Friday, January 24, 2014

Public Art, outside the Moda Center which used to be the Rose Garden--it's where the Portland Trail Blazers play NBA basketball



I took this photo at 3:06 p.m. on March 9, 2013, a particularly nice blue sky day for us. That's I-5 you see there behind The Little Prince. Those buildings are in an area known as the Lloyd District which is in Northeast Portland. One of these days I plan to be in good enough shape to walk there from my apartment. I'll take my camera and take photos to share with y'all!

In the past I've taken several other photos of this public art and have posted them on the blog. Click here to see four of them. In case you don't have time to click there to see the photos and read about the sculpture, I've copied and pasted the info for you here.

Bits I discovered online about the sculpture.

  • The Little Prince, by Ilan Averbuch. Copper and steel, 1995.
  • The Little Prince is a partially buried copper crown located at the south end of the arena in the Rose Quarter. It is a piece about imagination, desires and aspirations, conquests and struggles. It is the job of the viewer to create the story that goes along with the crown. Is it a victory and position of honor waiting to be claimed, or is there another story? Only the viewer can say.
  • Ilan's inspiration for this piece was the "Little Prince" by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, in particular, the first chapter where he talks about his drawing of a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant being misunderstood as a hat.
  • Ilan Averbuch's "Little Prince" and the Portland Trailblazer's Rose Garden Arena. Portland, Oregon . . . legend has it that the crown will be stood upright when the Blazers with their next championship.
  • The Little Prince, 1995, is a gigantic fallen crown, an image of a ruin of ancient majesty, of one-time splendor, and a version of another recurring theme in Averbuch’s work: the obsolescence of the monumental, former monuments in the soil, like ancient relics.
  • The Little Prince (Ilan Averbuch, 1996) is a copper crown, standing 15 feet tall in front of the Rose Garden. Inspired by the French children's story by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, the artist asks that you use your imagination to think of a story behind the crown. The crown is resting on its side perhaps waiting as a prize to be claimed or as a symbol of a triumph to come.

3 comments:

Randy said...

I really love that sculpture.

Birdman said...

I like this. "My crown, my crown...

Gallery of Shea said...

Portland:
"Crowns are so mainstream."
(Leaves crown.....just to be ironic.)

http://galleryofshea.blogspot.com/