Even if you haven't been following the case of the Bemidji beaver, you know the drill. Public art is revealed. Someone complains. Controversy splits town, and some thumbsucker in the newspaper uses it as an opportunity to have a conversation about art. My friends, I am that thumbsucker. But first, the deets: The rodent statue had a painted belly, and where some people saw praying hands, others saw ... Georgia O'Keeffe flowers! Well, no, but they saw the lady parts that some people spy in O'Keeffe. The town put it in a warehouse, thought about it, voted, and now it's back. End of story? Oh, no. Here comes the lessons.
Public art used to be basic: a guy on a horse, for example. Gen. Jeb (Buckshot) Hardington on his trusty steed, Steed. If you knew your statuary, you could read the history by the posture of the beast: One leg up meant the rider died in battle, all legs down meant he died in bed, and two legs up on the same side meant he died from gangrene when the damned thing fell over on him. Or it's a soldier gazing resolutely into the distance, scanning for Redcoats or Huns -- or just a marker for the Great War or its lesser-known sequel, the Incredible War.
Every small town has at least a marker; when I drive up to Fargo I pause in Verndale, which has a tiny park with a tiny monument for the boys who went Over There, with all their names cast for eternity. (Basically: "Johnson.") Fargo has a statue of a Norse explorer who's pointing to the ground with a stern expression, looking like some ancient Viking devoted to eliminating litter. They're part of the fabric of a small town; in larger towns, life swirls around them, and they seem like forgotten citizens of another era, pretending they can't hear the rest of us laugh at the pigeon droppings on their heads.
This changed after World War II, when people just wanted to move on already: hence no World War II statues. Styles changed, and now the modern world demanded Incomprehensible Things in empty plazas, with names like "Arrangement #5." You could sit on it, but you'd better have a tetanus shot first. Minneapolis got lucky and mostly missed the Enormous Alienating Modern Thing phase, and we have actual statuary. There's a Botero down by the Milwaukee Road Depot that consists of two chubby naked people dancing, for example. I don't recall that war, but it must have been a whimsical one.
Interesting that the controversy hit Bemidji, since the town already has one of the state's most famous statues: Paul Bunyan. Actually, there were two Pauls in the outstate B-towns: a concrete giant in Bemidji, painted over every year until his facial features looked like he'd been in a fire. (Babe stood by his side, and some years his eyes were painted so wide that he looked like he'd eaten bad mushrooms and was seeing things no ox should see.) Brainerd's Paul sat on a huge log throne in an amusement park, and it moved. The head turned. It spoke. When you entered the park, your dad would tell the ticket-taker your name, and he'd relay it to the man behind the curtain. Paul would turn his head toward you, his horrible, grinning head, and he would say your name.
Many a Pamper was retired ahead of schedule by that statue.
That's what we need more of, really -- awe-inspiring enormous creations that remind us of our history. There should be a 300-foot Pillsbury Doughboy on a plinth downtown, waving to the gigantic Jolly Green Giant down in Blue Earth. In the absence of this, though, small-scale art projects like Bemidji's, or St. Paul's "Peanuts" series, are a fine way to inject art into the molecular level of daily life. But it wouldn't hurt to have a hero on a horse, carved in stone, or an astronaut, or a Grecian figure representing some civic virtue. In southwest Minneapolis a water tower bears the glowering figures of Knights, swords clasped in their powerful hands, guarding the health of the citizens! You can't look at them without sensing the strength and confidence of the culture that produced them.
Beavers are cute, but Paul Bunyan on ox-back would be better. Just remember what people saw in the belly of the beaver, and be careful where you put the ax.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks
