Use of Color at the New Stadium AKA Britto Sucks

[Ralph]

Tell you what it's gon be one of a kind.

[Todd]

Needs to let Bobbob do my art history homework for me.

[Bobbob1313]

You can buy his crap at one of those annoying center aisle kiosk thingies at Dolphin Mall.

He is the worst.

And I'm not saying "He is the worst" like when Beef says that anything that is remotely not the best is the worst. I'm saying it because he is actually the worst.

[Todd]

I am not stuck in the 1950s.

[Party]

I was talking about the park and not Miami itself. Everything about this stadium is garish so far. Statues, color mixing, whatever the hell that thing is in CF, aquariums behind home plate.

Its going to be a place that an art person like Loria creams himself over and everyone else just kind of shakes their head at.

Good God color mixing!

[Fritz]

Also, it's kind of nice to have a new stadium that isn't trying to harken back to the good ol' days. It's insulting when I have to pay $9 for a beer.

[Todd]

How much will beer be at there?

[Party]

There's Brito shit at just about every mall in Miami, isn't there?

If you want to spruce up your open public space with something that screams "I have no imagination", Brito's your go to guy.

Some of his stuff is cool. But his shit is everywhere. I know the guy has to make a living, but having your shit everywhere cheapens things.

[Bobbob1313]

I really don't like his work, especially now that it's just mass produced crap. If we're going to have a well known local artist do stuff at the stadium, I'd rather have LeBo.

[Party]

Hey Bob,

The Miami New Times:

The artist pulls out a black magic marker and quickly scribbles the cartoonish face of a girl. Then he dunks a paintbrush in red and makes a single dot on her mouth. The mark will signal to his assistants — who do the painting for him — the intended color of her lips.

An international celebrity, Britto is one of the highest-paid commercial artists in the nation, netting a reported $12 million a year.

In Miami, a place that's still grasping for a cultural identity, Britto patterns have spread like a Skittles-colored virus. They can be found in virtually every crevice of Miami-Dade: at Sun Life Stadium, the Shops at Midtown, Miami Children's Museum, and Dadeland Station. You can see them from causeways and expressways. Car dealerships sell Britto-designed Mini Coopers. Workers at Miami International Airport wear Britto uniforms. Tourists on Lincoln Road shop for Britto luggage, dishes, high heels — even yarmulkes.

If, as detractors say, the Magic City is a shimmering veneer where people would rather read Cosmo than The New Yorker and talk about shoes instead of news, the land that brought you Vanilla Ice and butt implants has found an internationally recognized visual brand that has the color and substance of Laffy Taffy.

"Miami is still gestating — it's a fetus," says art critic and Miami Dade College professor Ricardo Pau-Llosa. "It's not a city; it's an airport surrounded by shopping malls — and we get everything that comes with that, including Romero Britto. He is Miami."

Pau-Llosa, who recently donated his Latin American art collection to Notre Dame University, calls Britto's work "phony baloney" and "hideous crap."

His opinion is in line with just about every respected artist, museum curator, and art professor in the country. Not one art publication has critiqued Britto's work. Nor has a respected museum purchased his art.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated art critic and New York Magazine columnist Jerry Saltz has an almost physical reaction to Britto's work. "Oh my God is he unoriginal," Saltz says. "It's sentimental, obvious, and empty. Let me put it this way: No one in the art world would say this is good."

After doing a Google search for Britto, whom he had never heard of, New York Sun art critic David Cohen calls his paintings simply "unchallenging."

"He looks like a sort of Liberace of visual art," Cohen says, referring to the flamboyant pianist who played schmaltzy classics under a chandelier.

Britto — who comes off like a sweet and unassuming airhead — doesn't take the criticism seriously. "It's a very small group of people who don't like it," he explains. "When you are successful, people are going to be jealous."

He didn't know it, but he was on the verge of becoming the McDonald's of the South Florida art world.

Smith is a typical Britto fan. He likes the art for the same reason people like fast food: It's accessible. And it doesn't take refined taste to enjoy.

Britto intentionally hires employees who are not educated in the arts because he tolerates no creative input, says one former assistant who worked on the artist's sculptures for three years. By her account, he was temperamental, controlling, and even slightly paranoid. He would fire dozens of people on a whim. Assistants were paid as little as $10 and, at times, felt like they were slaving in a sweatshop.

Shopping mall developer Jeffrey Berkowitz, a well-spoken 62-year-old, laughs and says, "Art purists want to hit me in the face."

The former lawyer and self-proclaimed Britto nut takes credit for Miami-Dade's Britto epidemic of butterflies and kitty-cats.

Berkowitz installed a 45-foot statue of a dancing clown named Mr. Happy at Dadeland Mall. He pushed for a 30-foot striped palm tree/beach ball combo at his Fifth & Alton shopping center in South Beach. And at his Kendall Village project, he paid for a sculpture of a boy with a goldfish.

"I may not have the finest taste," says Berkowitz, whose oceanside home is lined with Brittos. "But it's shared with kings and queens and heads of state."

At least 20 other huge cartoonish Britto installations can be found in the county's public spaces. City of Miami parking meters are designed by Britto, and his piece at Dadeland Station is the world's largest aluminum sculpture.

By 2005, Romero Britto installations had sprouted at malls, water parks, major intersections, and on the sides of condo buildings. At Miami City Hall, several commissioners kept Britto sculptures on their desks and lithographs on the walls, which the artist sent them as gifts.

Which is fine, says Wynwood gallery owner Anthony Spinello. Except we're all forced to look at it. "It makes me cringe," he says. "At some point, it just becomes grotesque... I don't think it represents contemporary art in Miami at all."

Midtown photographer John Gynell wrinkles his nose when he talks about Britto. "There are so many good artists out there," he says. "Why does this guy have a monopoly over our public art space?"

That commissioners like his art and want it in public places is no surprise, says art critic Jerry Saltz. The stuff is tailor-made for bureaucracy: It's safe, simple, and pleasing. Put one on a city street, and you won't get phone calls from upset mothers.

Two years later, in 2007, the county commission debated whether to allow Britto to design airport worker uniforms. Only Commissioner Natacha Seijas spoke up: "My maid wears better clothes than this."

In October 2009, after much debate, the giant aluminum palm trees went up at Berkowitz's Fifth & Alton mall. Anybody driving east on the MacArthur Causeway would now be greeted with bright-pink polka dots.

But within a month, commuters noticed something peculiar: Gold spray paint had blasted away one of the rainbow-colored fronds. Somebody, it appeared, was finally protesting.

The woman sitting at the Miami International Airport information booth is shy but pretty, despite her lazy eye. She would fit in well at a public library. Every day she is required to wear a lively Britto-designed uniform, complete with flamingos and polka-dot palm trees.

When she talks about it, she looks like a tomboy forced to wear a dress. "It doesn't fit my personality," she shrugs.

Then she smiles slyly. "Maybe it's to punish us?"

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-06...trump-talent/5

[wanks1212]

I was talking about the park and not Miami itself. Everything about this stadium is garish so far. Statues, color mixing, whatever the hell that thing is in CF, aquariums behind home plate.

Its going to be a place that an art person like Loria creams himself over and everyone else just kind of shakes their head at.

By "everyone else" you mean good old fashioned, All American, pick-up-truck-with-a-rifle-rack driving, Budweiser drinking country boys right? Because yeah, they probably won't like it. But Miami doesn't really give a fuck about them. And Miami shouldn't. That's not who's going to be attending these games.

CF thing is probably gonna suck though.

[Fritz]

I googled Britto's shit. It's ugly and stupid and kitschy. Doesn't seem very artsy to me. He looks like he'd be more at home making designer t-shirts.

[Fish Tank Frenzy]

My issue with Britto has always been that it looks like a child drew his paintings and he threw in some color. Now, I don't hate Britto and his work, I actually think it is appealing to the eye. I think more than anything, I dislike the way people like my brother, act like Britto is some amazing artist with lots of talent.

[Todd]

By "everyone else" you mean good old fashioned, All American, pick-up-truck-with-a-rifle-rack driving, Budweiser drinking country boys right? Because yeah, they probably won't like it. But Miami doesn't really give a fuck about them. And Miami shouldn't. That's not who's going to be attending these games.

CF thing is probably gonna suck though.

I dont own a pickup truck nor have a rifle in my back window(which is incredibly illegal...game wardens would fuck your universe up if they caught you). I wish I had a Toyota Tundra Rock Warrior though.

[HUGG]

(which is incredibly illegal...game wardens would fuck your universe up if they caught you)