People might look at the sculpture garden as superfluous eye
candy, something which looks pretty but doesn’t serve any
useful purpose. On the contrary, it’s an important
institution here at UCLA, not just a place to lie on sun-soaked
grass, but also a place where, after a hard day of regurgitating
dead facts and figures, one can stare at iron grotesqueries.
So few of the sculptures make sense that the garden becomes an
enormous Rorshach test; one person might claim that “Mere
Ubu,” the fluid multi-pronged statue hidden behind the
fountain, looks like a mutant penguin while another might insist
that it looks like a thrashing tongue of flame.
The discerning art patron might note that the strangest aspect
of the sculptures is that their names frequently make even less
sense. One would assume that an artist, struggling to communicate
his innermost feelings to an audience, would take any opportunity
to make his work accessible to his public. If his style were so
esoteric that it became difficult for the “common man”
to understand it, he would always have one final recourse in the
piece title.
So when a series of white sticks is simply labeled
“Untitled,” it becomes doubtful whether the artist
really had something meaningful to say or whether he was simply
babbling to himself.
That the names seem so meaningless enhances the Rorshach
experience. “Monolith,” a big silver, well, monolith,
is no fun; its title tells you exactly what it is, leaving no room
for individual interpretation. Unless one were to make a strained
parallel with the black slab of “2001” fame, there is
no story behind this sculpture.
For example, I’ve always thought that the
ship-sails-on-stilts that stands guard over the cross paths at the
garden’s center looks like a mechanical arachnid by way of
Tim Burton. Its title, appropriately enough, is “Encounter
VIII,” leading me to conclude that the artist was obviously
visited in his sleep by spider aliens from beyond infinity that
commanded him to build a sculpture in their image, a construction
so horrible that it would strike fear into the hearts of all who
gazed upon it. Spirits crushed, a terrified human race would be all
too ready to accept the authority of their evil alien overlords in
the inevitable alien invasion.
At the opposite end of the garden stands a massive crushed soda
called the “Bird Goddess.” This was obviously created
as an appeal to said deity to halt the eventual onslaught of the
spider people. Knowing that the invaders’ technology will far
surpass our own, the only possible way that we can hope to survive
is by divine intervention, and who better to stop the nefarious
schemes of these imperial spiders than a bug-eating bird?
Some might argue that this interpretation is absurd, given that
the dates that the two pieces were created are incompatible.
It took three years before I was finally convinced that the
driftwood horse was actually made of wrought iron. At first glance,
it seems like an ordinary horse statue; maybe the sculptor just
liked horses. The title, however, proves otherwise.
“Pensive” shows that this was a very special horse,
gifted with the power of human reason. Perhaps he despaired of ever
being taken seriously as an intellectual, fearing that he would
always be seen as nothing more than a comical freak in the
tradition of “Mr. Ed.” Who among us cannot help but
feel touched by the pain of this tortured soul?
Few can understand the jumble of stone slabs that bear the
enigmatic title “Elmo III,” but its charm is evident.
The name smacks of European royalty, a class of people with a
talent for inventing silly names and a tendency to reuse them for
generations. I can only imagine that the piece was originally meant
to honor the inbred grand duke of some exotic foreign land.
Outraged that his portrait depicted him as a pile of mismatched
polygons rather than the heroic figure that he so obviously was, he
banished the avant garde piece from his presence, forbidding the
court to ever speak of it again. The poor sculpture fell upon evil
times, shuttling from art collection to art collection, constantly
sneered at by wealthy philistines who cared more about its monetary
worth than its artistic merit, but finally finding a welcoming home
here at UCLA.
In the serious world of the university, it’s good to let
your fantasy run free every so often. We need the sculpture garden:
it’s weird and it runs completely counter to the dominant
mores of stuffy academia. With only a little nudge from an odd
title, what looks like a nonsensical statue can become a coherent
story.
The stories change and grow every time one visits the garden;
what looked like a duck now looks like a spaceship, and it is this
individual element that attracts people to the garden everyday. You
can learn something about yourself, or escape into a world of magic
and whimsy, or just be silly.
Of course, the critic who disagrees with my erudite opinions is
welcome to visit the sculpture garden, too, and come up with their
own interpretations. But you should do it before the spider people
get here.