Artists attempting to fulfil major public sculptures without adequate project management can land in hot water, as some famous examples illustrate.
Brett Littman is Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York. He is also curator of this year’s Frieze sculpture exhibition in New York. Frieze featured the work of 14 international artists represented by renowned galleries around the world. The show ran from April to the end of June in New York’s Rockefeller Centre.
The centre is part of the Rockefeller Plaza, site of the renowned Japanese American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi’s first New York commission.
Speaking on the Frieze website, Littman retold the story of Noguchi’s sculpture, News, a seven metre tall stainless steel bas-relief. It was commissioned in 1938, and would be mounted above the entrance to Associated Press’s former premises at 50 Rockefeller Plaza. The work depicts a stylised group of five reporters striving for a scoop.
‘Breakthrough collaboration between art and industry’
On completion it was the largest and heaviest stainless steel work in existence. Littman says it was ‘heralded as a breakthrough collaboration between art and industry.’
But the project was haunted by the controversy of what became known as the Diego Rivera Incident.
Courtesy of Wikipedia, the famed Mexican artist was a card-carrying Communist. Nonetheless, the wealthy Rockefeller family collected his work and commissioned him to paint a three-part fresco for 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the Rockefeller Centre. The work, Man at the Crossroads, was meant to depict the contrast between capitalism and socialism.
When a New York newspaper labelled the work anti-capitalist propaganda, Rivera or his assistants secretly added a portrait of Vladimir Lenin and an image of a Soviet May Day parade. Rivera believed the strength of his relationship with the Rockefellers would overcome any difficulties.
When John D. Rockefeller Jr asked Rivera to remove the images, he refused. Rockefeller ordered the mural’s destruction. Great controversy accompanied the saga, with prominent artists and celebrities protesting at an infringement of artistic freedom.
The mural was never completed in New York, although Rivera later painted a smaller replica renamed Man, Controller of the Universe in Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes. By most accounts, Rivera carried out the project negotiations himself, including failing to read the small print of the contract.
Noguchi feared Rockefeller censorship
Littmore says the controversy deeply affected Noguchi. He feared his own work could face similar censorship from the Rockefellers. As a result, his concepts were more conservative than those of other entries he had submitted to public sculpture briefs in the early to mid 1930s.
Noguchi’s masterpiece was the largest stainless steel sculpture project of its time. It featured a product still in its relative infancy compared with other more traditional materials. Littmore tells us the relationship between Noguchi and General Alloys in Boston, the foundry responsible for fabrication, was ‘complicated’.
‘Although Noguchi was friendly with the CEO of the company, his frustrations about the pace of the fabrication and his active participation as a labourer and grinder on the floor of the factory led to friction between himself and management.’
Extra money refused
Other issues arose. Like so many monumental public projects, cost and time outpaced even the most careful estimates. Noguchi’s requests for extra money were all refused.
A project that could have taken months took years. Although eventually installed in 1940 to great fanfare, the whole process proved difficult for sculptor, client, and manufacturer.
Key lessons learned
The key lessons, albeit historical, are threefold:
First, complex public projects like Man at the Crossroads or News need much more than artistic brilliance.
Second, competent project managers understand the needs of all parties. They are versed in the processes and components that make up such a complex operation.
And third, they identify, eliminate, or drastically reduce the risks and obstacles that convert so many dreams of beauty and joy into nightmares.
Todd Stuart is a rare combination of designer, sculptor, and project manager. His experience over 25 years of conceptualising, managing, and producing sculptures of all sizes on time, on budget, and with complete satisfaction, is your guarantee of a successful project.
Talk to Todd on +61 4 5151 8865, or visit mainartery.art for the right advice from a master sculptor and project manager.
