Artist:
Peter Shelton
Title:
sixbeaststwomonkeys
Year:
2009
Adress:
Police Department
www.publicartinla.com:
This is an ensemble of eight sculptures, a procession of abstracted animal forms.
www.lalouver.com:
The six 'beasts' are a series of large animal forms, possibly signifying authority or serving as guardians, but they also speak to our primal and earth-bound bodies. On the north and south end of this Spring Street parade, the two lanky 'monkeys' could be seen as animated sentinels for the elephantine procession along the walkway below. Their tall and attenuated proportions are in stark contrast to the corpulent masses of the beasts between them. These eight individual sculptures in bronze are a monumental accomplishment, and will surely become a treasured public art fixture in downtown Los Angeles.
Peter Shelton’s installation focuses this public area into a subtle and metered transition from the new building to the street, and forms a contemplative passage through the greater urban landscape.
L.A. Louver is pleased to announce the completion of a major new commission by Peter Shelton, entitled 'sixbeastsandtwomonkeys.' Installed in a promenade park outside the new Police Administration Building, along Spring Street between 1st and 2nd Streets in downtown Los Angeles, these new sculptures were made possible through the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program.
www.latimesblogs.latimes.com:
In the annals of art criticism, deriding a sculpture as looking like "some kind of cow splat" is probably not bound for glory.
Neither does Bratton's crack demonstrate that he knows zilch about contemporary sculpture, as one might suspect; it demonstrates instead that he doesn't know much about cow splat. Born and raised in Boston, the chief has lived and worked successfully on police forces there and in New York City and Los Angeles, where encounters with cows are rare. Perhaps he can be forgiven for not knowing what bovine poo actually looks like.
What the sculptural ensemble does look like is a procession of monumental, smartly abstracted animal forms. Some are loosely reminiscent of such brawny beasts as hippos, elephants and bison. Shelton, whose well-known work usually abstracts human body parts, distending them in space in ways that make us supremely self-conscious of our own imperfect, slightly ridiculous assemblages of flesh and bone, has here turned his talents toward powerful animals associated with the untamed wilds of Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Cast in bronze and coated with a rich, black patina, they create a formal promenade along the Spring Street side of the new edifice. Between the sidewalk and the conventional but imposing new building, their mostly rounded shapes soften the hard edges of the street-scape. The corpulent forms are sheltered beneath a freshly planted alley of London plane trees. As it matures, the bower will further cushion the pedestrian space between the busy traffic artery and the swank architecture.
In stark contrast, the procession is flanked at either end by headless creatures atop tall, spindly legs. Their elevated bodies, presumably derived from the monkeys mentioned in the title, twist in space as if scanning their surroundings with bodily sensors rather than eyes. These animated forms begin and end the procession with an image of movement into the central city.
www.wikipedia.org:
Peter Shelton is an American sculptor born in 1951 in Troy, Ohio.
Peter Shelton: "I like to think of my work as a threshold between in and out, object and space, heavy and light.[2] How far away from a corner in a room is it no longer a corner? If you are in a pocket, at what point do you pass when you are no longer in the pocket? Language tries to cope with these questions, and often, poorly. ... When I was a young boy, I would ask friends one of my favorite riddles, "What is the difference of an orange?" When my question was met only with puzzled, distorted faces, even irritated silence, I would happily answer "the peel!" What interests me most in my work is the "peelness" of it..."
Shelton's biography page at the Getty Museum notes that he "draws from a vocabulary both figural and abstract, anatomical and architectural."
This is an ensemble of eight sculptures, a procession of abstracted animal forms.
www.lalouver.com:
The six 'beasts' are a series of large animal forms, possibly signifying authority or serving as guardians, but they also speak to our primal and earth-bound bodies. On the north and south end of this Spring Street parade, the two lanky 'monkeys' could be seen as animated sentinels for the elephantine procession along the walkway below. Their tall and attenuated proportions are in stark contrast to the corpulent masses of the beasts between them. These eight individual sculptures in bronze are a monumental accomplishment, and will surely become a treasured public art fixture in downtown Los Angeles.
Peter Shelton’s installation focuses this public area into a subtle and metered transition from the new building to the street, and forms a contemplative passage through the greater urban landscape.
L.A. Louver is pleased to announce the completion of a major new commission by Peter Shelton, entitled 'sixbeastsandtwomonkeys.' Installed in a promenade park outside the new Police Administration Building, along Spring Street between 1st and 2nd Streets in downtown Los Angeles, these new sculptures were made possible through the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program.
www.latimesblogs.latimes.com:
In the annals of art criticism, deriding a sculpture as looking like "some kind of cow splat" is probably not bound for glory.
Neither does Bratton's crack demonstrate that he knows zilch about contemporary sculpture, as one might suspect; it demonstrates instead that he doesn't know much about cow splat. Born and raised in Boston, the chief has lived and worked successfully on police forces there and in New York City and Los Angeles, where encounters with cows are rare. Perhaps he can be forgiven for not knowing what bovine poo actually looks like.
What the sculptural ensemble does look like is a procession of monumental, smartly abstracted animal forms. Some are loosely reminiscent of such brawny beasts as hippos, elephants and bison. Shelton, whose well-known work usually abstracts human body parts, distending them in space in ways that make us supremely self-conscious of our own imperfect, slightly ridiculous assemblages of flesh and bone, has here turned his talents toward powerful animals associated with the untamed wilds of Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Cast in bronze and coated with a rich, black patina, they create a formal promenade along the Spring Street side of the new edifice. Between the sidewalk and the conventional but imposing new building, their mostly rounded shapes soften the hard edges of the street-scape. The corpulent forms are sheltered beneath a freshly planted alley of London plane trees. As it matures, the bower will further cushion the pedestrian space between the busy traffic artery and the swank architecture.
In stark contrast, the procession is flanked at either end by headless creatures atop tall, spindly legs. Their elevated bodies, presumably derived from the monkeys mentioned in the title, twist in space as if scanning their surroundings with bodily sensors rather than eyes. These animated forms begin and end the procession with an image of movement into the central city.
www.wikipedia.org:
Peter Shelton is an American sculptor born in 1951 in Troy, Ohio.
Peter Shelton: "I like to think of my work as a threshold between in and out, object and space, heavy and light.[2] How far away from a corner in a room is it no longer a corner? If you are in a pocket, at what point do you pass when you are no longer in the pocket? Language tries to cope with these questions, and often, poorly. ... When I was a young boy, I would ask friends one of my favorite riddles, "What is the difference of an orange?" When my question was met only with puzzled, distorted faces, even irritated silence, I would happily answer "the peel!" What interests me most in my work is the "peelness" of it..."
Shelton's biography page at the Getty Museum notes that he "draws from a vocabulary both figural and abstract, anatomical and architectural."