Canned Art

San Diego U-T art critic Robert L. Pincus is not a fan of recent public art projects commissioned by the Port of San Diego:

The Port of San Diego keeps on trying to build projects in public places that are the visual equivalent of elevator music….

The entire public art program at the port seems to be committed to the innocuous, from Imperial Beach, where you can find Wyland’s trio of dolphins in bronze (”Ocean Riders”), to San Diego, where poorly such conceived works as Stanley Bleifeld’s “Homecoming” vastly outnumber good ones, such as Gail Roberts’ “Treelines,” a suite of paintings and objects in Terminal 2 at the San Diego International Airport.

More specifically, Pincus has issues with the $270,000 of port money (read: our) that was spent on “The Cannery Workers Tribute,”

But is this what public art at the port has come to? To pick something that simply fills a parcel of land with elements such as a few decorative walkways, some benches, a nice bit of mosaic work and some innocuous figures? It doesn’t seem to trouble anyone at the port that the art lacks the essential quality of art: aesthetic vision.

What of the aesthetic vision? According to Mr. Pincus:

If I was a descendant of cannery workers, I would be appalled, not honored. “The Cannery Workers Tribute” is the shallowest sort of tribute, infused with an “it’s a small world” ethos that denies the real grit and drama of the history it supposedly celebrates.