ArtPrize 2013 is hardly the first controversy to surround La Grande Vitesse in Grand Rapids.
Watch video
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Let’s play a game.
Guess which of the following quotes about Alexander Calder’s iconic “La Grande Vitesse” stabile sculpture in Grand Rapids comes from 1969, and which from 2013.
• “If you took a Calder and put it next to a pile of welded junk and didn’t tell the average person which was which, 99 out of 100 people wouldn’t know the difference.”
• “I've felt from the beginning that this is a useless piece of junk and an eyesore.”
If you guessed the first was oldest, go to the head of the class. Calder critic Robert Blandford made that statement a couple months before the sculpture's dedication.
If you guessed the latter, don’t get down on yourself. It sounds just like the scorn heaped on the Calder by folks who objected to the piece more than four decades ago, even though it was posted just last week on Facebook by a Grand Rapids Press reader.
What was the point of this exercise? Simply to demonstrate that despite the Calder’s venerable status as the most recognizable symbol of Grand Rapids, aside, perhaps, from the Grand River itself, it is no stranger to harsh language and squabbles.
David Dodde's ArtPrize entry "Fleurs et riviere" at Calder Plaza in downtown Grand Rapids Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013.Cory Morse | MLive
An ‘abomination’
The Calder’s continuing capacity for controversy flared-up this month when ArtPrize artist David Dodde affixed large white flower magnets to the swooping orange steel sculpture, a whimsical display that sparked outcry and heated debate about the propriety of altering another artist’s work, even temporarily.
Dodde said "naysayers will be naysayers, and lovers will be lovers," but the flowers were nonetheless removed Wednesday morning after city leaders caved to pressure from Calder’s kin in New York — who came out strongly against the alteration — and local citizens aghast at what they saw as utter disrespect.
“I think it’s vandalism,” said Nancy Mulnix Tweddale, who is chiefly responsible for bringing La Grand Vitesse to Grand Rapids.
That may sound harsh, but it’s gentle compared to the sharp rebuke drawn from Calder Foundation president and Calder’s grandson Alexander Rower, who called the “poorly rendered imitation Warhol flowers” an “abomination” that “reflects an utter lack of understanding and respect for Calder’s genius.”
The flap even got attention from the Los Angeles Times this week.
Eric Gollannek, a visiting art history professor at Grand Valley State University, said the debate over the flowers raises the question: Who does the Calder belong to?
Although the city and county technically “own” the sculpture, Gollannek said the public at large and future generations should also be considered stakeholders in the stabile, a first-of-its-kind work.
“All public art is inherently controversial,” he said. “You’re taking the commons and putting a piece of art there and saying, ‘This represents all of us,’” he said. “Anytime you do that, you’ll have people who stand up and say, ‘That doesn’t represent me.’ It goes with the territory.”
Modern, abstract art in particular, he said, has always drawn a certain level of criticism, “maybe because it's hard to pin down,” he said. “It challenges and pushes the critical boundaries of what constitutes art.”
Gollannek praised the flower magnets, and the subsequent controversy, as a good way to help people see a familiar work in a new light.
“Can you value something more by seeing a new side of it," he asked. "I would argue ‘yes.’”
For some, artistic value may depend partly on whether a person sees the piece as having purpose, said Tweddale.
In his letter to the city, Rower wrote that art history has many examples of temporary alterations to masterpieces, but the success of such an endeavor “rests on the intellectual rigor of the dialogue and the intervener's deep understanding of the original work.”
The flowers? “I regret that neither applies to this unfortunate example,” he wrote.
Tweddale concurred. When she saw the white magnets, “it literally made me ill.”
Related stories:
• Julie Hoogland: Calder controversy brings Grand Rapids full circle
• Jeff Kaczmarczyk: City's two wrong decisions don't make a right
• Rick DeVos: Controversies are just part of the ArtPrize deal
Calder installation is local legend
In West Michigan, Tweddale has been closely identified with Alexander Calder for more than 45 years. The two formed a close friendship after she pulled all the right strings at the right time to bring to Grand Rapids sculpture that, in many ways, has defined the city for nearly half a century.
The story of how she brought the Calder to Grand Rapids is local legend.This is what Calder Plaza looked like in 1967 when Nancy Mulnix began lobbying the National Endowment for the Arts to fund a civic sculpture in downtown Grand Rapids. View is looking south from Michigan Street NW along Ottawa Ave.MLive file photo
In April 1967, the stark, windswept plaza where the sculpture stands today was ground zero for a major urban renewal project that involved the wholesale demolition of north downtown, and the replacement of municipal buildings including old city hall, police headquarters and the county building with modern, taller structures.
Henry Geldzahar, curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was in town to speak to the women’s committee at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and happened to mention to Tweddale during a tour of downtown that the newly created National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was planning to grant federal money for civic artworks as part of the Art in Public Places program.
A public sculpture might be just the thing to tie the new Vandenberg Center Plaza — now more often called Calder Plaza — together and help heal the scar on downtown Grand Rapids wrought by the urban renewal process.
Within a month, Tweddale had successfully recruited then-Congressman Gerald R. Ford, who brought the idea to the NEA. The organization sent out feelers to Grand Rapids leaders, who responded favorably with drawings and data on the plaza construction.
In May, Tweddale received word that the NEA was on board. Three months later, a committee formed to shepherd the project through the various local approvals selected Alexander Calder, inventor of the mobile, as the sculptor for the project.
When all was said and done, the $134,000 cost of commissioning, fabricating, shipping and installing the 43-foot tall, 54-foot long, 30-foot wide and 42-ton sculpture was shared by the NEA, philanthropic foundations, local businesses and individual citizens.
It was the first civic sculpture in American history to be jointly financed by federal and private funds, and the architects who designed city hall and the county building (the top of which features a Calder painting) saw it as an ornament for the clean lines of the plaza and the nearby stark black box buildings.
To Tweddale, it was a dream come true.
“In my opinion, Calder is the greatest American artist of the 20th Century,” said Tweddale. “He did something no one else had done. He created movement in art.”
’People don’t understand abstraction’
Not everyone shared her love for the Calder.
As details about the project filtered out, letter upon letter was sent to The Press deriding the artist, the work, the price — everything about the project, really. Angry citizens grumbled about elitists forcing their tastes on the populace, and opposition coalesced around alternative plans for either a reflecting pool or a statue of Sen. Arthur Vandenberg in the plaza.
Blandford, a lumberman, was the chief opponent.
“I think the whole concept of modern art is a big spoof,” he said in 1969. “And after Calder gets his (money) and goes back to France, some evening he’ll be sitting in some pub and saying, ‘Boy, did I hoodwink those guys over in Grand Rapids.’”
Blandford stoked public opinion with mocking ads on the radio in the days leading up to the dedication, and the pomp and circumstance of the June 14, 1969, ceremony did not dampen his distaste for what he still called “a horrible example of nothing” a couple months later. He was especially irked by $18,000 worth of piping that still remains under the sculpture from the aborted reflecting pool alternative.
“In my humble opinion, the sculpture is no great beauty for the area,” he said. “I don’t like the sculpture and I never will.”Sculptor Alexander Calder talks with attendees at the Calder sculpture dedication ceremony on June 14, 1969. The artist and his work are seen here with old city hall in the background.Courtesy Photo | Grand Rapids Public Library
The harsh words for the Calder translated into reams of hate mail for Tweddale, who even had a bullet shot through the living room window of her home on Mercer Drive on dedication day. The sculpture itself was egged and spray-painted in the weeks after the ceremony.
Soon, though, the public simply moved on.
She brushes off the latent distaste for the sculpture. In her mind, if people don’t like or "get" it, that’s their problem. Her thoughts echo Calder’s own words: “If they don’t like it, leave it alone,” he told reporters in 1969.
“I think it's safe to say a lot of people don’t understand abstraction,” she said.
The Calder helped put Grand Rapids on the art world map long before ArtPrize, she argues. It’s been the backdrop of the annual Festival of the Arts since its inception and it foreshadowed construction of cultural centers such as DeVos Performance Hall and the new Grand Rapids Art Museum at Rosa Parks Circle.
The sculpture, built to reflect the “great swiftness” of the Grand River, has been Tweddale’s uniquely personal dance partner for more than 40 years. But it can dance with anyone, because that, after all, is how it’s meant to be.
“To me, it’s a dancer,” she said. “The stabile is on its toes and you dance with it as you walk around it and walk up to it. It’s never the same.”
Garret Ellison covers business, government and breaking news for MLive/The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at gellison@mlive.com or follow on Twitter & Instagram