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Tom Otterness (born 1952) is an American sculpture who is one of America's most prolific . Otterness's works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums around the world, notably in New York City's Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City" "The Real World" " The Battery Park City Authority and Life Underground in the 14th Street – Eighth Avenue New York Subway station. He contributed a balloon (a giant upside-down Humpty Dumpty) to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.Vogel, Carol. "Two Major Collections Land at Christie's" The New York Times, Friday, September 23, 2005 In 1994 he was elected as a member of the National Academy Museum.
His style is often described as cartoonish and cheerful, but also political. "The AI Interview: Tom Otterness," ArtInfo, October 2, 2006 His sculptures allude to sex, class, money and race.Sheets, Hilarie M., "Creeping Cats & Fish in Hats", Art News 105 (April 2006): 127-29 These sculptures depict, among other things, huge pennies, pudgy characters in business suits with moneybag heads, helmeted workers holding giant tools, and an sewer alligator crawling out from under a sewer cover. His aesthetic can be seen as a riff on capitalist realism.
Known primarily as a public artist, Otterness has exhibited across the United States and internationally, including New York City, Indianapolis, Beverly Hills, The Hague, Munich, Paris, Valencia and Venice. His studio is located on Ludlow Street in New York City.
One of Otterness's earliest public art works, The New World, was installed in 1991 for the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, California. Otterness subsequently received Federal Courthouse commissions in Portland, Oregon ( Law of Nature, 1997), Sacramento, California ( Gold Rush, 1999) and Minneapolis, Minnesota ( Rock Man, 1999).
From September 20, 2004, to March 18, 2005, Tom Otterness on Broadway, his largest exhibition to date featured 25 different works installed between Columbus Circle and 168th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan. The project was sponsored by the City of New York Parks and Recreation Department, the Broadway Mall Association, and Marlborough Gallery, and traveled to three other cities—Indianapolis, Beverly Hills, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Grand Rapids exhibition featured more than 40 works across two miles of the city's downtown area and at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.Goldberg, Ira. "Speaking with Tom Otterness", Linea: Journal of the Art Students League of New York 10 (spring 2007): 4-7
His independent punk films featured real-life aggression and violence, most notoriously Shot Dog Film, wherein he adopted a dog from an animal shelter in Golden, Colorado, chained it to a stake, and filmed his hand shooting it dead. This was followed by four fight films, where Otterness, an amateur boxer, filmed his own Golden Gloves fights. Shot Dog Film premiered at a Times Square screening room in early 1978, the film being shown in a loop, and viewers were flash-photographed when they left. The film was the only entry that was not accepted in the Punk Art Catalog, due to its offensive nature. Otterness described it as follows:
Shot Dog Film was inserted by an unknown person into the repeating programming queue on Manhattan Cable TV instead of the normal cartoon programming for children. It was also shown on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, The Breeze, February 29, 1980, "Artfile: ‘Shot Dog Film’", p. 11 1978, and caused an instant outcry, leading to calls to prosecute Otterness. The film has continued to haunt Otterness, engendering continued controversy. Shot Dog Film was briefly mentioned as having "provoked a small scandal in" in a 1997 New York Times article which dismissed it as "a seemingly uncharacteristic gesture that he has since declined to discuss." It was brought back into the public conscience in 2004 by journalist Gary Indiana, who criticized Otterness for the killing. Since then, Otterness has attracted criticism and protests for the 1977 film, apologized for his behavior, and lost a number of commissions from the continuing criticism. Otterness's studio released a statement blaming his "anger at himself and the world" for the film.
In New York City in June 2011, the Battery Park City Authority, under Bill Thompson, rejected Otterness's lion sculptures for the area's new public library, after the sculptures were approved by 5-1 by Manhattan Community Board 1 under Chairperson Julie Menin. The New York Public Library disavowed any involvement with the project, noting the donation of sculptures commissioned by a private donor had not been solicited by the NYPL. Following the Battery Park City Authority's rejections, in 2011, there was renewed controversy over the film, with animal rights groups protesting the selection of Otterness for a major sculpture project at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.
Also in 2011, the San Francisco Arts Commission terminated one of two contracts they had with Otterness. He had been awarded a $750,000 contract in September 2011 for a piece in the new Central Subway project; the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency stated they were unaware of Shot Dog Film when they awarded the contract. The mayor of San Francisco put the project on hold, calling the film "deeply disturbing." In October 2013, Lincoln, Nebraska Mayor Chris Beutler decided against purchasing a $500,000 train sculpture from Otterness for the city's West Haymarket development, after residents objected to Shot Dog Film. Citing the unity brought about by the city's development, the mayor said, "...the artist's past behavior in this instance has created a level of division in the community that is simply not acceptable. Our feeling is that it is in the best interest of the city to discontinue the contract process."
In September 2014, freelance artist Andrew Tider added three illegal sculptures to the "Life Underground" groupings in the subway station. They imitated the Otterness style, a blend of whimsy and biting commentary on corruption and greed, depicting a man pointing a gun at a dog, and a distant bystander.
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