Things that Make Me Laugh: Brushstrokes in Flight
If you ever find yourself stuck at the Columbus airport and needing to kill ten minutes or so, walk toward concourse B and take in the ‘magesty’ that is Brushstrokes in Flight.
What makes me laugh about Brushstrokes every time I see it is not the sculpture itself, but the history behind it.
In the early eighties, Roy Lichtenstein was a very big deal in the art world. I have to admit, to me his stuff looked like any old cartoonist could have drawn it. (But anyone can spatter paint on a canvas too–Jackson Pollock made it art.) So, in our infinite wisdom, the City of Columbus comissioned a sculpture to sit at the entrance to the Columbus airport and sort of represent our city to the incoming visitors from around the world. We paid $150,000 for the original art that was to represent our city-not the fortune now that is was then, but still a hefty sum.
It was unveiled among much hullabaloo, then quietly fell into obscurity until the mayor decided he wanted to give it to the city of Genoa, Italy as a thank you for a sculpture of Christopher Columbus that they had given us. “Luckily” he didn’t have the authority to do that and the sculpture remains here.
Brushstrokes in Flight has been moved twice, finally landing at the entrance to concourse B. If you take a good look, you can see the damage that was overtaking the sculpture when it sat outside, so since we are apparently keeping it, it is a good thing they moved it to where they did.
If you have the opportunity and you have never seen it, take a walk over to concourse B and take a long look. It is amazing the small elements that make up the history of a city. Brushstrokes in Flight represents all the fun and a little of the excess of Columbus in the 1980s. I hope you enjoy, and no one will blame you if you laugh just a little too.
Columbus, Ohio, Brushstrokes in Flight, Roy Lichtenstein, art, sculpture, modern art, pop art, Port Columbus
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