Rocket Thrower (Up)

I am totally devoted to public art in all its forms. Actually liking any particular objet d’art is not the point. The point is that any given work gets put out there for us, the public, to decide on our own. Personally I disliked (hated is too strong a word) Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” when it was splitting a plaza down in the financial district and I was glad when public outcry decreed it be removed. I understood the statement he was making (I think) but I still preferred clean and clear open space as opposed to a Berlin Wall of subtle meaning.

Usually I’m fine with almost anything, whether I personally like it doesn’t matter, it’s the effort I appreciate. However (isn’t there always a however?) a sculpture left over from the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, instead of being removed, is now being restored. This sculpture, in my opinion an atrocity of the first rank is, according to The New York Times critic David W. Dunlap, “a gargantuan…tchotchke of homoerotic kitsch.” He goes on to say, “Perhaps the Municipal Art Society would have been more successful raising money to melt down [Donald DeLue’s bronze, 43-foot-tall] “Rocket Thrower” than to conserve it."

When it was erected for the Fair it was blasted by both the press and the public. But I guess it was an artistic embarrassment easier to ignore than maintain until it started to deteriorate badly over the last 25 years. The restoration is costing $115,000. Maybe it could be melted down (at a fraction of that cost?) and kept in place, the resultant pile of molten bronze left as a warning to future generations about mindless and misguided municipal decisions.