"But is it... art?"

Ottawa reacts, from Voice of Fire to a dead rubber crow

[CLICK PLAY ABOVE FOR RUBBER CROW VIDEO]

[UPDATED DETAILS ABOUT COSTS IN THE STORY TEXT BELOW.]

In 1988, I landed a student summer job working as an audio-visual technician at the National Gallery of Canada, shortly after it re-opened in its gorgeous new building created by architect Moshe Safdie.

The Gallery promoted its re-launch with a special exhibit of work by French impressionist Edgar Degas, best known for his paintings and sculptures of young girls in tutus at ballet school in Belle Epoque Paris. Each day I had to run the film projector for regular screenings of a documentary about his life by Canadian film-maker Harry Rasky.

It was not Degas’s dancers but another work on display that provoked the strongest reactions from visitors in the Gallery’s first years on Sussex Drive: a 1967 acrylic on canvas by American abstract painter Barnett Newman called “Voice of Fire.”

The Sun newspapers jumped on story of the Gallery paying $1.8 million for the simple blue and red geometric design. Mocking what was seen as an elitist excess was, for a time, a favourite local pastime.

There was no shortage of wags who painted their own versions in their garages and offered to sell them to the Gallery for a reduced price. Voice of Fire t-shirts were temporarily in vogue. One guy decorated an older beater car with red and blue stripes. A bar poured layered liqueur shots (blue cacao and cherry brandy, if memory serves).

When I wasn’t screening the Degas film, I liked to sneak upstairs to the gallery where the Newman was hanging and listen to tourist heap scorn upon it. “I could have done that with a paint roller and a few gallons from Color Your World,” was a common grumble. The question I never dared ask them, “So why didn’t you?”

Ottawa has a long and contentious relationship with art displayed not in galleries but in public. Whenever the city, a federal government department or the National Capital Commission drops a non-representational sculpture to liven up the tundra, it tends to stir strongly negative reactions.

The latest of these is the appearance this week of “When The Rubber Meets the Road,” a 2018 work by Prince Edward Island artist Gerard Beaulieu, next to a bike path through LeBreton Flats.

From afar, the 5-metre long sculpture made from re-purposed automobile tires looks a bit like the blasting mats used to muffle explosions on construction sites. But closer up, the work appears to be a rendering of a dead crow or raven forged from B.F. Goodrich radials.

It would likely have gone unnoticed if the NCC hadn’t tweeted a photograph of it this week, drawing predictably outraged responses tempered by some who thought it looked interesting. The commission says “When the Rubber” will remain in situ for a year and credited the federal Department of Canadian Heritage for help bringing it to Ottawa. (I’ve asked the NCC for details on costs but, so far, crickets.)

UPDATE: The NCC says it paid the artist $14,022 to rent the artwork for one year, a figure that includes shipping, installation and insurance. The price, according to senior manager of strategic communications Valérie Dufour, is aligned with rates recommended for fair compensation by Canadian Artists’ Representation.

Dufour says the recycled tires used in the piece are “symbolic of the debris that can be found in the former landfill at LeBreton Flats.”

“This large crow lies flat on the ground in a manner that resembles road kill, symbolizing the collision between human and natural worlds,” explains the signage posted by the NCC nearby.

“The artwork invites us to reflect on how we impact our environment and the creatures that inhabit our own shared spaces.”

Opinions on the work will vary. I’m posting a bunch of pictures here to give a better look at it.

Oh, by the way, “Voice of Fire” remains in the Gallery’s collection and is now worth an estimated $40 million.