Despite Big Hype, Obelisco Goes Off Half-Cocked

Walking from the subway to the corner of East 60th Street and Central Park, I had high hopes for Obelisco Transportable, Mexican political cartoonist cum sculptor Damián Ortega’s 20-foot-tall obelisk on wheels. Public Art Fund, the sponsor of this new public artwork, had set the bar high in its description of the piece as a “mobile landmark ... that offers a pragmatic yet wryly playful approach to a global society in which the balance of power is constantly in flux.”

In concept, Obelisco Transportable is wonderful. Placing an obelisk, a power symbol dating from ancient Egypt, in the center of aggressively contemporary New York City creates a quirky, symbolically rich contrast. The added layer of mounting the obelisk on a base with wheels makes an intriguing comparison between the permanence an obelisk traditionally connotes as a landmark of strong civilizations, and the actual transient nature of most things in our world.

With these thoughts and a series of what I’m sure were inaccurate quotations from Shelley’s “Ozymandias” running through my mind, I prepared to be wowed. I was not. Obelisco Transportable is great in concept; it is not great in practice.

The shiny black obelisk blends into the black paving stones of the plaza it stands on. To be fair, I viewed the sculpture in rather dreary and gray weather, but I doubt sunshine would help Obelisco stand out any more. The platform that the surprisingly small sculpture is mounted on looks like the dollies maintenance workers use to transport large boxes of paper towels. It is, therefore, easy to miss and does almost nothing to highlight the rather important point that the obelisk is on wheels. The one intriguing detail about the base is that it is covered in a patch of grass, suggesting that the monument was, on a whim, ripped out of the ground in its original location and rolled to New York.

It is, however, the location of the obelisk that most dilutes its effectiveness as a meaningful piece of art. The “monument” is smaller and less impressive than everything that surrounds it—the traffic, the trees, and the skyscrapers. Looking at Obelisco against a backdrop of midtown office buildings, it’s clear that these steel and glass colossi are the true obelisks, the real symbols of our society’s power and permanence. The Egyptian obelisk is suddenly an inadequate and outdated monument to thriving civilization when enveloped in the chaos of Columbus Circle.

Passersby seemed to agree about Obelisco Transportable. When asked his opinion of the piece, Dutch tourist Timothy Man replied, “I didn’t even notice it.” Many answered the question of whether or not they had any immediate reactions to the work in a similar way: “I don’t have any,” or a simple “No.” Even when pressed for an answer, people could not conjure up opinions.

People were, however, able to comment more extensively on Obelisco after learning about the concepts behind the work on a nearby informational plaque. “I love it,” said Claire Fleming, an archivist on her way to work at the scientific organization, The Explorers Club. Although Fleming is aware of the history and connotations of obelisks, she admitted to not being able to truly appreciate the piece until after reading the information on the plaque. “I am not one to get all that symbolism just looking at it,” she said.

Man pointed out the fatal flaw of Obelisco Transportable when he said, “I wouldn’t get the meaning of this without an explanation.” The lesson to be learned from Ortega’s work is that public sculpture cannot rely on art historical quotation (even a quotation as established on the obelisk) as the primary source of its significance as a piece of art.
Public artwork should be able to be appreciated both in passing and upon further contemplation. Despite excelling in the latter category, Obelisco Transportable’s inability to stand out aesthetically and its use of esoteric symbolism make the work more of a colossal wreck.