New York
Nicole Eisenman, in her artist statement for Fixed Crane (on view through March 9, 2025), muses about the ways that an urban landscape might sustain the mental and physical health of its citizens, imagining a future in which open-air green markets, public pools, dog runs, community greenhouses, and affordable housing would replace luxury apartment buildings. Such dreams may seem almost impossible, but Eisenman’s Madison Square Park installation—an “assisted” readymade consisting of a 1969 Link-Belt industrial crane, its parts embellished with sculptural elements—offers a vision of possible alternatives to New Yorks’s unceasing development.
When first viewed on a warm, sunny day in late October, the crane, complete with 90-foot boom, lay on its side on the central lawn as if resting, its supine form appearing to mirror a much larger, contemporary crane erecting a skyscraper just north of the park. Without power or function, Eisenman’s grounded crane serves as a place of artistic intervention, commentary, and play. Now horizonal, the lattice boom, its crossing bars recalling a playground jungle gym, bisects the lawn, open to interaction. Some of the bars are covered with bandage-like wrappings, implying the need for DIY repair and strengthening. Here and there, small painted cast bronze sculptures—a goblet, a can of tuna fish, a piece of petrified wood with a painted pride flag, and a shiny red ring— have been placed along the frame, alluding to the park as a place for picnicking and repose while also paying homage to the work of other art tricksters such as Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Bruce Nauman.
Through Eisenman’s reworking, the crane’s counterweight becomes a bench, and the gears and wheels turn into seats, inviting encounters and conversation. On the other side of the lawn, the engine, paired with a bronze foot wearing a Birkenstock sandal, suggests a commemorative marker or memorial like those often found in parks. Even as the embellishments and recycled boom invest this industrial machine with new purpose, another more intimate and pragmatic counternarrative can be discovered in the crane’s cab. Viewable only through a small slot in the back of the compartment, the dark interior slowly reveals a flickering chandelier and a figure under a blanket huddled near a glowing stove. While this hidden space would seem to offer refuge and safe shelter, a small figure above the cab waves a flag signaling surrender and occupation. Transformed by Eisenman’s intervention, this dysfunctional crane, with its fallen phallic boom, can no longer sustain its symbolic association with power and prowess.
Yet such is the life of public sculpture that Fixed Crane’s meaning has changed with the seasons. Since its installation, an election has altered the political dynamic, while relentless wars in Gaza and Ukraine continue, and destructive hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, as well as fires in California, bring a purposeful urgency to cranes and other machines brought in to salvage and restore. On a recent visit, Eisenman’s recumbent crane lay covered with a dusting of snow; the surrounding lawn and the back of the cab were closed, denying any play or shelter. Rather than a toppled symbol of development, the crane now looks abandoned and forlorn as it awaits the harsh realities of a new year.
