Saturday, June 29, 2013

Googling on: Whirly birds and art

Where would art be without helicopters, especially big art and even more particularly big art in out-of-the-way-places. Want to put a statue on the top of a building? Helicopter. Need to pour a couple of hundred galleons of water over the statue of a thirsty God? Get a helicopter in here. Need to make a big art statement in the air? Where’s a bloody helicopter when we need one?  So here for an uplifting Sarturday morning on OTN is a bunch of helicopters doing stuff with art when cranes just aren’t up to it.
Images: Top to bottom left to right. The most famous helicopter-art combo is filmed from, yes another helicopter, for La Dolce Vita. The statue of Freedom gets airlifted off the Capitol dome for a bit of a clean and restoration and in Trinadad a helicopter is brought in to help out with the ritual bathing of a 26 metere statue of the Indian God Hanumān. A statue of King Neptune in Puerto Plata was stolen, chopped up, found again, restored and then proved too heavy to lift and Ayse Erkmens sculpture airbourne during the 1997 Munster sculpture exhibition. A couple of miscellaneous sculptures with attached ‘copters. It’s art (Robert Doisneau’s as it happens) and it’s helicopters and finally, ok maybe not art, but looks like part of what might be a statue of an elephant airbourne under a helicopter.