The World of Art: Beaver Stadium Corrosion and Rubble

             I used to work in a bronze foundry where we made a lot of statues. One job I remember in particular was a group of figures representing African-American students integrating a school. They were life-size with period details like cat-eye glasses. The figures were extremely naturalistic, with any expressionist evidence of the artist's personal style or hand carefully removed. The long skirts on the female students were deeply undercut and difficult to work with.
           People in the US love these type of statues. This is perhaps the one form of public art that doesn't provoke a virulent reaction from the public. Most big sports arenas in the US have statues like these on their entrance plazas. The only people who don't like them are pointy-headed intellectuals like me who find them to be retrograde at best and crypto-fascist at worse.
         The Joe Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium at Penn State was a particularly weird example of the genre. Not so much for the stiffness of the figures or the blonde sameness of the players  (hallmarks of the form) behind him, but for the fact that he was still alive when it was put up.  The dignity associated with the material in the public mind is usually reserved for long-dead men who have been elevated to the pantheon of the state. Athletes are honored this way, but only after they retire.
           I am always interested when public art is destroyed, especially in the US.  Yesterday, the Paterno statue was taken down. Who knows what will happen to it? It may be relocated later in a less conspicuous space. It may be melted down and completely destroyed.
           The evidence of the footing for the sculpture and the hangings for the players remains in the picture above. A soft and subtle oval of crushed concrete. The rust from where the outline of the player frieze met the concrete walls drips down the grey concrete in diaphanous brown veils. I assume this will be cleaned up, but the marks left by the metal and tools are really amazing.
           The iconic has become the indexical overnight. The austerity of the stone and concrete are much more pronounced in the visual silence left by the departed bronze. The now pointless foot lights create a formalist rectangle containing the oval of rubble and in counterpoint to the polygonal plaza. The anonymous workers have turned the carefully worked opus into a fantastic readymade.