth Tynan experience which dates back to 1956: “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see ”?
(The modern equivalent seems to be slightly different: "I doubt if I could love anyone who did not agree wholeheartedly with me about .”) All of which is a very roundabout way of landing on this week’s topic.
In the last week or so Cork City Council’s Arts Office has been drawing attention to a series of public sculptures around the city, specifically on Cork’s central island, whence comes the name: Island City, Cork’s Urban Sculpture Trail.
The office has been describing the pieces on social media: “Boom Nouveau, by Forerunner on the Oliver Plunkett St end of Cook St. The sculpture mimics the form of a tangible everyday urban street feature — the lamppost. The three lights shine a light on the city.”
Have you noticed the beautiful art nouveau craftsmanship of the lights on Boom Nouveau, by Forerunner on the Oliver Plunkett St end of Cook St. The sculpture mimics the form of a tangible everyday urban street feature - the lamppost. The three lights shine a light on the city. pic.twitter.com/hFIs2VEvL1
— Cork City Arts (@corkcityarts) November 30, 2023
Or this: “Have you noticed the seagull perched atop a neon strip, sentinel-like on both ends of Carey’s Lane? Niamh McCann's Sentinals [flew through the ages in the shape of birds], is a sculptural piece influenced by the architecture, geography, and incidental features along the street.”
Or: “A stunning aerial view of Urban Mirror on Cornmarket Street. Designed by Plattenbaustudio who describe themselves as architects in an art world, it’s easy to see how much thought and work they put into ensuring that the piece fitted seamlessly into the area.”
I am all for more public art, and for more art in public — not always the same thing — but can we just take a moment to consider these descriptions?
In reverse order, the last is in the form of an enormous yellow lollipop towering over the streetscape, but the photograph accompanying the above text was taken from above. Far above.
A stunning aerial view of Urban Mirror on Cornmarket Street. Designed by plattenbaustudio who describe themselves as architects in an art world, it’s easy to see how much thought and work they put into ensuring that the piece fitted seamlessly into the area. pic.twitter.com/o85qQyA5uA
— Cork City Arts (@corkcityarts) November 14, 2023
It’s easy to see how much thought and work was put into ensuring the piece fit seamlessly, per the text, but only if you’re approximately 100 feet in the air directly above the piece. Which seems suboptimal for most of us.
The next piece features a “seagull perched atop a neon strip, sentinel-like on both ends of Carey’s Lane”. This looks, to these admittedly untrained eyes, less like a seagull than a crow.
As for the sculpture that mimics the form of a tangible everyday urban street feature — the lamppost — on Oliver Plunkett Street, I cannot put it any better than the person on social media who asked an obvious question: “You’re saying the design of the lamppost mimics the design of a lamppost?” All I can add is that if a sculpture mimics a lamppost so closely that it, too, sheds light is it not then a . . . lamppost?
A two-for-one deal: visual art and epistemological poser, both at the same time.
Before going any further, readers may feel compelled to point out that complaining about public art is a long-standing pursuit.
They’re right. When Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was placed in a Manhattan plaza back in 1981 thousands petitioned for its removal because it forced them to take the long way around to their offices; go back a further hundred years, and Rodin’s bronze Monument to Balzac wasn’t unveiled until 20 years after the sculptor’s death, so toxic was the reaction.
The problem when you start complaining about art is that you run the risk of falling into the trap mentioned above, where the criterion is not so much whether the subject of discussion is good or bad, but whether everyone agrees with your opinions.
Only a few days left to sign up for a special conversation with the commissioned artists from Island City on Tues 12th Dec (11.30am-1pm) in @TriskelCork . Tickets are free, but places must be reserved. Book now on https://t.co/hJ9JhRoi8M pic.twitter.com/7WVFPpRq0q
— Cork City Arts (@corkcityarts) December 6, 2023
I’m not complaining about the new art for just that reason. Whether I like it or not, you may enjoy it, and your opinion is as valid as mine.
Also, lampooning a certain strand of artistic discourse is just another way to shoot fish in a barrel.
Earnest attempts to articulate an artist’s vision of an artist — particularly one whose work is neither verbal nor intended to be — often nudge well into Pseud’s Corner territory. Maybe such artistic work doesn’t need a huge level of explication to be appreciated, but people often appreciate some context.
Just not too much context. And certainly not too much pretentious context.
One more angle to the new pieces to be found on the streets of Cork. Is it better to have five such installations scattered throughout the city or would we be better off with one large-scale project?
I ask because of a recent trip to Bilbao in northern Spain, where the Guggenheim Museum is synonymous with the regeneration of the city. In front of the museum is Puppy by Jeff Koons — a 12-metre-high statue of a West Highland terrier, with around 38,000 flowers covering its steel structure.
It’s set in a broad open plaza before the museum, identifiable from hundreds of metres away, besieged with photographers and tourists, a striking silhouette that is immediately recognisable and completely identifiable with its city. Accessible to all.
(And not immune to artistic guff, either. Koons said the piece was inspired by Europe’s baroque cathedrals “and the way they achieve this balance between the symmetrical and the asymmetrical and between the eternal and the ephemeral.”) Would we be better off with something on this scale in Cork? An artistic piece so big that it needs no explanation, no mediation? Something that could become a symbol of the city in and of itself?
Yes, there’s the Statue. Should it be covered in flowers? Should it be a dog and not a priest? Should it just be bigger? Fr Mathew bedecked in roses and petunias, twice as tall?
I am open to collaborating on a thousand fridge magnets and cheap t-shirts with that image on them. Think of me as a prophet, and of that work as my song.
*Note - the Triskel hosts a special conversation with the Island City artists on December 12 (11.30am-1pm). Tickets are free, but places are limited — tickets here.