Stories & Articles by Ted Meyer

Spiderman - Savior or Artist?
First Published in Coagula Art Journal     

As New York prepares for the next big installation by American-born artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude this coming February, it begs the question, “Just how much of this site-specific art can New Yorkers take?”

No one doubts that the 7,500 saffron-colored cloth gates will liven up a leafless and wintery Central Park. We all agree the Alice in Wonderland statue lost its charm to the over-seven crowd years ago, leaving the park in need of a total artistic overhaul. This dreary patch of land--this “ghetto of trees” if you will--is no longer a draw to the average New Yorker, who surely has better things to do than commune with nature. I am sure there are a few tree-hugger types who prefer the outdoors over the warmth and comfort of a coffee bar, and some of them might even brave Central Park’s twenty-three miles of decorated footpaths to view the gates during their sixteen-day run. Sure, the occasional uneducated jogger might be as thrilled by the golden burst of color supplied by each gate as they would a painted cow--but let’s be honest--their main thought will be nothing more than the nagging fear that a mugger or killer might be hiding behind the temporary structures ready to harm them--or worse yet--take their cell phones.
For those of us who choose not to put our lives and bodies at risk to view art in the park, and the rest who, after years of hunting, still can’t find the DIA Foundation’s “Broken Kilometer” exhibit--there are the easily-accessible, newer, and far more impressive installations of New York City’s flamboyant savior, Spiderman.

This Spiderman has taken the New York art scene by storm with his gigantic spider web installations that cover building after building with glistening translucent threads once used to support the artist himself as he swung his way from disaster to disaster--stopping crime, thwarting terrorist threats, and saving scores of people. Spidie’s giant “webs” sway in the New York breeze, adding movement and softness to the city’s cold metal and stone façades in a way that wrapping the static Nazi-ridden Reichstag in Hello Kitty pink plastic never achieved. The scale of these faux webs juxtaposed against urban cityscapes makes us question not only the scale of the buildings they stick to, but indeed, to ask if it is we who are trapped in this artist’s web?

“I really am just a crime-fighter. It is who I am, it is what I do. I’m not an artist. If you people enjoy looking at all the webs, that is just fantastic because cleaning them up after every heroic deed is really a pain in the ass. I’d just as soon leave them there. Some girl died last week out in Brooklyn while I was cleaning a web off the Chrysler building. I didn’t have the time to do both, so she ended up falling off the Williamsburg Bridge and got hit by a barge. Between the no smoking ban and all the web removal regulations the city has enacted, this place is going to hell. I saved some drunk guy from certain death when he fell out his window and all I heard was ‘Hey, you gonna clean up that web or what?’ Ungrateful cretins. I’d move to Prague in a New York minute if the buildings weren’t too damn short to swing from.”

The artist, as always dressed in his form-fitting signature blue and red superhero suit (that has trendily replaced the death-watch-black outfit as the art opening uniform of choice), insists that he has no interest in the next Whitney Biennial unless someone attending the event is in peril.
“You know, these webs aren’t really art,” insists the talented arachnid. “It is really just some biological waste that spews out of me. Sort of like snot, but it comes out of my wrists. I have no control over it. You see, I got bitten by this radioactive spider and ever since these webs just shoot out. Really, I’m no artist.”
To that I say, “Spidie, if you don’t tell me what is art, I won’t fight crime.”