good morning happy saturday let's artfight. thoughts, feelings, theses upon THE BEAN? - ThreadSky

annakornbluh.bsky.social • 2 days ago

good morning happy saturday let's artfight.

thoughts, feelings, theses upon THE BEAN?

Comments

karlsteel.bsky.social•2 days ago

Want more

omweekes.bsky.social•2 days ago

What’s a thing in New York as cool as the bean?

minsong.bsky.social•2 days ago

Maybe?

charlottegarden.bsky.social•2 days ago

The Astor place cube?

karlsteel.bsky.social•2 days ago

Happily not a giant mirror

omweekes.bsky.social•2 days ago

You win hahah. Sorry Chicago!

deebeehobbs.bsky.social•2 days ago

this is NY’s Bean https://www.diaart.org/visit/visit-our-locations-sites/walter-de-maria-the-new-york-earth-room-new-york-united-states/

karlsteel.bsky.social•2 days ago

📯🥳

onceatrophic.bsky.social•2 days ago

Be careful what you wish for… https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/anish-kapoor-new-york-bean-review-1234656240/

karlsteel.bsky.social•2 days ago

Hahahhaa

jpinnv.bsky.social•2 days ago

Construction/renovation made it inaccessible when I was there last and I was disappointed I couldn’t play with reflections up close & do my obligatory tourist selfie, & watch others do the same.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

made for selfie is definitely an issue with most contemporary art

cmf406.bsky.social•2 days ago

I moved away in the late 80s, and I like that it seems to weirdly thrill people in a way that say, the Lurie Garden (which I find much more thrilling) doesn't -- but also, WTF?

It's just big and shiny and people like to take selfies of their distorted reflections?

mrothberg.bsky.social•2 days ago

His installation in the Tate Modern some years ago was probably the best public art work I've ever seen...

jraber.bsky.social•2 days ago

It's (a) a bean, (b) a reflection of Chicago, and (c) a mirror, like that Time cover where "You" was Person of the Year. Symptomatic of city's shift from big shoulders manufacturing (giant metal hulk) to tourism and creative industries (gotta attract people with shiny amenities). I like it.

carallewis.bsky.social•2 days ago

Co-signing all this, and yet I still don't get the attraction to it. Sometimes I feel like it's Koons-y kitsch stealing the fanfare of the glorious architecture all around it

jraber.bsky.social•2 days ago

I feel like it's trying to add fanfare to the architecture, to add a new angle of vision on it, to show downtown as a panoramic picture even while you're standing in the middle of it: Chicago's selfie stick.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

here for thoughts of this flavor, yes!

cdanby.bsky.social•2 days ago

I can't abide Koons, but I thought the bean was fun -- I was drawn despite myself. It is utterly unchallenging but what the hell. Kids like it. I don't think it subtracts. Chicago has good buildings but the larger plaza where the bean sits is kinda bleak.

micahbateman.bsky.social•2 days ago

I like it but distrust the pleasure it brings in reflecting people as cosmopolitan and thin

drewdaniel.bsky.social•2 days ago

This prompts a memory: wasn’t there an urban legend about someone spreading the false rumor that when you visit Chicago it is good luck to “lick the bean”?

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

ew ew have not heard this...but on further thought, maybe up with public tongues

mwyarbrough.bsky.social•1 day ago

Love it. Art that invites people to engage with it, enjoy themselves and others. What's not to love?

annakornbluh.bsky.social•1 day ago

some people think it is too abstract, conversely others think it is not really about anything; too oriented to mirroring? and a lot of critics don't like public art in general?

annakornbluh.bsky.social•1 day ago

for instance https://bsky.app/profile/danvitkus.bsky.social/post/3liuqnqeayc2v

danielbarber.bsky.social•2 days ago

Meh

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

precisely interested in how common this is

danielbarber.bsky.social•2 days ago

I liked the bit above about maybe ok but don’t want to encourage AK, not completely unredeemable. but scared that is already too encouraging

jonathanflatley.bsky.social•2 days ago

i like it. i'm in favor of the promotion of aesthetic experiences of wonder and joy. plus it draws attention to your sense of perception and position. it brings people out into the world, and into contact with each other.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

up with joy! outside!

jonathanflatley.bsky.social•2 days ago

plus, just anytime an artist can make a work (a non-representational one, no less) that so many people genuinely take pleasure in . . . that's not easy. closest aesthetic analogue for me are Serra's big structures you walk through.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

do serra's somehow seem much higher? (exceedingly love them myself)

funny how calling it the bean is like, re-representationalizing

carallewis.bsky.social•2 days ago

not least because its official name is "cloud gate"—entirely other connotations

gillywhite8.bsky.social•2 days ago

i love that when you’ve bean there, you’ve done that.

gillywhite8.bsky.social•2 days ago

stephjayb.bsky.social•1 day ago

Charming, and like that from the Bean you can see Jeanne Gang's residential tower (Aqua Tower?)

haredurer.bsky.social•2 days ago

Sure why not

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

well yes trying to gauge this sentiment precisely

marthashearer.bsky.social•2 days ago

enjoyed its appearance in SOURCE CODE

melmac.bsky.social•2 days ago

Is it a bean or a neck pillow?

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

legit question

dlbroox.bsky.social•2 days ago

I liked standing in front of it seeing the reflections in it. As a piece of art not sure I love it, but it’s fun and engaging in its own way so overall I guess I really do like it as a thing.

ecourtem.bsky.social•2 days ago

Absolutely adore it. The way it organizes the entire city space around a fluid, fun, unpretentious and yet quasi-sublime work of art. Turns a tourist attraction into a celebration of the people who come to look at it

fplynch.bsky.social•2 days ago

It brings joy to so many people, and it, itself, has a certain peaceful quality to it. Chicago is blessed for having it.

thezachloeffler.bsky.social•2 days ago

Offensive that it’s such a thing, and that millennium park is like the tourist thing in the area, when very nearby you can go take a tour of Adler&Sullivan’s auditorium theatre or ride the elevator at the fine arts building or marvel at how bad Frank Lloyd wright’s rookery renovation is.

niamhroisin.bsky.social•2 days ago

Love it

niamhroisin.bsky.social•2 days ago

Cheerful, welcoming, expansive, easy, fluid.

allgrim.bsky.social•2 days ago

I jokingly used it for the hypothetical cover to my diss. Blah blah warped vision.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

good!

teddyg.bsky.social•2 days ago

it's for children and our dogself, shiny, mirroring, false recognition -- unlike a hydrant, no way to mark. thought-less.

meganlcook.bsky.social•2 days ago

I’m conflicted: I think it is successful as a piece of public art but also worry that saying so only encourages Anish Kapoor

ebwood.bsky.social•2 days ago

👆🏻 This.

bocadelperro.bsky.social•2 days ago

Well luckily he apparently hates that people call it "The Bean"

meganlcook.bsky.social•2 days ago

Good!

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

meaning, you think his other works are less good?

meganlcook.bsky.social•2 days ago

I find them aesthetically interesting in the same way as a well-designed scientific device, or an iPhone. Kapoor seems, cynically, more interested in engaging headlines and collectors than actual viewers. The Bean works because of site and people but I don’t know those are ordinarily his concerns

slavagreenberg.bsky.social•2 days ago

I have to take a pic every time I’m there, so yeah, love it! It’s also make for a nice walk during SCMS.

gavinmueller.bsky.social•2 days ago

Probably not very cool to say but I always liked it

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

funny how we have this sentiment; it's ok to affirm the perfectly likable!

gavinmueller.bsky.social•2 days ago

its early days were also my early days in the city and all of my Chicagoan friends hated on it so it just seemed inappropriate to like it! But I always did, I even used to do field trips there

danvitkus.bsky.social•1 day ago

An organic shape in tension with its hard shiny metal high-tech reflective surface. Unsprouted and sanitized, its sterility places in abeyance a potential to be either nourishment or living plant. Instead, an aesthetic object mirroring narcissistic images of all who stare into its mise en abime.

somniens.bsky.social•2 days ago

Mixed opinions tbh it’s certainly successful at what it’s trying to do (public/eviromental engagement) but I’m not personally that interested in chrome abstract sculptures as a whole…

somniens.bsky.social•2 days ago

also less than enthused that public art money always seems to go to art which people can engage with on a shallow level. I can look at it and tell the art proposal he wrote emphasized how much people would enjoy taking pictures with it. Just not a huge fan of art as engines for social clout.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•1 day ago

the pic clout thing is hard since it predates iPhone by a few years, but certainly tourist snapshot

somniens.bsky.social•1 day ago

I think what we call pic clout is inherently functioning in the same way as a tourist snapshot. There’s not much difference between posting on Instagram a picture where you seem to be holding up the tower of Pisa vs including it in a slideshow you plan to show all your friends/relatives

somniens.bsky.social•1 day ago

That said the modern era of it has had seen a massive increase on the way public art/museums exhibitions are designed to be interactive(read selfie conducive) like basically any yayoi kusama installation in the last ten years

modernistwitch.bsky.social•2 days ago

personally it evokes no strong feelings for me which means to me that a piece of art has failed. so many buildings around it are more interesting to look at imo

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

success = strong feelings evoked, whether good or bad, and failure = it's ok
(?)

modernistwitch.bsky.social•2 days ago

that’s how i feel, yeah! art is for engaging with, so even a piece i think is dogshit will have whys in it, and that why is interesting. the bean is one of those pieces that just utterly fails to make me care one way or another

atrubek.bsky.social•2 days ago

a fan, perhaps could be squishier

onekade.bsky.social•1 day ago

Very alluring, draws you in. The people want the bean

axisofelvis.bsky.social•2 days ago

Love it

tedunderwood.me•2 days ago

Awkwardly placed in the uncanny valley between bean and not-bean

Should be rebuilt as a recognizable variety of bean, prob kidney

jpinnv.bsky.social•2 days ago

Garbonzo or go home

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

now picturing Oldenburg hummus plate with one giant garbanzo on the rim

haredurer.bsky.social•2 days ago

Huge spring of parsley, shiny skating rink of olive oil.

annakornbluh.bsky.social•2 days ago

interactive ecoinstallation

immerschon.bsky.social•21 hours ago

I pretty strongly dislike Kapoor in general but I love the Bean as an object and I'd submit that it's become more interesting over time as both an instigator of and alternative to smartphone narcissism

immerschon.bsky.social•21 hours ago

The interesting thing being that it predates the iPhone

annakornbluh.bsky.social•21 hours ago

precisely

grubstreetwomen.bsky.social•2 days ago

I took so many selfies with it when i moved there in 2010! Loved it

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