Waterfally!

I've been gushing (fner) over the Brooklyn Bridge Waterfalls ever since they were announced, and now that the installation is complete they're even cooler than I'd imagined! This video does a nice job of capturing their dreamy matter-of-factness, as if they utterly belong in that landscape.


The New York City Waterfalls
Olafur Eliasson
New York, NY 2008
1:21

Here's an amusing article from the New York Times about New York City's other waterfalls, including the "explicit" cascade at Trump Tower and a brief shower from a high-powered facade washer in the Bronx. My second favorite waterfall in Manhattan was similarly ephemeral: while wading through Union Square Station one summer during a thunderstorm, I had to leap over a torrent of water flowing from beneath a locked maintenance door. The Brooklyn Bridge installation captures something of that incongruous NYC magic.

Other of his pieces are similarly impressive. Here we visit the Tate Modern during his "Weather Project" installation, a Ballardish (Ballardian?) nightmare of heat and light.


The Weather Project
Olafur Eliasson
Tate Modern, London, 2006
:45

And this elegant, astronomy-flavored light sculpture reminds me a bit of the Roden Crater.


Round Rainbow
Olafur Eliasson
Hirschorn Museum, Washington DC, 2007
1:08

If other artists would start plagiarizing this sort of simple, resonant installation, instead of trying to be John Curren or Elizabeth Peyton, the art world would be a much more interesting place. In that spirit, enjoy a slide show of land art grandaddy Robert Smithson's Hobbit-sized, waterborne Central Park being tugged around the island of Manhattan. Perhaps inevitably, it's pursued by a tiny rendition of Christo's Gates.


Floating Island
Robert Smithson
2006
[chased by] Gates
The Bruce High Quality Foundation
2006
2:01