The DUMBO (acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighborhood of Brooklyn is an upscale community of high-rises, high-prices and high-living. Like other such neighborhoods in and around the city, mainly inhabited by professional types (which, today, usually means wealthy) or career-oriented types (which, today, usually means covetous ), they’re proud of their elitist cynosure. These are what I refer to as the Nifty Epicureans, connoisseurs of the finer things in life. Exotic herbal teas and related potions, healthy if frivolous dining, designer-labeled apparel and personalities, are just a few of the props which comprise their nouveau riche, dilettantish lifestyle. (Then again, this somewhat resembles my own nearby neighborhood.)
Somehow and sometime (how and when, I’m not sure), a block of granite was “planted” in Cadman Plaza, a park bordering on DUMBO’s green and pleasant pretentiousness. Within that oftentimes cloudy region where art borders on artifice, this monolithic curiosity is called “art”…at least by its creator, Sam Nigro. The apparently mislaid, commonplace stone is called “The Strategic Placement of Stone” by Nigro, while the majority of mystified residents call it a mere “cement block” and, further mystified, walk away.
In my mischievous moments (and there are many), I find myself appreciating such new age works of art. Like DUMBO itself, rising out of nowhere to confound reason and sensibility, “The Strategic Placement of Stone” may be strategically and appropriately placed after all. But my interpretation is probably outdated, based on growing up in a state of mind when DUMBO wasn’t an acronym for an affluent and high-rising neighborhood but the name for a lovable Disney character, a cup of coffee didn’t cost ten-dollars, and a block of stone became a work of art only when it was transformed into, or aspired towards, a “David” or a “Pieta” or something similar.
Photo: Ben Muessig, The Brooklyn Paper
The Pieta, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City
Photographic Print
Michelangelo…
Buy at AllPosters.com
| 3.5 (1 person) |
Posted by 
GrayFoxDown, filed under Big Apple Sauce. Date: July 17, 2008, 1:32 pm |
July 21st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
lol…it absolutely confounds me to find blocks and find that they’re art. It’s an interesting idea, I suppose, but in the old world that block would be, well, euphemistically, NOT ART!
I have to admit that it took me a while to develop a taste for contemporary “art,” and even so I’m not entirely sure…
July 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I believe that there’s much in contemporary art that’s very good, even if I may not appreciate and/or understand it. On the other hand, there’s much more in it that’s mere pretentiousness if not outright quackery.