Globalization in Modern Art - How the World Has Shrunk

    The World used to be such a big place.  Until 200 years ago, man sailed the oceans with...sails.  Before the advent of the steam engine and paddle wheel, to the modern engine and propellers on both ships and airplanes it took literally years to traverse the globe, a feat that now can be measured in hours in the air or weeks on a ship.  It was only 70 years ago "shipping containers" that could come off a trailer and be stacked on deck of a cargo ship were conceived.  Now likely everything within reach of any of us has spent time in a container.    

 

 Malcolm McLean, the inventor of the shipping container.  It enabled us to load a container, put it on a trailer, leave it loaded, take it off the trailer and onto a cargo ship going across oceans, then off the ship onto another trailer to be dragged to very near it's destination, where it would be opened and it's contents dispersed, possibly a half a globe away from point or origin, or further.

 

Las Colinas

 Ben Carpenter commissioned Robert Glen of Nairobi, Kenya to build these.  He modeled them up to half size in Kenya, sent those models to England to be modeled up to 1.5 times life, where they were cast of bronze in 1981, though they don't exactly fit into the "post modern" era in which they were caste, they adhere to a more photo realistic approach, closer to the modern style.  They were then air freighted from England to Irving, Texas to be the centerpiece of Irving's real estate plans.  Carpenter was on safari in Kenya when he came across other examples of Glen's work, and Glen traveled to England and Texas to design this piece, down to the jets at the feet that make the hooves splash.

Glen is still working today out of Kenya, and the Mustangs are on full display at the Urban Center Carpenter had built.  Sure, something like this was possible before the "Post Modern" art period.  But it's completion may have taken a generation and a half due to the status quo of travel and supply before "globalization."  Instead, only eight years elapsed from when Carpenter was contacted by Glen in 1976 to the dedication in 1984.

Las Colinas is truly a piece of art for all the senses.  In a period of art where I struggled to find pieces that appealed to me, this wonderful piece of realism stood out. I reckon the display isn't just the horses; looking at the image the straight lines of the buildings bring my focus down to the visage of the animals, and then back up to what must be a beautiful horizon if it ain't blotted out by concrete buildings.  The texture sculpted into the bronze really makes the horses look alive; you can see the muscles ripple, see the veins pop in exertion, the mane flowing in the wind.  The color of the white water, coupled with the lights under the water at their feet, clashes with the dark color of the calm water, it enunciates the action captured in the moment, like a good Baroque.  The curved lines of the horses puts on fine display the grace and strength of wild Texas mustang.   I'd like to see this in person, but unless I have other reasons combined to go to Irving, Texas, it's unlikely.     

Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center, though erected at JFK International in New York between 1959 and 1962, is an example of a giant modern sculpture made into architecture.  Made from cutting edge material of the time, Saarinen said it is an ode to da Vinci's flying machine.  Saarinen thought the terminals of the time were boxy, shoddy, ugly, and inconvenient, and thought to beautify and streamline the travel through them.  Airline terminals, and train terminals, were getting bogged down by increasing traffic, particularly at large busy international airports like JFK.  Saarinen and company studied these congested terminals, observing that even in "boxy" structures human traffic seemed to arc.  They figured if they curved the travel ways in their intended directions traffic could be manipulated to increase efficiency and reduce congestion.  The combination of straight and curved lines does give it the look of a raptor tucked for a dive, achieving wonderful speeds, not unlike passenger aircraft circumnavigating the globe from this very airport.  The thin concrete forming the wings was a new idea at the time, requiring hundreds and hundreds of man hours to prepare the form and supports, and once started the pour didn't stop, it took over one hundred and twenty hours of continuous pouring to complete the roof.  If you look close, the columns on either side of the doors could be talons extended down to snatch a fish out of the water.  The space created under the wings by the glass gives the impression that the wings are not supported by anything other than air flowing under the wings.  The three dimensional form of the roof, curved front to back and side to side, really ad to the sense of aerodynamics and birdlike appearance.  If a strong catastrophic wind picked up the form of it makes it imaginable that this building could fly, even if only for a horrific moment.  It's a hotel now, would be a cool place to stay if I knew the weather forecast...and had any reason to go to New York.

 This is another piece by Saarinen.  Made of stainless steel and concrete, The Gateway to the West is yet another testament to post modern globalism, despite it's earlier origins.  It's first inception was in the early 1930s, as a memorial to revive the riverfront and the economy in St. Louis, Missouri.  It took decades from the idea, through the design competition where they were looking for something that would be "transcending in spiritual and aesthetic values... one central feature...that would symbolize American culture and civilization."  It would be nearly 30 years between the spark of the idea and when ground was broken in 1959, and due to construction delays, contractual issues, and even the Civil Rights movement, it wouldn't open to the public until June 1967.  US Vice President Hubert Humphrey said that it is "a soaring curve in the sky that links the rich heritage of yesterday with the richer future of tomorrow..."  It's distinct lack of color, being stainless steel, seems pretty intentional.  Stainless steel can be very reflective, and on the pictured bright sunny day that reflection is bright and blue, shining a light for the future, heralding the bright expanding world to come, as it also memorialized US expansion westward.  The legs of the arch, the lines and the tone of them in this photo at least, and their spacing, show the past westward expansion of the US, and the future, globalization.  They are linked, and always will be, and we must learn from one to better handle the other. 

 Here is another bronze by Robert Glen, the Kenyan sculptor.  Commissioned by the city of San Jose in 1988, it commemorates the first raising of the American flag in California in July, 1846, by Captain Thomas Fallon.  Though the piece itself doesn't showcase globalism, but the fact that the city of San Jose in California, got a Kenyan to build it, likely using materials sourced from around the world, is representative of the shrinking world globalism has brought us.   

Works Cited

“Shipping.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 23 June 2023, www.britannica.com/technology/shipping-water-transportation.

Irving Archives & Museum, www.irvingarchivesandmuseum.com/mustangs-of-las-colinas. Accessed 31 July 2023.

“TWA Flight Center.” Wikipedia, 24 June 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_Center.

“Gateway Arch.” Wikipedia, 28 July 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Arch.