Currently towering over the Los Angeles skyline are: 3 mid-sized skyscrapers. The Chinese company that built the tower ran out of money and abandoned the project in 2019. Since then, the tower has attracted a steady stream of spray-painted vandals eager to make their mark.
No matter what you think about graffiti, its presence this high above the city is at least a testament to the tenacity and physical audacity of its perpetrators. And it makes a kind of statement about the mismanagement of local government and the breakdown of security.
Over the past few decades, we have been taught to appreciate this former symbol of urban blight as art. But if it is art, then it is a modern variety that makes “self-expression” the highest value and requires us to overcome our instinctive reactions to beauty.
american sculptor daniel chester french (1850-1931) sought to hone this instinct rather than suppress it. “Look for beauty, not ugliness,” he once replied when asked what maxim he lived by. “Look for good, not evil. Look for cheer, not trouble.” This approach served the Frenchman well, one of America’s foremost popular artists and its most powerful myth-maker. Ta.
This kind of sunny disposition is unlikely to help aspiring artists today, when it is widely believed that art’s primary role is to dispel myths. But the human desire for myth cannot be eradicated any more than religion can be eradicated. When told properly, myths can unify and inspire, but they also leave plenty of room for disagreement about the history on which they are based.
Consider France’s most famous work, the giant seated statue of the 16th president at the Lincoln Memorial. This is one of those works that is so familiar to us that it appears as if no art was involved at all. This is simply what we think of when we think of Abraham Lincoln.
But if we manage to take a fresh look at France’s story, which transformed an extraordinary but all-too-human leader into a lasting reminder of our debt to the past and our hope for the future. You will be able to understand the magnitude of your accomplishment.
