That's art? It looks more like the set of this old house.

My kids doing better work with his crayons.

I would love to meet the artist (I'm imagining dreadlocks): I'll bet he/she hasn't had a bourgeoisie job in some time. I hope he has a trust fund (or wealthy lover), because he's going to have a hard time living of his artistic talent.

No, no, no...

The art is in the statement, not the objects.

I thought the art was in getting the city to pay you for vague pretensions pinned to whatever slapdash crap you could throw together... usually something about challenging us to view the world's injustices through the lens of the starving child that is ART!

"Gentrify" means to "renovate and improve so that it conforms to middle class tastes". I find the installation to be quite humorous. Perhaps the theme is a little too subtle for some tastes. But then the inclusion of a "pink flamingo" might be a little too obvious.
C'mon critics, lighten up!

I thought the art was in getting the city to pay you for vague pretensions pinned to whatever slapdash crap you could throw together...

I hope I'm not the only one who thought this comment referred to the SoWa district.

"Young is setting out to obliterate the artiness of the installation space."
According to Henry James there are 3 questions one should ask about any artistic endeavor; 1. What is the artist trying to do? 2. Did they suceed? 3. Was it worth doing in the first place?
I'll have to check it out on my lunch hour before I make any judgements.

A reference to bourgeois values equates to marxism? Like the results of the last local election were a harbinger of socialsim I suppose. Haven't you heard that the cold war is over?

Are my tax dollars paying for this shite?? What a waste!

History note to Pierre: The USSR and East European communist governments are gone - hence the Cold War is over.

However, Marxism is alive and well throughout the world.

I think Mr. Young's creative vision is a huge success:

He completely obliterated the artiness of the installation space.

At the risk of increasing my blood pressure, how much did RACC pay for this splendiferous attack on my bourgeousie property tax?

Alive and well around the world. You can tell it because they use words like bourgeois. A sure tip-off if there ever was one. E Gads, a marxist art exhibition in the Portland Building. Next thing you know they'll be trying to teach French in the public schools!! Give the man a fig leaf.

"I Pity the fool!"

Years and years ago, I took some political economy classes at the New School in NYC. We read some Marx as one of the thinkers in the line of classical political economists that included Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the Physiocrats (Always thought they should have started a band). Marx got into the heavy ideology, it seems, when he teamed up with Engels for the Communist Manifesto.

Years and years ago, I took some political economy classes at the New School in NYC...

Heck, Cynthia, I've got a UofO 5 credit class under my belt for reading and studying Capital!

Marx was pretty incisive about some stuff. But economic theory, and how that translates itself into seizing power in feudal Russia...not a good model. Yeah, the cold war's over, poverty and misery in the now defunct Soviet Union is on the rise, as many of the same Party apparatchiks remain in control, but now their thievery is more blatant then when they claimed to speak for their ever screwed over proletariat.

What's ironic, too, is how many of our own neo-cons came out of the Trotskyist tradition.

Wow...use a word like "bourgeois" and see what happens. But when you realize it really translates to "middle class"...

Let's face it...most modern art is crap, whether paid for by public monies or not. Walk the new underground passageway to the Portland Art Museum's new wing and I swear --I swear-- that the alledged sculpture there is simply construction debris left behind. But put a bronze plaque next to it, with someone's name and...voila! Art!

Tom, et al:

I went into the lobby today (which is actually located on the 2nd floor if you enter from the Bus Mall) and looked everywhere.

There's lot's of public art (and info on the RACC and their various projects), but I couldn't find the bourgeois section.

Maybe the RACC is playing a joke on all of us?

Lord knows I think RACC is a big joke.

Mister T, there is public gallery on the second floor of the Portland Building, but the exhibit in question is in the lobby on the first floor.

Part of its cleverness is that it blends in.

Rebecca:

Any idea how much RACC funding was provided to Mr. Young?

I've always looked upon the Tram as more of a 'performance art piece' then infrastructure it makes more sense to me from that perspective. Perhaps the RACC or the NEA could pick up some of the tab, or bring in Christo to do something with it for opening day. I plan on devoting a whole photo series to the tram when it's up and running.

Maybe if he's going to produce "stealth" art we should pay him in stealth money.