Art Facts
Art Facts
Ganapathi & Devi - Stephen Cox - Sun Street Roundabout
Bristol-born sculpture, Stephen Cox has spent much time in Italy, studying architectural shapes and Renaissance stone-carving techniques. He has also travelled widely in Southern India to see first hand the ancient craft skills of the sub-continent's stonemasons. The two-part sculpture in carved stone represents the tension between dualities at the heart of many belief systems - positive/negative, male/female, yin/yan, birth/death. In Hindu religion, Devi signifies 'the Goddess', while Ganapathi alludes to the elephant god, Ganesh.
Finsbury Avenue Lit Floor - SOM & Maurice Brill - Finsbury Avenue Square
The light installation is set into the hard landscaping of the square and provides a striking computer controlled light show after night fall. The lights beneath the benches cause the massive glass supports to glow iridescently.
Go Between - Alan Evans - Sun Street Roundabout
Alan Evans works both as jeweller and as an artist in metal on a large structural scale. His gateway punctuates and divides an open space between 2 buildings, subtly channelling pedestrians as they move between them. Executed in forged steel and of massive proportions - 24 meters long, 3 meters high - the detailing is surprisingly discreet, and as delicate as foliage. Decorative metalwork like this - from fountains to urinals, bandstands to bollards - was once everywhere in our towns and cities. Rejected by recent generations of architects, it is now experiencing a quiet revival.
Water Feature - Stephen Cox - Exchange Square
In designing this water feature, sculpture Stephen Cox (see also, Ganapathi & Devi) worked in conjunction with Chicago-based architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who were responsible for the entire eastern side of Broadgate, including Bishopsgate, Broadwalk House and Exchange House. The Japanese-inspired water sculpture brings a marvellously tranquil piece of landscape art to an otherwise busy corner of Broadgate.
Rush Hour - George Segal - Finsbury Avenue Square
George Segal (b.1924) is one of America's leading contemporary artists. He casts his figures from life, encasing his sitters in wire mesh and plaster-of-Paris bandages. When it has set, the mould is cut open and the subject is released, then the mould is joined together again. For indoor display, the plaster relief is normally the basis of the work; for outdoor pieces, bronze figures are cast from the plaster version, retaining the rough textured surface. Other notable works include "The Truck" (1966), "The Laundromat" (1966-67), and "Hot Dog Stand" (1978).
Bellerophon Taming Pegasus - Jaques Lipchitz - Arena
Jaques Lipchitz (1891-1973) was born in Lithuania and became one of America's leading avant-garde artists. After meeting Picasso in Paris, the city where he lived for 30 years, Cubism would always be a strong element in his work. By 1941, when he moved to New York City, Lipchitz had established an international reputation. His new obsession with spiritual questions coincided with a revived desire to give his pieces solidity, notably in such massive works as "The Prayer" (1943) and "Prometheus Strangling the Vulture II" (1944-53; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, U.S.). His last large work, "Bellerophon Taming Pegasus," was completed in 1966 and was installed at Columbia University, New York City, in 1977.
Broadgate Venus - Fernando Botero - Exchange Square
Botero was born April 19, 1932, in Medellín, Colombia. He was heavily influenced by the Spanish Colonial art that surrounded him as a child. In 1960 Botero moved to New York. His easily recognisable paintings of round, corpulent humans and animals became well known to the American art world. In the early '70s Botero moved to Paris and began creating sculptures in addition to painted works on canvas. During the 1980s, Botero's work became quite popular and began to command a high price in the marketplace. In 1992 one of his paintings depicting a brothel scene sold for $1.5 million, a record for a Botero at auction. The five-ton bronze nude, Broadgate Venus, is one of his largest outdoor pieces.
The Broad family - Xavier Corbero - Exchange Square
Xavier Corbero is an artist from the Catalan region of Spain, where there has been a long tradition for the production of fine sculpture. Corbero's roots are in Barcelona, a city that is internationally famous for it's public displays of art. Cobero's sculpture on Exchange Square evokes universal human feelings - togetherness and separation, safety and vulnerability, innocence and experience. The sheer bulk of the basalt is impressive but a gentle humour is at work also in the ball, the dog and a pair of child's shoes almost hidden from view at the base of one of the pieces. The space between the figures is as important as their solid mass.
Eye-I - Bruce McLean - Pindar Plaza
Bruce McLean studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art and at St Martin's. He is known around the world for his performance art, debunking the art world (and himself) with refreshing candour. In recent years he has acquired a growing reputation as a painter. His sculpture, an abstract sketch of a face, glamorously female and executed in bright coloured steel, towers above the Bishopsgate pavement. For all it's imposing size, this is clearly a work of great good humour, giving a saucy wink of recognition to passers-by.
Fulcrum - Richard Serra - Octagon
Richard Serra is an American artist with an enormous global reputation, yet his equally huge sculptures continue to arouse controversy. This, the artist maintains, is precisely their point - they must engage with their viewers and surroundings. The Fulcrum (balance) is assembled from Cor-Ten steel, which weathers into intriguing textures without compromising its structural integrity. Commissioned to create a large piece for the cramped site, Serra's response was to design upwards, creating a kind of enclosed sanctuary that makes a powerful gesture of protectiveness towards its immediate environment. It would be hard to imagine the Octagon area without this magnificent work.
Leaping Hare on Crescent and Bell - Barry Flanagan
Barry Flanagan was born in Clwyd, Wales. As a printmaker, sculpture or film-maker, the common feature of the artist's style is the very absence of style where diversity is the keynote. His hare figures are probably his most accessible work, adopting human attitudes as cricketers or boxers, forming mysterious alliances with pyramids, helmets and anvils, exuding always a sense of playfulness and optimism.
Alchemy - Lincoln Seligman - Great Eastern Walkway
The 300-yard passageway is broken by the graduated colours of the roof beams, from a metallic to spectacular golden yellow. From a distance, they present a solid spectrum. Walking beneath them, the elements part to reveal a light above.
