Welcome To Public Art Around The World

Welcome to my blog.

A few month ago I decided to build a website on Public Art around the world, I know a brave and bold move on my part. But over the years I had collected an enormous amount of images of statues, monuments and sculptures from every corner of the globe. Being in the media I knew one day these images would come in handy. My objective was to build an impressive site of public art backed up with detailed research on each piece. Public art is a great way to follow and learn history. Someone is always erecting a statue to someone and I figured if they took all that time and effort to create it, the person they are honoring must have done something pretty important, right?.
Then after a few years of collecting these images I began taking photos of the plaques on the statues and soon realized some people did take a lot of time and effort on people who “weren’t” so special after all. Some pieces of work just would never find their way onto the World Wide Web (check out the Fred and Mary Tree Stumps if you don’t believe me) let alone the local rags. So anyway I began to do a little research and before long I discovered an amazing thing. More intriguing than the Da Vinci Code, more controversial than the magic bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. Public Art has more scandal, controversy, conspiracy, theft and bitching than even the National Enquirer. I was hooked. You can go all they way back to ancient times, when they were wearing nothing more than a toga and thongs, and discover some sort of scandal about a statue. Unfortunately in those times it wasn’t at all that rare to be bumped off for art. Either by a rival artist or by an unhappy (usually fat and ugly) Emperor who didn’t like what he saw. The public were also so much more involved and vocal way back then, especially about what went up in their neighborhood. One little slip and your fountain became the local laundry hangout, just go ask Bartolomeo Ammannati. In just about every case I have an earthed a funny, bizarre or simply crazy story involving a statue or sculpture. More often than not the person represented in the sculpture has a deep and sometimes sordid past.

So in writing content for my website I had a dilemma, a snag if you like.
I couldn’t really write what I felt like writing because, since I am creating a serious site (sort of), I didn’t really want to offend. There is no nice way of writing your sculpture has ended up becoming a local shelter for the homeless (don’t laugh it happened in Melbourne, Australia) nor could I delve too deeply into some of the “so-called” rumors .
So my solution was to get myself a Word Press blog.

If you would like to find out what piece of Public Art was held hostage by a militant group, which statues have disappeared off the face of the earth, or even if you simply want to have a laugh just keep on visiting my blog. One stop gossip shop for public art.

1 Comment

  1. anon said,

    April 17, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    i like this very much. i really like the idea of a secret, quiet whisper on the internet about moments of art that break into the routine.

    and public art yo! it’s great to see that not everything is pasted on clean white walls.

    ‘respect.


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