Botero on the Avenue - Fernando Botero - Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York - Column

Art in America, Nov, 1993 by Brooks Adams

Temporarily sited along Park Avenue's median strip, 14 monumental bronzes by Fernando Botero bring a hint of Latin sensuality to New York's modernist canyons.

"Have you seen the fat people on Park?" my cab driver asked me one night as we were stuck in traffic. I didn't know at first that he meant the Botero sculptures, but of course I had, for who could have missed them? During rush hour or after dinner, the 14 bronzes by Fernando Botero installed on Park Avenue between 54th and 61st streets have been required viewing, like it or not, for anyone trying to get around the East Side of Manhattan this autumn.

Sponsored by the Public Art Fund, the temporary installation of the bronzes [until Nov. 14] on the median malls of the avenue grew out of an original idea to exhibit some Boteros at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street - since 1977 a site for revolving shows of public sculpture. The project expanded after James M. Clark, executive director of the Public Art Fund, saw Botero's sculptures installed along the Champs-Elysdes in Paris in 1992 and envisioned doing something similar in New York, largely as a means of reintroducing figurative sculpture to the program; the last quasi-representational sculpture on the plaza was part of an outdoor Henry Moore show in 1984. According to Clark, "The challenge was to find a site where we could exhibit Botero's voluptuous figures in a series." In Europe, they had been shown in 1991 in Florence at the Forte di Belvedere and in 1992 at the Casino in Monte Carlo (under the auspices of Marisa del Re, who has also regularly included Boteros in her sculpture biennials in Monte Cario). Currently there are plans to install the bronzes in Chicago's Grant Park in April '94, and additional venues including San Diego, Sydney and Hong Kong are under consideration.

Born in 1932, the 61-year-old Botero is one of the world's most commercially successful living artists, with strong markets in Europe, the U.S., South America and the Far East. Better known as a painter, he has been making sculpture since the '60s, when he lived in New York. Early on, he emulated the traditional polychrome wood sculpture of his native Colombia in strange animals, such as a horse (1966) sculpted out of acrylic resin and sawdust with a mane of real hair. He started worlking in bronze only in 1975, when he could afford to convert his Parisian atelier into a sculpture studio and have his plasters cast in metal. Now the sculptures are made primarily in Pietrasanta in Tuscany, where Botero keeps a house. He shuttles between New York, Paris, Pietrasanta and Bogota. His colossal pieces, blown up by mechanical means from smaller models, have never been taken particularly seriously in the New York contemporary art world. But this current installation suggests that Botero should be understood as a latter-day Baroque showman who succeeded in conquering the metropolis with his down-to-earth parade of mythically charged creatures-raucous bird, phallic cat, humans ranging from lovable village types to stylized, over-muscled athletes and fecund-looking female nudes.

Botero's project stirred up some trouble last summer when local committees in charge of planting flowers on Park Avenue complained that they had not been adequately consulted about the feasibility of a sculpture exhibition on the plots where tulips and impatiens usually bloom. A dustup ensued between Judith Price, president of Avenue magazine and of the Park Avenue Association, who was in favor of the Botero scheme, and Margaret Tiernes, head of the Park Avenue Malls Planting Project, which pays for flowers on the central islands. Tiernes opposed the Boteros on the grounds that they could pose dangers to pedestrians and drivers alike. (Her organization is technically liable for any accident that occurs on the median strips.) Eventually the sculpture project was approved by the city's Department of Parks and Community Boards.

According to the Public Art Fund, the budget totaled around $100,000, of which the fund contributed $20,000 in "direct costs." Acting in what Clark calls "enlightened self-interest," Marlborough Gallery (which is holding a concurrent [to Nov. 6] exhibition of sculptures and drawings on canvas) footed the bill for transporting and rigging the outdoor works. These range in height from 8 to 15 feet, weigh as much as 5,000 pounds and were installed on a single Saturday over the Labor Day weekend. One of the sculptures, Woman with Serpent (1993), now on view at the gallery, was destined for Park Avenue but had to be exchanged at the last minute when it proved too top-heavy for its wooden base; it was replaced by The Left Hand (1992) which, alone of the works on Park Avenue, has a dull, sgraffito-like patina which recalls the painter's late-'50s canvases in which he emulated Abstract-Expressionist brushwork. The works on Park Avenue range in date from 1976 to 1992 and were cast in editions of three. Several of them, most notably female Torso (1982) and Cat (1984), have been seen before in New York on Marlborough's outdoor sculpture terrace during the 80s. Although none of the sculptures on the avenue is ostensibly for sale, the prices for comparable works at the gallery run from $500,000 to $700,000.