Otterness Sculptures as Images of the 99%

 I was in the Eighth Avenue subway at 14th Street yesterday and it struck me that the sculptures of "Life Underground" in the station by Tom Otterness can be see in the light of the Occupy Wall Street as an allegory of the 99 percent.

The MTA has a video of Otterness's work on YouTube. Otterness, who comes from Wichita, Kansas and has a studio in Brooklyn, is probably best known for the subway station sculptures and for the sculptures in the Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City.

 Many of the sculptures depict the life of the 99 percent - for example, the homeless woman huddled at the foot of a large riveted beam in the first picture, or the man peering around an aluminum fence in the second.

Sculptures of police stand guard over enclosures, or over would-be farebeaters or over large bags of money.


Otterness's sympathies are clearly not with the 1 percent, who are frequently depicted with a money-bag where a head should be, as in the next photo. The 1 percenter is shown as a shellfish that has captured a family in its giant claws.
The use of a money bag for a head follows Thomas Nast's depiction of Boss Tweed.

Here is a final sculpture - government workers  sweep up the pennies. I lhink of this as the payroll tax, sweeping up the workers' pennies.

Otterness has done work in other cities and ran into trouble over a San Francisco contract. Local animal-rights activists drew attention to a film he made more than 30 years ago involving the shooting of a dog; he has apologized for having done this film.