By Tom Wachunas
“…The most positive aspect of “culture”—the
idea of personal, humane enrichment—now seems especially remote. In its place,
the idea of culture as unconscious groupthink is ascendent.” - Joshua Rothman
Location, location,
location.
On August 4, the
fifth public artwork in ArtsinStark’s much-ballyhooed “The ELEVEN” project will
be officially “unveiled” (though it’s been entirely visible throughout its
making over the past few months) during the Pro Football Hall of Fame (HOF)
Enshrinement Festival. Popular mural
artist Dirk Rozich was awarded the $40,000 commission to memorialize Joe
Namath’s famous guarantee that he and his fellow underdog New York Jets would
win Super Bowl III in 1968. For more background, here’s a link to ArtsinStark’s
web site. Before proceeding any further into my comments, consider clicking on
this link and reading the info as a kind of pre-game show:
As a work of art, the
heraldic configuration of Rozich’s superbly painted mural exudes a certain
spectacular majesty. Poised to throw the football, a focused and determined Joe
Namath steps out of the escutcheon-shaped frame (looking like a coat of arms),
into our field of vision, and stands
over his bold prediction emblazoned in white letters on a blue ribbon, “I
guarantee it.”
Even bolder (dismayingly
so, as some folks have already expressed to me in the past several weeks), was
ArtsinStark’s decision to locate this work on the huge, south-facing brick wall
of the Cultural Center for the Arts at
1001 Market Avenue North, which houses the Canton Museum of Art, Canton Ballet,
Players Guild Theatre, and VOCI.
I confess to being
initially dismayed myself (though now I’m merely conflicted). Haaarrrumph. The
audacity!! To co-opt our beloved Cultural
Center for the Arts – our local
temple of high aesthetic pursuits –
by attaching such an unabashed glorification of something as common, ordinary,
and…low as the game of football is just… well, it’s just… In the end, it’s just…
not surprising.
Culture, cultural, cultured. Or
cluttered?
What does culture really mean today? What are our
assumptions, expectations, predilections? Here are several things
Merriam-Webster says about it:
a : the integrated pattern of human knowledge,
belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and
transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations
b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and
material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday
existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or
time * popular culture * Southern culture
c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals,
and practices that characterizes an institution or organization * a
corporate culture focused on the
bottom line
d : the set of values, conventions, or social
practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal
characteristic * studying the effect of
computers on print culture
OK, so let’s say
it’s now halftime in this admittedly long missive. The show I’ve planned is for
you to once again click a link to a very timely and thought-provoking piece
from 2014 by Joshua Rothman, writing for The
New Yorker:
It’s interesting to
note that behind the football mural, on the other side of the brick wall, is
the Players Guild Theatre mainstage. Knowing as much, are we to take this
public art gesture as some sort of implied, “insider” message, a looming symbol
of football (or for that matter, perhaps any sports activity) being a type of
theatre, and therefore an art form in its own right? While I might be
over-thinking this a bit (and without knowing the exact reasoning behind
designating The Cultural Center for Athletics…er, uhm, the Arts… as the
location for the mural), I know that many folks continue to make a moderately
reasonable argument for some sports
being types of art, or at least ‘artful,’ in that they’re consciously created
spectacles adhering to certain rules of design, form, execution, and
presentation.
Some intriguing
questions come to mind. Is the perfectly executed pass in a football game, the
home run hit in a baseball game, or the tennis player’s ace, for example, to be
considered as a “thing of beauty,” or noble, or personally enriching to behold
in the same way as, say, the exquisitely chiseled marble hand of Mary in
Michelangelo’s Pietà, the gripping
painted drama of Picasso’s Guernica, or
the transcendent emotionality of a Beethoven symphony? Is there any more need
or desire in our society for nurturing a hierarchy of meaningful aesthetic
forms and experiences? Should there be?
Like it or not, the football mural is now a permanent
fixture both on and of the Cultural Center for the Arts. That
said, I think it’s much larger - and arguably more important - than the story
it tells of one Miami sports event from 1968. It speaks volumes about the
Canton zeitgeist, which is to say Canton’s communal identity, its sense of
cultural purpose and priority, however mixed (or confused) it might be. I suspect
that this particular work of public art – a marvelous painting, to be sure -
will generate some intense reactions and dialogue as time goes on.
In fact I
guarantee it.
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