Monument to Frustration and Low Achievement
George Greenamyer
born 1939, Cleveland, OH
works in Marshfield, MA
Mass Art Vehicle, 1970, arc welded steel, 8' 3" x 20' x 2', DeCordova Permanent Collection 1973.16, Gift of the Artist.
Mass Art Vehicle, an early welded sculpture created when Greenamyer was Chair of the Sculpture Department at the Massachusetts College of Art, is a humorous allegory of the frustrations of the art world. A nightmarish, tank-like vehicle, it sits squarely on a track which leads to nowhere. This sculpture is both muscular and Minimal, and evokes a certain romantic nostalgia owing to an appearance rooted in forms of nineteenth-century armor plating and weaponry.
The Merry-Go-Round of Hidden Agendas , 2006
George Greenamyer
born 1939, Cleveland, OH
works in Marshfield, MA
The Merry-Go-Round of Hidden Agendas , 2006, Forged and painted fabricated steel, 12’10’’x 5’3’’x 5’3’’, Lent by the artist.
The Merry-Go-Round of Hidden Agendas, is a wind activated, narrative sculpture that is distinct from the many commissioned public sculptures that George Greenamyer has focused on over the last 20 years. The content of this work was not influenced by location or suggestion, but rather by a personal moralistic opinion driven by the negative actions of certain lawyers, CEOs, and other people Greenamyer does not admire. The sculpture is a multi-leveled sermon with a series of eight houses representing the states through which the various “players” pass. The houses are: Life Choices, Backsliding, Greed, Judgment, Condemnation, Wrath, Hells, and Purgatory. Each figure utters both a public and a private statement which is written on the inside and outside of a word balloon; the double sided comments indicate the devious nature of their character. In all, the sculpture examines the cycle of repetitive actions a person might take as a result of their character flaws.
