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The "bastardization" of public art in Harrisburg
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
The "bastardization" of public art in Harrisburg
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| Courtesy of Eric Ascalon | |
| BEFORE (left) and AFTER (right) | |
If any of you Tyler or UArts grads secures a job with the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg or the city of Harrisburg's Department of Parks, Recreation & Enrichment, think twice before dropping your gallery gig to erect the next great piece of public art. Once you've completed your sculpture or painting or meta-performance art piece about performance art pieces for the city, you may return years later to find that your name has been erased from your work, and, even worse, the whole project has been âdrastically alteredâ without your permission to the point of âmutilationâ and âbastardization.â
At least, that's what David Ascalon, an artist from Tel Aviv, claims happened to him. In a lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Ascalon says that the Federation commissioned him to create a Holocaust memorial on public property (which is maintained by the Parks Dept.) that did not âprettify the landscapeâ but instead was âcommitted to developing a truth-telling monument.â
In other words, the death of 6 million Jews was horrifying, so let's make sure the memorial isn't all puppies and rainbows, eh?
Ascalon complied. His memorial depicted a serpentine made of Cor-ten steel — a purposefully rusty, ugly material to represent the âoppression, decay and miseryâ under the Nazi regime — wrapping itself around the Star of David, conversely constructed out of shiny, flawless stainless steel to represent the goodness and permanence of the Jewish people. A âtear-filled ceremonyâ on July 17, 1994, fêted the creation of the Holocaust memorial, and the Patriot News gushed that, âa lot of symbolism is featured in the monument. ⦠The rusting barbed wire that wraps around the core represents the fences around Nazi death camps.â According to Ascalon, the memorial was so popular that it made it into Yumiko Mochizuki's book Public Art: A World's Eye View, which chronicles the greatest public visual art.
Fast-forward to 2007, when Ascalon says he found that his name had âbeen completely excised and grinded off of the memorialâ without his permission and replaced with this: âRestored by David Grindle 2006.â
Additionally, Ascalon claims that Grindle switched out the serpent's Cor-ten material for stainless steel, which doesn't sound like that big of a deal, until you consider that stainless steel was supposed to represent the Jews' tenacity, not the er ⦠Nazis'.
âThe modification of the sculpture has changed it so that now the same shiny stainless steel that represents the enduring Jewish people is also used to depict the Nazi regime and atrocities of the Holocaust,â reads the lawsuit. âThis alteration is abhorrent.â
Oy vey. Did we mention that several of Ascalon's relatives, including cousins, uncles and two grandparents, were killed in the Holocaust?
Ascalon is demanding an injunction, as well as actual and statutory damages, in his suit against the Parks Dept., the Jewish Federation and Grindle.
None of the three defendants have returned our calls.
Holy shit! I'd love to know which moron (or cadre of morons) was behind that decision, and hear the explanation! Thanks. Please keep us posted.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Philly City Paper, Philly News Now. Philly News Now said: The âbastardizationâ of public art in Harrisburg: Courtesy of Eric Ascalon BEFORE (left) and AFTER (right) If an... http://bit.ly/adgTGI [...]
Once again a visual artist's work has been disrespected by a local government body. These avoidable incidents are bound to be repeated unless the respectability of artists and their work becomes a part of everyday conversation in households across the U.S. A similar case invoking the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 or VARA is winding its way through the court. Chapman Kelley vs. Chicago Park District will have been in the Seventh Circuit Court's lap for a year on September 10. That day will mark the first anniversary since oral argument (promising to Kelley, we are told) was heard in Chicago about the destruction of his 66,000 sq.ft. public artwork "Chicago Wildflower Works" (1984-2004), which was deemed by the court to be either a painting or sculpture. A landmark appellate decision is imminent. Another important VARA case still in progress on the east coast is the installation artist Christoph Buchel case involving the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The integrity of Buchel's "Training Ground for Democracy" is the focus of that dispute. David Ascalon is to be commended for standing up for his moral and personality rights as set forth in VARA. The artistic community will be better off as a result of his bold action. John Viramontes - Council for Artists Rights
This is a punch in the stomach to all public artists (or any artist for that matter). It is testament that artists' rights are not well understood and that the role of public art is often taken for granted. Thank you for sharing this. Jennifer Corio - Cobalt Designworks
[...] this week, the Clog told you about how artist David Ascalon, in a recently filed lawsuit, says that a piece of public art he created — a Holocaust memorial in Harrisburg — was "drastically [...]
[...] August, we told you about the artist David Ascalon and what he called the "bastardization" of a public sculpture in Harrisburg: In a lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, [...]
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