In case you're squinting at the graphic in the previous post and wondering about the "Nail's Tails" artist, I thought I'd put up this picture of the sculpture — by Donald Lipski — which stands outside Camp Randall, the Wisconsin Badgers football stadium. I happened to take a picture of it the other day. I used iPhoto to make it black and white and then to "boost color," which gets you to a much richer brown than making it "sepia." The original sculpture — which you can see by the linked article many people hate — is stark white. Click here for a larger version of my picture. It's an obelisk, eroded to reveal a core composed of footballs. Why don't people like it? Is it because of something suggested by naming it after the artist's roommate? Now, the roommate's name was "Nails," so I have a problem with the placement of the apostrophe in the title "Nail's Tails," and I hate the title, but forget the title. Pretend it's called Our Football Obelisk. You'll have to learn to like it.
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18 comments:
The linked article has the amazing ability to make me hate both the "whimsical" artist and the rubes and dullards who dislike the sculpture.
And it uses the amazing, paycheck-deserving skill of the reporter to find a couple of people who dislike the artwork and conclude that "the majority of Madisonians" must dislike it too. The guy should be writing for the New York Times, who love that kind of writing.
"many observers referenced the sculpture's inescapable resemblance to an appendage unique to the male anatomy."
Inescapable resemblance? Really? Do all columnar objects inescapably resemble "an appendage unique to the male anatomy"? Where did you find these observers, in a bar on "Ladies Night"? Participating in Madison's gay pride parade? Honestly, if your phallus is covered with pustular protuberances from its square base to its pointed tip, you might want to see a doctor
I think it resembles nothing so strongly as a pile of well-formed turds, which suggests an alternate title: "I didn't know they piled it that high".
'HE'LP' 'Cal'l' th'e' ap'ost'ro'ph'e po'li'ce!
Inspired by the roommate Nail, who was apparently a football player whose triumphant narratives of football exploits were classically monumental, but had a tendency over time to wear.
Half a million dollars for that. I would have done it for $10,000. For $15,00, I'd have made it twice as tall. But the guy who said it called it "brilliant," must have been imagining it in its finished form, after it acquires its urban camouflage of spray painted graffiti.
Was it made by badgers, dragging the stones one by one in their mouths from a local river??
It'd make a good Pixar movie if it was.
If my 'appendage' were all pebbly like that, I'd apply a cream or something...maybe cheese curds in Wisconsin...
Reminds me a little of the so called Watts Tower.
It's not named for a guy named Watts.
I don't like either one of them.
The Rudston Monolith
Many questions remain unanswered.
“Nail’s Tails” would be much improved if each one of those footballs were instead a football helmet with a grimacing head inside.
Aah, the fungal phallus.
Yes, Palladian, the majority of Madisonians do think it's a ridiculous piece of (cough) art. As in a big old waste of money. Mercifully, it's just part of the landscape now -- boring, if you will. What better condemnation for art.
It's Big Ten football, people! Does no one here but Althouse understand what that means? I think it's fabulous, can't wait to see it when the Nittany Lions kick your sorry Midwestern asses on October 11.
I thought I knew a lot of minutiae about college football subcultures, but I've never seen that. And I'm in Big 11 country.
The Watts Tower(s) at least do homage to the essentially beautiful cone shape.
This thing just "deconstructs" that shape. Which I'm sure is the term its art manque deconstructor would use to justify his eyesore.
You'll have to learn to like it.
Not gonna' happen.
It looks like a big pile of rabbit poop that accumulates under the wire floor of a rabbit hutch. Although, I must admit it does look better in the brown tones.
Someone should sneak in and paint all those little footballs green. Attach a lizard tail emerging from the crack in the base. Now that would give Madisonites a reason to tut tut.
It ought to have a little German Wermacht helmet on top.
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