By Layla Grant-Simmonds
Our school building is heavily decorated in student art, from paintings to 3d art, there is a big culture of appreciating art at LREI. However, some students have not noticed the art made by non-LREI students who have been in this building before any of us have. There is a collection of bronze sculptures placed around the high school building. They feature bags of money, loose coins, little men, and people eating trains. According to a Google form sent out to the student body, a whopping 92.9% of students noticed this sculpture, which means, only 7.1% of students have yet to. This could be for so many reasons, perhaps they have only stuck to the older stairwell without the sculptures, or they have just gotten so used to the sight that they never even noticed it. Regardless, most of the student body has noticed this art and voiced opinions on it.
Many students noticed them the first time they set foot in this building, during the tour, or on their first day of high school. Another group of students noticed it well into their high school career. One student even noted that they first heard about these sculptures in their first year of high school when “Lucy posted it on her Snapchat story”.
Many of the students find the content of the art to be silly, partially because of the cartoonishness. When asked how they felt about these sculptures, some said they seemed very random, funny, cute, and cool, while others did not care at all. One student linked the collection to the sculptures featured at train stations, “I thought it was really cool that LREI was able to get them here”. That seems to be much of the allure, but they also questioned the deeper meaning of it. Consumerism? Capitalism? According to the LREI high school, this sculpture was donated by the artist Tom Otterness and was titled “The Consumer” which hints that it is in fact about consumerism.
This artist is very controversial. In 1977, at the age of 25, Otterness got a lot of pushback due to the content of his footage titled Shot Dog Film. His goal for Shot Dog Film was to make the audience uncomfortable and disgusted, a common goal among New York avant-garde artists in the ‘70s. According to Artsy, Otterness was pursued by the Animal Protection Institute and demanded to pay or, at the very least, apologize for his murder.
Very quickly after, instead of addressing what he did, Otterness rebranded and became one of the world’s most abbreviated public sculptors. In 2004, he completed his 14th Street subway art installation and has since been honored with a spot in the New Museum’s exhibition and shot for New York magazine.
Animal Rights activists put even more pressure on him to apologize. In 2007, he made a statement about his film, “It was an indefensible act that I am deeply sorry for”. In the past 20 years, Otterness has displayed his work in the most prestigious galleries after many powerful people in the art world accepted his apology.
Only one of the students knows the controversy behind Otterness. They discussed with another student, “how the creator of the sculpture created an art piece where he adopted a dog from a shelter and then shot it dead on film for the purpose of ‘art’”.
Most people at school, and taking the subway do not know about the devastating truth of Otterness. It is important to separate the art from the artist, but at the same time, installing his art may go just a step further than simply appreciating the art.