“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable,” wrote George Bernard Shaw. We agree. So as the weather becomes colder and midterm season picks up, we spent one of the last pleasant afternoons frolicking around campus and exploring the many aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating works on permanent display outside. Here were some of our favorites:
Artist Unknown, Spilled Buttercream Frosting on Park St. (Oct. 16, 2023), Paresky Center
With its technique of elliptical mark-making and the streaks emanating out from its center, this piece calls to mind a slice of Whitmans’ Dining Hall’s yellow cake dropped out of a cup. Such strokes are usually an indication of a takeout-related disaster. One can only imagine that the cake was perched on top of the canvas boxes distributed for to-go meals, as the diner presumably hoped to prevent it from mixing with a savory main course. The poignancy of a lost dessert echoes the melancholy of Picasso’s Blue Period, as the semicircle of cake opens towards Greylock Quad, beckoning longingly to the meal it could not accompany.
Students of Perry, Upturned Picnic Table (October 2023), Perry House
A frivolous take on the classic table, Upturned Picnic Table appeared meaningless until we realized that it stands for how the world was turned upside down after the discovery of Travis Kelce’s new relationship with Taylor Swift. We now see it as a powerful reminder of popular culture’s ubiquity, and of just how good of an album Red was.
Herbert Ferber, Calligraph LC, Lawrence Hall
Calligraph LC is an alphabet-themed work of art located on campus. Herbert Ferber, an illustrious American abstract expressionist, constructed the sculpture by bending and welding copper alloy sheets into the shape of a piled L and C. Ferber, though trained in dentistry, emerged as a trailblazer in the American sculpture scene by rebelling against standard methods. He rejected the conventional notion that a sculpture should include a pedestal. The tenuous equilibrium that the enormous metal form of Calligraph LC seems to uphold at a solitary point of connection serves as evidence for this. The object demonstrates buoyancy with minimal effort, protruding laterally and thereafter from the supporting concrete base.
[NAMES REDACTED], Pioneer DJ Board with Headphones, 71 Hoxsey St.
An unwavering symbol of the College’s peerless party scene, this behemoth spins covers of Dua Lipa’s remix of Elton John and 2010s bangers on Friday and Saturday nights to the delight of bushy-tailed first-years and washed-out seniors alike. There is an undeniable existentialism to the piece: The turntables recall the circular passage of time, and the dual screen display harkens back to the dangerous world of multitasking that erodes our attention spans on a daily basis. Nonetheless, all of its accouterments do little to dilute the austere simplicity of its singular purpose.
George Warren Rickey, Double L Excentric Gyratory II, Greylock Quad
Double L Excentric Gyratory II by George Warren Rickey was gifted to the Williams College Museum of Art in 2011 by the Class of 1961. The reciprocal motion between the audience and the sculpture is a testament to Rickey’s preoccupation with the ways in which both natural elements and human presence can imbue works of art with life. Standing 29 feet tall, the two large, L-shaped stainless steel slabs will never collide, regardless of their rotation. The visual impact of the sculpture is subject to its kinetic grandeur, manifesting as dynamic and soaring forms at various moments, determined by the strength and direction of the wind.
Dining Hall Staff, Chairs in Conversation, Paresky Center
Similar to Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, which spent considerable time on display in the Museum of Modern Art, these chairs ask us to decipher the subliminal sentences in which we articulate our artistic experience. Though mundane, the chair is a fine-art cachet — a mixture of design and practicality. Worthy of being included in International Objects, a Bushwick Gallery which had an exhibition dedicated to chairs, this piece remains integral to the Paresky landscape. The empty chairs are reminiscent of a post-COVID demure campus — an eerie reminder of one of the College’s darkest times.
