There are painted cows in Boston this summer and they are giving me life. A few weeks ago I read a headline that said leprosy was making a comeback in (pause for effect) Florida. Leprosy. The thing they talked about in Catholic Sunday school to make you think it was actually a punishment for swearing or lying or masturbating. To be fair, the old school Catholics could make you believe you were going to hell just for lingering a little too long over the men’s wear section in the J.C. Penny catalog1. The world grows ever weirder by the minute in most of the wrong ways. But there are 75 life-size cow sculptures around Boston, painted and transformed by regional artists, as part of a fundraising initiative for the Dana Farber Institute for cancer research and that alone is a reason to smile.
I think that one of the perks of city life is getting to encounter public art on a regular basis. Some people might disagree. LESS color! FEWER sculptures! NO MORE shiny, paper stuff hanging from chain link fences to distract me while I’m texting and driving! I don’t think people in this camp are soulless, but I do think they dream of the day when we’re all wearing grey onesies like extras in a Pink Floyd video. Art makes people a little defensive: I don’t GET it. What does this MEAN? My kid smeared ketchup on her placemat, think I could sell that for 1.4 million?
Valid questions all. Because art is a little bit lawless and that makes us nervous. It has all these permeable parameters—performance art, mixed media, pieces designed to decay or self-destruct or be eaten. How do you even know if it’s “right” or “good?” In Somerville MA there used to be a Museum of Bad Art housed in the basement of a movie theater. Walking through the space and looking at the hideous art, everyone had the same conversation: “Is it so bad it’s good or is this really, really terrible, as in, like, is this even legal?” This is my idea of an ideal first date, a true litmus test of so many things—intelligence, sense of humor, philosophical beliefs, deviant pathology. It’s all right there in the person’s reaction to a painting of a pale bald man with mushrooms haloed around his head and coming out of his mouth. Those next-step-life-decisions about the person you’re looking at “bad art” with will just cascade into place like one of those purple plastic Plinko pucks in that game from The Price is Right.
And maybe that’s what people are chaffing against—the sense that art is mocking them for not being smart or savvy or cool enough. You’re a grown-ish human adult standing in front of a sculpture that may or may not resemble stars or fish or Oprah suddenly feeling like you’re the only kid in school who wasn’t allowed to see Star Wars. Stupid art, exposing all of my insecurities and personal shortcomings! HOW DARE YOU MARCEL DUCHAMP?!
Fear not, the CowParade will not shame you or make you feel inadequate. They want nothing more than to surprise and delight. These beautiful bovines are fun and charming and colorful and full of whimsy and imagination and they are working “udder-time” for a good cause (Now THAT is bad art. Not sorry!). They are exactly the reminder my high-functioning-anxiety-riddled-self needs to stop overthinking everything, pump the breaks on worrying about what I have no control over (Leprosy is making a comeback!), and leave the whole good/bad stuff to the experts.
Had it not been for Judy Blume and Mtv, a lot of us recovering Catholics who grew up in the ‘80s still wouldn’t know what part goes where
Thank you for sharing the fun and whimsy of painted cows today, brought a smile to my face!
Love the cows! We've had painted giraffes and penguins in Christchurch and an app to find as many as possible in the summer months until they get sold to private collectors. https://popuppenguins.co.nz/