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From: Monisha Saldanha
Category: Exhibitions, Other stuff
Date: 08 March 2001
Does the wall of Au Bon Pain, the French Bakery Café serving the greater Harvard University community, qualify as a gallery? If we can’t even agree on a definition of art, it would seem impossible to achieve consensus on that which houses art. Art is where you find it, and today I found art on the wall of Au Bon Pain. Sandwiched between a poster aggressively declaring “New! Mild Roast Coffee” and a coiled fire hose were two pieces of work, the pride and joy of the proprietor. Clearly two in a series, these pieces depict Pegasus burnished onto the twin towers of what resembles a parking meter. In a not-so-oblique homage to Warhol, this work mocks a venerated icon made base by it’s use on a utilitarian device. Inverses of each other – one a cheerful bronze, the other a darker silver that has been corroded, these pieces mock our slavery to the automobile and the crash commercialism of our times. The artist, one Melissa Johnson, identified the two pieces as “Kantharos with Pegasus” No.1 and No. 4. My waiter abruptly terminates my ruminations: “Is that your red bicycle chained to the meter outside?” I nod. “You’re being ticketed,” he chuckles, “Just kidding.” Right. Perhaps I am closer to the definition of a gallery: a place in which you can experience art undisturbed.
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