The Great Failure of Modern Art By Fritz Spencer, Hallowell, Maine Jul 7, 2007 - 9:12:40 AM

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The sculpture recently placed in the park beside Johnson Hall in Gardiner raises many intriguing questions.

First of all, what is it? Like most modern art, the streamlined brown curves do not represent any particular thing in nature, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral. Everyone is left to decide for himself what exactly the sculpture means.

This, of course, is the great failing of modern art. Modern art is the art of a society mired in subjective values, a society with no absolute values to preserve the health and well-being of its citizens. Modern art is by definition unnatural and unhealthy.

Since modern art allows for a subjective interpretation, let me give my own thoughts on what I see. By an odd coincidence, while I was viewing the sculpture, a boy playing in the park found a bat, quite dead, and as hard and stiff as granite. He then placed the lifeless creature on the back of a park bench near the sculpture, as if to exhibit it to the public. He did so without thinking perhaps, but nonetheless with good reason: for the sculpture resembles nothing so much as the wings of a brown bat! So let me be the first to give the sculpture a name. Let it be called “The Flying Mouse” or “The Brown Bat” of Gardiner!

What a pity a town known for its 19th-century charm, and the legacy of creativity handed down by her native poet, E.A. Robinson, is home to such a “work of art.”

From the July 5, 2007 edition of the Capital Weekly.  

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