OWS Liberty Plaza Sculptor Was Once Arrested at GOP Convention for saying Bush Lied!

Heard this at the OWS Open Forum last night - thought it was really interesting. By the way for those that don't know Zuccotti Park was first known as Liberty Plaza Park:

The man behind life’s joy “Joie de Vivre”
June 2-8, 2006
By JERRY TALLMER

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_160/themanbehind.html

...“They’re not going to let me talk,” Mark di Suvero, 72, said genially, explosively, from his studio hard by the river in Long Island City. “Nah, they’re scared. I got arrested during the convention for saying Bush lied. I was one of the oldest people that got hauled in. You should have seen how the cops treated the young girls.”

The little park is Liberty Plaza Park, Broadway at Cedar St., catty-corner to the onetime World Trade Center, and the Big Red X is di Suvero’s 70-foot-high “Joie de Vivre” in steel beams painted red.

“It’s not an X,” the sculptor no less genially- explosively corrected this writer during a telephone interview. “There’s no X in it! It’s a series of tetrahedrons that are open at the ends. Yes, of course I call it a piece. A sculpture. Yes, of course it can be taken apart and put back together. That’s what’s unique about these pieces : They can be disassembled.”

The piece, the sculpture, “Joie de Vivre”, was given to New York City “by Aggie Gund and her husband” – Agnes Gund, president of the Museum of Modern Art, and lawyer husband Daniel Shapiro. Its earlier Manhattan location had been in Tribeca at the rotary of the Holland Tunnel.

(more at link)



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Small world isn't it?
:fistbump:

The 'Charging Bull' statue which people think of as symbolic of Wall Street and very official was delivered unasked and placed under the Christmas tree at the Stock Exchange, guerrilla art style, by the artist Arturo Di Modica in 1987. 7000 pound surprise.
It was an instant hit with the public, but the city was none too pleased, and Charging Bull was taken by the Police and placed in NYPD impound, only to be replaced a couple of blocks away in Bowling Green Park, because of public outcry.
The City does not own the Charging Bull, and although is just remains there, it is actually squatting under a temporary permit for the last 20 years.
Not as cool as Mr. di Suvero's story, but interesting that the art all seems to come with back story, as art so often does.