by Garrison Frost

There are a lot of ways to judge art, public art in particular. One can assess it on its looks (ugliness, prettiness, size, color), content (accuracy, pertinence, intellectual rigor), craftsmanship (execution, durability, detail), or its emotional response (how does it make you feel). But another way of judging art is to ask one's self whether this thing being sold to the viewer as art is in fact art, and this approach is particularly apt when discussing public art.

Which is why I'm pretty sure that Paul Tzanetopoulos' "Cultural Waves," a tiled art piece on the seawall adjacent to the Manhattan Beach pier is far and away the worst piece of public art in the South Bay.

While I could launch this broadside from several different directions, I'm going to start by challenging the classification of this thing as art. While Andy Warhol expanded our notions of what is and isn't art with his famous Campbell's Soup cans, I'm not quite ready to say that anything one says is art is art. This especially goes when one slaps two different colors of tiles on a wall in a simple wave pattern. Let's face it, there is no shortage of tile guys in the phone book who could have designed and executed this thing, and they would not have called it art, nor would they have charged $100,000 for it. At best, this is decoration, and when mere decoration is pawned off as art it does a disservice to both. I've seen displays at Home Depot that display more imagination and creativity.

It must be understood that in 1997 when the city of Manhattan Beach commissioned this piece, its public art program was in serious trouble. For years, the program's products had been pilloried by the public, and "Cultural Waves" was a product of the City Council's need to do something that would not generate more criticism. This was a "consensus-builder," and the council had to go through several gyrations just to get this approved. Everything that is wrong with public art comes out of this type of process. Don't be dazzled by those who deride public art because it denigrates religion or insults morality. No, when public art goes bad, truly bad, it looks like "Cultural Waves," not Robert Mapplethorpe.

One aspect of this project which particularly pleased the council and the public was that it was "interactive," which is to say that members of the public were invited to help the artist stick the tiles on the walls in the exact places he told them to do so. Well, I'm not sure that was exactly interactive, but it was participatory. Does this make it art? Well, no. In fact, having a bunch of untrained helpers do the busy work of the project probably helps the argument that it isn't art.

Now that that's out of the way, let me also say that, separate from the comments above, "Cultural Waves" just flat-out stinks. It's ugly, unimaginative, simplistic and boring. Long before this dog was installed, someone had painted a mural of local surfer Chris Frohoff on the seawall. While it wasn't particularly well done, and it had practically faded away by the time it was tiled over, the mural was much more interesting.

I recall saying when it was built that "Cultural Wave" just had to be a joke. This was it? This was the great public art piece for which the city had so long waited? This was the art that was going to frame the city's beautiful new pier?

Now that several years have passed, it's obvious that no one was kidding. Which is probably for the best. Now that it seems that the Manhattan Beach Cultural Arts programs seem to be gathering momentum, "Cultural Wave" can stand as an example of what not to do, what not to settle for.

(March 9, 2003)

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