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The misspellings pull people away from her work and to that critical area of editing--and I don't think that's what she wants her work to doI agree, Wordwind. But this artist has inadvertently done more for the cause of literacy [and good spelling] than any other artist in the land, I fathom. This mural will end up on every blackboard in the country, thanks to this artist. Her name will go down in pedogogic history. $6,000 is a very cheap price to have the artist come back and correct her spelling mistakes under the glare of all this censorious publicity. Whoever is behind this muralgate deserves the "Librarian of the Year Award".  "And a library, no less." Yes, "no less" and "none better" ... except the wall of a public school, perhaps.
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The misspellings pull people away from her work --
and I don't think that's what she wants her work to doCertainly not, Wordwind. But before we judge Maria Aquilar, perhaps we should first consider her values [as posted on her website for all patrons of her art to consult before they engage her]: Installations
Maria believes that the most important elements that should exist in a Public Art Work are the following:
The work must have universal appeal for the users of the site on all levels, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.
The users of the site should be considered at the planning stage.
The visitors to the site must be able to interact with the art at one or more of the aforementioned levels. http://www.maria-alquilar.com/2level/2installation.htmlAnd, perhaps, we should also consider her background and the inspiration for her work [also published on her website]: Looking inward to an imaginative world of fantasy inspired by her Latin-American and Russian background, Maria Alquilar creates a personal mythology with universal appeal. ... Maria's richly detailed paintings and sumptuously stained and patinated metal sculpture draw inspiration from Russian Icons and Mexican Retablos They bring together mythic elements from many cultures, transformed by her vivid imagination into strong works that remind one of Rousseau and Frida Kahlo, but are unremittingly her own. Catholic symbolism, animism of tribal cultures and elements of Maria's own history come together in her paintings.http://www.maria-alquilar.com/Who is the victim here, friends? Maria? Or those who commissioned her work without a sympathetic understanding [and anticipation] of her limitations? What a terrible injustice to a visionary artist!
What a helpless scapegoat of those who have failed her!I withdraw my recommendation for the "Librarian of the Year Award". It is the library adminstration which should be scolded and humiliated, not Maria.
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I do agree with you that good itself will come out of consideration of this situation. However, Grapho, you left out a phrase that is important to understanding my viewpoint: "The misspellings pull people away from her work and to that critical area of editing..." I think I could have improved my meaning by adding the word 'instead'. Read this adjustment: "The misspellings pull people away from her work and instead to that critical area of editing..." You copied and pasted without the phrase that I think explained my point, and I quote your quote of me (without the critical phrase) below: "The misspellings pull people away from her work -- and I don't think that's what she wants her work to do" I do not imply that the misspellings categorically pull people away from her work. I do imply that in the process of editing (automatic editing as a result of our instant editing capacity), people are pulled from the immediate impact of the work itself because their minds are busily and automatically editing. It's an act comparable (on a much smaller scale) to that of considering a lovely woman, beautifully dressed, who smiles and reveals a plug of spinach caught between her front teeth. (That's an old tale, but it illustrates my meaning. Off topic: I remember someone retelling this illustration in such a way that you fell in love with this lovely woman who had such zest for life that you'd give her her spinach and a plug of tomato, too! ) I argue with your point just because it concerns your taking part of a quote and jumping to another point, thereby showing a direct relationship between one thing and another, when, instead, I meant that one result (specifically, people's not thinking about her work directly) had been caused by something not directly related to the work itself at large (the critical act of editing those spelling errors). Sloppy editing caused her work not to be taken immediately for what it was, whatever that was. If I were in her shoes, I'd be embarrassed, but, then again, I'm inordinately embarrassed to make any kind of editing error in formal work. And I consider a completed work of art to be a formal work, at least in the case of an expensive museum piece. Maybe I shouldn't have written about this at all. I was just trying to step into the shoes of the Artist at Large, and through empathetic capacity imagine what it would be like to realize that my audience was editing my spelling when, in fact, I wanted the audience to consider my point. It's probably a fool's errand to try to understand hypothetical beings since the hypothetical beings that we all live with have so little relationship to the hypothetical beings that live within others. We're hypothetical strangers living in hypothetically foreign caves...at least when considering professions that are realistically foreign to us. I'm a bit idiotic considering at all what it is like to be a visual artist since I bore myself in two minutes flat trying to draw any object, any design, any visual conception at all. Forgive my idiotic plunging into the world of art. I am very much (and obviously) out of my depth. Hope this helps. Probably not. But I tried.
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the only way that this artist is not responsible is if the library had given her a list of names it wanted on the mural and they were mis-spelled on that list.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Interesting site, Grapho. Thanks for posting. And very well-written, too,--and even word-laden. Didn't spot any spelling errors there in a fairly quick reading of it other than one capitalization error that wasn't important.
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and to that critical area of editing..."
I didn't gloss over your point because I disagreed with it, Wordwind. I did, and do, agree with it.
I glossed over it because the issue here is not the distractions caused by the artist's misspellings [they certainly are distracting], but who is ultimately to blame for those misspellings?
The artist values consultation with the community, as we know from her website.
Is it possible that those who commissioned her work did not ask her to submit a detailed illustration of the work which they commissioned?
If they failed to request such an illustration for review and approval in advance, who is to blame? The professionals responsible for issuing the commission, or the artist whose reputation is founded on her art, not on her mastery of english literature?
Those who commissioned this work of art, Wordwind, failed not once, but twice, to prevent the obvious spelling errors. [This is not what lawyers call a "latent defect" which cannot be detected with ordinary visual inspections while the work is in progress.]
First they failed to approve the final design in advance. Then they failed to inspect the work either before it was completed or immediately after it was completed while the artist was still on the site and the mortar was still moist.
Who of us would undertake an expensive renovation of our own home, perhaps a kitchen, without monitoring the progress of the work and insisting upon a final inspection before we make the final payment to the contractor?
Why should we expect less of people, like library administrators, who are responsible for taxpayer dollars?
Actually, these people failed Maria most egregiously a third time. They failed to own up to their own responsibity for her unsupervised, uninspected, unintended errors.
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re Didn't spot any spelling errorsI'm not surprised you didn't spot any spelling errors on Maria's website, Wordwind. It appears to me that the copy was written by an admiring and erudite art critic. I'm glad you found the website interesting, Wordwind. After visiting it myself, I have become an admirer of Maria's work. I fear Maria's reputation as an artist could be unfairly damaged by this brilliant mural with its regretable spelling distractions. I wonder if Shakespeare or Einstein or any of the others honored in that gorgeous mural, undertaken by a Russian-Mexican iconic symbolist and colorist, would really mind? I wouldn't ask Maria to teach an english class, Wordwind. But I wouldn't ask a librarian to paint a mural either. But you said as much yourself, and that is fair of you.
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In reply to:
I wonder if Shakespeare or Einstein or any of the others honored in that gorgeous mural, undertaken by a Russian-Mexican iconic symbolist and colorist, would really mind?
yes, because she didn't take the time to see whether or not she spelled their names correctly.
formerly known as etaoin...
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yes, because she didn't take the time to see whether or not she spelled their names correctlyAgreed, etaoin. Let's call it contributory negligence with the lion's share of the blame falling on those who commissioned the work without reviewing and approving a final design in advance, and without monitoring the progress of the work or conducting a final inspection. No doubt, Maria and the library have both learned a valuable lesson from this. But the greatest benificiary of this artistic oops (as the newspaper called it) is the municipality of Livermore, California, which now has a $40,000 mural and a busload-a-day tourist attraction completely funded by the national media, all achieved at a 15% premium over the original cost of the artwork. Maria Aquilera has put Livermore, California on the map. They should open up a Maria Aquilera Museum and sell postcards showing the original misspellings. I'm not kidding! And this says nothing of the profound impact Maria's artwork has had, and will continue to have, on the cause of literacy and proper spelling. "Why is proper spelling important?" Just ask Maria Aquilera. If all the stakeholders in this "artistic oops" got their heads together - the librarian, the municipality and Maria herself - Maria Aquilera could become a willing and sympathetic national poster figure for the importance of book learning and proper english, and, last but not least, for the importance of dominant-culture sensitivity in a multicultural society.
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artistic oopsWorth repeating. Jackson Pollock's artistic oops "blazed an astonishing trail for other Abstract Expressionist painters to follow". De Kooning said, "He broke the ice'', an enigmatic phrase suggesting that Pollock showed what art could become with his 1947 drip paintings.
It has been suggested that Pollock was influenced by Native American sand paintings, made by trickling thin lines of colored sand onto a horizontal surface. It was not until 1947 that Pollock began his ``action'' paintings, influenced by Surrealist ideas of ``psychic automatism'' (direct expression of the unconscious). Pollock would fix his canvas to the floor and drip paint from a can using a variety of objects to manipulate the paint.http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/Does this remind us of anyone?The intuetics of W. B. Yeats, perhaps?"The rational thinking of scientists and scholars is continually opposed to the inspiration or intuition of the artist in Yeats’ poetry, as it was in almost all forms of romanticism." Or the intuetics of Maria Aquilera?
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