on the broderick tower in downtown detroit there is a wonderful whale mural painted by an eccentric detroit artist named wyland. for various reasons locals don't like him or his whales very much. i have read stories that people used to thrown things at him while he was painting just out of spite.
during the run up to the super bowl and for about a year afterwards the whales were covered up by advertising. which was a shame, but made people realize that whales, however disliked, are better than t-mobile monthly specials.
one of the main complaints about the whales is that they have no relationship to detroit. admittedly, the closest whales to detroit are in the atlantic ocean which, considering detroit is solidly in the midwest, are not particularly close. most detroiters never think of whales but rather deer and other creatures which are hunted. here is one opinion from detroitblog
"The whales mural always struck me as California pothead art, the kind you find at the starving artists sales they periodically hold in places such as Eastland Mall, where you find paintings of majestic wolves and their cubs on a foresty snowscape, like you see airbrushed on the side of a van now and then. Now that’s art!" detroitblog
i always liked the whales (i am from california after all), they were strange and out of place on the side of an abandoned (hopefully not for long) office building. just the kind of juxtaposition that makes detroit wonderful.
2 comments:
your posts are so amazing. Love the shout outs to whales! thats hot!
speaking of hot...i bet youre a stud!!!
I can confirm that Bubba is a stud.
But onto matters of Wyland, funny that you should post about him becuase I am a reluctant fan of his work, he actually had many paintings in a sea-life fine art gallery on 1st ave in Seattle not to far from the Lusty Lady. I long to see the day when he is shown alongside Thomas Kincaide (or is it Kinkaide?) in the wold's most important museums...
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