I'm seeing Antony Gormley!

100 of him. On Crosby Beach. It's an art installation (at least that's what we used to call it when the earth was young... meaning back in high school when I took art classes) that piqued my interest when I saw it in some of the tourist stuff I picked up when I first arrived in Liverpool.

Another Place used to be a touring exhibit, but the Brits stole it and are hoarding it now permanently. Not unlike many other things (like socialism), they refuse to share this exhibit with the Americans, who were booked to have it next (in New York). If you look carefully on the sign, it says that is will be there until 2006 (which was true). I wonder if I can use any more parentheses in this blog post (I'm just going out on a limb here, but probably). The pictures in this post are better viewed large. Click on the photo to see a bigger version.


I will now quote the artist statement from the sign, because you probably can't read it.

"The seaside is a good place to [explore man's relationship with nature]. Here time is tested (what? ok) by time, architecture by the elements, and the prevalence of the sky seems to question the earth's substance (hmm). In this work, human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body, no hero, no ideal, just the industrially-reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet."

Obviously, I think that some of this is a bit waffly (it's ok... we all do it in art at least a little) but some of it is golden. I think the decision to use crosby beach was genius, mostly because check out what looms in the background:

There was something very strange about the way that people interacted with the statues (or didn't).


Perhaps it is my tendency to imagine others' lives, but I found myself wanting to know what they saw.




Some were more subjected to the elements than others. These tended to be the ones further out, less visited, and in the areas that were deemed dangerous by the sign on the beach warning of "soft sand" and "quick tide changes". The sign even cautioned visitors not to even attempt to reach those statues furthest away.




One had gotten caught up in unexpected externalities.


It was a bit eerie that they were all tagged, more or less faceless, and people took pictures, pointed, and talked about them but didn't touch them.



You may be thinking, that's what we usually do with art. There are a lot of things we usually do. Perhaps we could change convention.


As for me, I'm seeing Antony Gormley. And I plan to see him for the rest of my life.