Let’s assume that you’re the type of person who can’t be bothered to analyze abstract works of art. There are many people like you, in fact, but don’t worry-that’s how the government wants it (just kidding). But, there’s yet another reason not to worry, because there’s a thing called sculpture. Sculpture doesn’t demand that you sit there and translate what you see until it means something to you. Instead, sculpture is eye candy, and the Laumeier Sculpture Park, which is 15 minutes away from Saint Louis University, has plenty of it.
The difference between paintings and the art at Laumeier (12580 Rott Road) is shock value. With a lot of art, you sit there dumbfounded at first, staring blankly ahead until you’ve formed something identifiable out of it through some forced and awkward teleological process of introspection. At Laumeier, you approach one of the sculptures and your mind stops functioning altogether. The sheer size, complexity or just downright starkness of the sculptures usually takes a while to fathom and, as a result, the sculptures inspire a sense of wonder. The experience is akin to the feeling you get from looking at a skyscraper, or maybe some startlingly deformed animal.
The combination of sculpture and outdoor setting is the greatest coupling since Shaq and Kobe. The vast openness that the sprawling 98 acres affords allows people to move about and experience the terrain and sculptures in a special way. Instead of the sculptures as distinct entities unto themselves-clinically displayed in a white-walled art museum-they’re part of the more beautiful juxtaposition of nature and sculpture, organic and mechanical.
That the sculptures are displayed outdoors invites internationally renowned artists to bring their site-specific environmental sculptures to Laumeier. For example, one of the park’s first visual sculptures is Frenchman Philippe Richard’s impossibly endless and intricate maze of latex paint-colored wood that hooks around the expressive and organic curves of trees in rote 90-degree turns. The dichotomy of the natural and the mechanical is defined through sculptures like these.
After Richard’s piece, there rests the hulking, metallic beast sitting smack dab in the middle of a field. It looks like a ridiculously large, bent-out-of-shape paper clip whose size is so immense that it inspires an initial sense of not only awe, but also fear. It rouses a feeling of powerlessness; you almost lose your balance just looking at the sculpture.
“But what about the strict ‘hands off’ signs and snobby bespectacled know-it-all museum curators?” you might ask. The answer is that this is not a typical museum. The outdoor environment serves two purposes that work distinctly to the sculptor’s advantage. First, the contrast of nature and sculpted shapes reciprocally highlights their respective beauty. Second, the openness of the outdoor lends the sculptures a free-reigning, boundless quality. Housing the sculptures indoors would limit the sculptures’ potential. But in open space, wonder and awe run free.
Your experience at Laumeier, open from 8 a.m. to one half hour past sundown, can be whatever you want it to be. At the very least, it’s a series of trails and nature to be experienced free of charge, and it is practically always open. But, it also comes with the added benefit of being a crazy, sculptural playground.
