Art Review: Joe Carollo’s Dogs and Cats Walkway Sculpture Garden Is Bad Public Art

Officially debuting earlier this month, the Dogs and Cats Walkway Sculpture Gardens at Maurice A. Ferré Park consists of 52 aluminum sculptures of varied canine and cat breeds painted in brilliant, garish colours and patterns. There’s a longhaired cat painted in tiger stripes, a poodle with a rainbow dye job, a Chihuahua painted Lisa Frank-pink, and so forth. Some pets are sporting garments. There’s a basset hound in a hoodie, a dalmatian in an outsized fireplace hat, and most revoltingly, a Labrador retriever in a police cap named the “Boss.”

It would not take a skilled creative eye to understand these statues are ugly and ugly. None of them are visually coherent or notably properly made, and the entire set up feels pointlessly extravagant and low cost regardless of costing almost $1 million of public funds.

Miami has at all times had an affinity for kitsch and pop artwork. Local museums and artwork festivals are replete with shows of artwork by Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol, and the saccharine work of Romero Britto is everywhere in the metropolis. But at the very least these artists have a imaginative and prescient.

Koons’ work displays the excesses of American tradition again at us. His artwork depends on a way of mischief and darkish humor, as one girl found this weekend at Art Wynwood when she unintentionally shattered one among his distinctive porcelain balloon animals. But no concepts emanate from the Dogs and Cats Walkway. Looking at a longhaired orange cat with palm bushes painted throughout it doesn’t stimulate the thoughts past ideas like That’s humorous. It’s totally pointless.

The backyard is very pitiful contemplating Miami’s robust custom of public artworks, stewarded by Miami-Dade County’s glorious Art in Public Places program. The assortment consists of sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein and Isamu Noguchi and murals by Keith Haring and Ed Ruscha.

Miami Commission Joe Carollo and his spouse, Marjorie, the progenitors of the Dogs and Cats undertaking, admitted that they ripped the thought off from an identical undertaking in Colombia to appeal to vacationers to Ferré Park. Like Wynwood Walls, the Carollos use artwork as a way to an finish slightly than a public good in and of itself.

Worse nonetheless, the commissioner rammed the thought by means of an approval course of that led to at the very least one resignation from the Bayfront Park Management Trust board, which Carollo chairs. According to Cristina Palomo’s letter of resignation, the proposal to construct the backyard had not been vetted earlier than it went to vote, with no bids or enter from establishments like Art in Public Places or the adjoining Pérez Art Museum Miami, who absolutely may have offered higher art work befitting a supposed “world-class” metropolis.

So the Dogs and Cats undertaking was not an unique thought, was executed with out correct planning, disrespects the present creative legacy of the town, and isn’t made for the those that dwell right here. So why does it exist?

It should not shock anybody that the sculpture backyard comes from the thoughts of a person presently wrestling management of lots of Miami’s cultural landmarks. Last yr, Carollo led the trouble to take over Virginia Key Beach Park from the majority-Black board. He additionally kicked Miami Dade College from Little Havana’s Tower Theater. Carollo dominates and controls every little thing round him, irrespective of how ill-suited he’s to the duty, and this newest vainness undertaking is presumably the worst factor to date.