Article by Joe Krzyston<\/p>\n
For a brief, uncharacteristic moment, I\u2019d like to give voice to a belief that I do not hold myself. I\u2019d like to air publicly a couple of grievances concerning the new Rooney topiary, which some might say rises like a Phoenix out of the ashes of good taste.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to act as a mouthpiece for those holding the opinion, impolite though it may be, that the thing looks a little scary.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to acknowledge that a few of us might have found the dedication ceremony a little bizarre, with so much ado about a bird made of a tree from up north. Indeed, like much of the student body, the bird might be considered little more than an odd looking Yankee interloper.<\/p>\n
I give voice to these opinions because they were mine until I spoke with Matt Larkin and Joanne Cassullo at the dedication ceremony.<\/p>\n
My conversation with these two, however brief, made me realize how poorly informed the above critiques are. Matt Larkin is a topiary artist, and quite a good one. Mr. Larkin brings twenty years of experience with topiary sculpture to our college.<\/p>\n
He told me that it would take about four years for the topiary to fill out, cover the supportive wire, and look altogether like a free-standing shrub. This means that the topiary will grow to maturity alongside this year\u2019s incoming class. If you fail to understand the significance of this, you might be well advised to keep your artistic commentary to yourself.<\/p>\n
Joanne Cassullo is a trustee of the college (and a great friend of the Brackety-Ack). She\u2019s also a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. (I\u2019ll reiterate, for the Philistines among us, that this is a massive honor and a testament to Ms. Cassullo\u2019s knowledge and expertise.) Ms. Cassullo had the idea for the topiary, and contacted Mr. Larkin to make this a reality.<\/p>\n
As a form of artistic expression, the topiary is something of a left-field choice. In this era of class\/ privilege consciousness, the topiary is more reminiscent of Victorian England than whatever classless epoch is meant to follow \u2018late-Capitalism\u2019 (which in and of itself is a silly term, Capitalism being less an economic system than the behavioral manifestation of our worst evolutionary traits, and therefore probably as resilient (and as pleasant) as a cockroach).<\/p>\n
The obvious choice might have been some postmodern abstraction of a bird that bore a vague, symbolic resemblance to our mascot, but Ms. Cassullo demonstrated a willingness to step outside the confines of the avant-garde that has hijacked so much of our high culture.<\/p>\n
She gave us something traditional, more evocative of a pastoral past than a post-industrial future. Also commendable,\u00a0she gave us something that we couldn\u2019t immediately appreciate. In an era of immediate gratification, a piece of art that takes four years post-installation to mature is almost an act of rebellion.<\/p>\n
Though she gave no indication of such a sentiment, it wouldn\u2019t surprise me at all if the short-sighted critiques of the topiary sounded like music to Ms. Cassullo\u2019s ears. I don\u2019t mean to malign anybody\u2019s interpretation of the topiary. I can\u2019t tell you that a piece of art is making you feel the wrong way.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the beauty of it.<\/p>\n
But I will ask you to remember that though the work has been done, that statue isn\u2019t finished yet. We\u2019re now waiting on a tree, which I understand runs contrary to our tendency to bend nature to our will, but it\u2019s the decadently slow situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Article by Joe Krzyston For a brief, uncharacteristic moment, I\u2019d like to give voice to a belief that I do not hold myself. I\u2019d like to air publicly a couple of grievances concerning the new Rooney topiary, which some might say rises like a Phoenix out of the ashes of good taste. I\u2019d like to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}