Modern art can be tricky even at its best – it can be snobby and inscrutable and intolerably highbrow and, well, annoying. But today at the Olympic Sculpture Park, a young woman walking around in the Richard Serra sculpture said this: “This must be what it feels like to be a fish!” It’s nice to think of Serra enjoying that remark and hey, art that makes you feel anything so specific in a public place, that’s art that works.
We made some art school jokes about tipping over the Serra, but mostly, we were awed by the perfection of the site. Okay, it’s not exactly perfect, there’s a real shortage of restrooms for a place you’re expected to spend time wandering around in. But even the work that I didn’t love is so artfully situated that it makes up for any shortcoming in the work itself. The Calder and the Space Needle look like they were made to be together, as if maybe the Needle is the transit the Calder used to get to the park, or they’re two alien forms on a bender in the Emerald City. See, once again, art that makes you feel things. The Park is a wonder, a gem on the edge of the sound.
Seattle visitors, I’ll be taking you here when you come in to town. You might not know anything about art, but wouldn’t you like to know what it feels like to be a fish?
But those copper panels that you’re not supposed to touch — they ache to be touched. My fingers ache to touch them. Why put art there, close to the people if you don’t want them interacting with it? Put it behind a rope or a wall if you don’t want it touched. It gets my goat every time I think of it…