Public Art Takes Path of Adventure at UC San Diego

An artist working in non-traditional media once asked sculptor Claes Oldenburg what it was like to deal with the people in charge of commissioning public sculpture.

“They’ll tell you that they admire and respect your work,” Oldenburg replied. “They’ll tell you they’ve prepared the community for the type of art you do. But no matter what they tell you, what they really have in mind is a medium-sized Henry Moore.”

Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection at UC San Diego, related the anecdote Thursday night at the Irvine Fine Arts Center during a slide lecture about the unusual public art program she supervises.

Although some members of the university community might prefer to see undulating figures by the late Moore on the 1,200-acre campus, most of the work commissioned so far is considerably more adventurous.

Under the terms of a collaboration between businessman James Stuart DeSilva and the university, begun in 1981, prominent artists from California and elsewhere have been asked to create work for campus sites of their choosing.

The Stuart Foundation pays all expenses, including a $20,000 flat fee for the artist. (So far, project costs have ranged from $70,000 to $200,000.) And the campus gets some extraordinary flights of fancy.

A piece by Robert Irwin, located in a eucalyptus grove, consists of 25-foot stainless-steel poles that bear aloft a small-gauge chain-link fence with a blue coating that plays now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t tricks with the viewer’s eye. Zigzagging through the trees, the ribbed surface of the fence looks “like a ribbon of sky,” Beebe said.

Rather than existing as an alien art object plunked down in a natural setting, the piece allows people to become more aware of the patterns of shadows and the movement of wind through the trees. Typical of the maverick California artist’s careful attention to perceptual details, the steel poles are buffed so that they don’t shine distractingly.

Reaction to the piece “Two Running Violet V Forms” has been diverse. One of the groundskeepers mused that the piece appears to have “no beginning and no end.” An office worker answered a puzzled viewer with aplomb. “It’s a giraffe net,” he said.

“Oh,” said his interlocutor. “Do you have trouble with giraffes here?”

“Not any more.”

Someone else, speaking up at an informative meeting for campus employees, was concerned that birds might be trapped in the fence. No injured or dead birds have been spotted at the site.

Another eucalyptus grove project by Terry Allen--an artist who is also a musician and songwriter--directly responds to nature-lovers’ dismay at the cutting of trees to make room for a building. Allen wrapped three dead trees in lead hammered with nails--”like a coat of armor,” Beebe said--and wired two of them for sound.

One plays a wildly varied selection of music (from Texas crooning to a Thai band); the other broadcasts an equally diverse menu of poems and stories. Each program lasts 4 or 5 hours. The sound is on 24 hours a day, though each program is punctuated by periods of silence.

“People hug and touch them,” Beebe reported. “And they carve their initials in them, which Terry likes. “Someone carved ‘Art Has No Meaning.’ We haven’t found serious obscenities.”

The third tree--which is silent--stands near the library, where a librarian asked plaintively, “Couldn’t our tree say something?” Students have dubbed the grove “The Enchanted Forest.”

Other worthy, provocative projects include those by video artist Nam June Paik (a series of Buddha sculptures “watching” old, skeletal TVs scattered in landscaped areas), and mixed-media artist Bruce Nauman (neon signs of the seven virtues and vices flashing around the top of a campus building in a way reminiscent of old-fashioned architectural inscriptions).

On five limestone rocks with undulating surfaces, poet, gardener and sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay carved the Latin word for wave, unda, in conjunction with a wave-like sign used in editing. At once cerebral and tactile, the piece is meant to convey his conception of enlightened man contemplating the spectacle of nature. On an open, grassy site, sculptor Richard Fleischner erected blocks of pink and gray granite in a sober configuration intended to bring to mind elements of architecture.

The only traditional, sculpture-on-a-pedestal piece in the lot is Nikki Saint Phalle’s 14-foot-tall multicolor beast standing on a 15-foot-tall concrete arch. It was the first work acquired for the program.

Granted that a university tends to be insulated from some of the rough-and-tumble of the outside world, does Beebe have any thoughts about municipal public art projects, and how they can achieve equally creative results?

Believing that “you can’t cater to a democratic process” when it comes to public art, she answered that decisions should be in the hands of “the (art) professionals.” All too often, she said, “businessmen who are courageous in other aspects of their lives turn cowardly” rather than approve unusual works of public art.

At the same time, groups commissioning public art shouldn’t expect it to be the centerpiece for the city--at least, not right away. “The Eiffel Tower was hated ( by Parisians ), “ Beebe said. “The Calder (sculpture) in Grand Rapids was picketed and booed-- and three years later (images of it were painted) on all the city vehicles.”