The Street Seen: Homage to Jack Kerouac
Neilson Way & Ocean Ave @ Pico
On March 13, 1993, the city of Santa Monica unveiled Italian sculptor Mauro Staccioli (1937 - 2018)’s piece Untitled (Homage to Jack Kerouac). Two half-moon, rusted red color, structures nestle amongst the palms on this otherwise unassuming median1.
Staccioli’s first solo show in the United States was in Massachussetts in 1984. This was followed with a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego, as well as with the series of installations in 1987-1991 for the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California. Then in the 1990s, new interventions and exhibitions, among them the one held at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in 1993.
The structures are not Corten steel - but stucco on wood. The installation was coordinated by the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs with a donation from the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, and additional funding from the City of Santa Monica Percent for Art Program.
The work is at once incongruous, generating tension from its tilted slices and scale, and yet quite at home in its humble materiality. The two distinctly nautical structures are seemingly woven between the palm trees around them to symbolize, as with many of Staccioli’s sculptures, the juxtaposition between urban society and nature.
In 2008, the City Council allocated $100,000 in one-time funds to assist with major conservation of Santa Monica’s art collection. The funds were used to repair three works: Tony de Lap’s “Big Wave”; the installation by Michael Davis in the Public Safety Facility; and this work by Mauro Staccioli. The Staccioli sculpture was repaired in 2011.
On the Road is Kerouac’s best known work.