Jeff Koons' New Sculpture Could Crush You
But luckily the $25 million life-size train will be suspended from a crane.
Fancy a thrill in the 'I could so easily be painfully pulverized' sense of the word when stopping to smell the flowers? Jeff Koons has made massive dogs out of live plants and balloon animals out of stainless steel, and now the pop artist could suspend a train weighing several tons from a crane above a walkway in a New York park. As you do. The proposed sculpture would be a life-sized, 70-foot replica of a 1940s locomotive crafted from incredibly heavy-sounding materials, steel and carbon fiber. Oh, and it would also sporadically turn its wheels, blow its horn and emit steam.
The piece of art has been modestly quoted at $25 million to produce and install, and it would be part of the High Line in Manhattan's West Side, which is a park built above the city streets on what used to be a freight rail line. Jeff is in talks with Friends of the High Line, the group that manages the park, about installing the train in the park's third and final section of development, the rail yards.
"We've had a crush on the 'Train' for a while now," said Robert Hammond, co-founder of High Line, to the New York Times. Crush. Lol. Tom Eccles, former director of New York's Public Art Fund, employed quite an original metaphor when describing his feelings about seeing a model of the train, also telling the Times, "It's like picking up a dog by its tail, with the legs still running. In some ways, it's suspended between the past and the future."
Now all they need is a private investor to dish out the cash money - and they can't look to Diane von Furstenburg and her husband Bary Diller, who've already donated nothing short of $35 million to the park.
Ingrid Kesa
