An "Ugly" Frank Stella and Other Dubious Sculptures Spark a Public Art Backlash in Seoul

Seoul's famous "gorilla with a backpack"

By ARTINFO, Published: June 28, 2011

For the past 16 years, a South Korean law has required developers to commission a piece of public art for all large building projects and to spend one percent of the overall budget on its creation. Seoul has been flooded with thousands of sculptures, many of which the public views as eyesores, prompting the government to rewrite the law. Now developers will have the choice between commissioning a work of art or donating the money to the government for an art-purchasing fund, and many Seoul residents hope that the new law will improve the quality of the art they see on the streets.

According to a report on the phenomenon in the Los Angeles Times, the law produced 10,684 public artworks between 1995 and 2008 at a cost of over $546 million. Frank Stella's "Amabel" was installed outside the Posco steel company in 1996 at a cost of $1.4 million. But many Seoul residents found the gnarled mass of steel ugly, and officials considered moving it to South Korea's Museum of Modern Art. Balking at the $400,000 cost of transporting it, they decided instead to try to hide the sculpture by planting trees around it.

In order to comply with the law, many developers took the path of least resistance, opting for abstract metal shapes or stylized human figures. Among the stranger artworks that have benefited from the legislation are an enormous straw man perched on a corner of a building, and a gorilla with a backpack climbing up a high-rise. "More than 90 percent of it is problematic. It has no relationship to the architecture and no form," Hong Kyoung-han, editor of Public Art magazine, told the Voice of America. "There is no artistic sense whatsoever. There are thousands of works of art on display publicly in Seoul, yet most of them are viewed negatively."