Ice Dream

Radcliffe Quadrangle Ice Project

Created by Michael Van Valkenburgh

On display at the Radcliffe Quadrangle

Through February 15

SO what if the new Radcliffe Quadrangle Ice Project uncannily resembles those cunningly frosted windows with the little silver strips running through them which we all associate with the common bathroom? So what if the thick metal poles which surround the actual chickenwire-and-ice construction lend the whole a surprising resemblance to a whimsical construction site? So what if it's far too cold to visit the whole installation for more than 10 seconds, even when one is fortified with all the hot cider that Cabot House can furnish?

None of these petty objections can overcome the fact that, if properly approached, the Quad Ice Project is a thing of lyrical and exotic beauty. For this to become readily apparent to the uninitiated requires the willing viewer to assume a more poetic and fantastical frame of mind than is his wont. Tap the vein of poetry latent within us all. Think, not bathroom windows, but towering glaciers. Or, if the bathroom window resemblance remains inescapable, try to overcome its more prosaic implications. These are not ordinary frosted windows; these are the bathroom windows of your dreams, though slightly colder than the discriminating bather might wish.

Creep between the walls as they stand there in a majestic triple salute to the wondrousness of Cabot House. Become one with the ice. Feel its aloof beauty. Touch the knobbly ice surface. Run your numb fingers over it.

Appreciate the coloristic luster of the blue against the white. Stare at your fellow aesthetes through the magical icy wall. See how they waver and flicker and are gone. Appreciate the mystical unity you are achieving with the ice, the way your feet appear to have frozen to the ground.

For those less given to ice worship, the historical approach may prove equally illuminating. Consider the early Arctic explorers, their heroic exploits, their terminal frostbite. Cultivate a noble and stoic reserve. Look hungrily about you--after all you have been subsisting exclusively on stewed husky for the last few weeks. Perhaps that light ahead is your next food depot. Perhaps you are going snow blind. What if your frostbite gets worse and your toes drop off? Where are all the Eskimos?

AT this point the eager ice appreciator must withdraw slightly from the artistic symbosis he doubtless has acheived. The purpose of the instailation, after all, is to challenge the perceptions, not to litter the Quad with frozen corpses. That would be neither artistic nor santitary. It is time for the seeker after art and truth to return to the academic paradise that is Harvard, to a warmer and less esoteric world.

But, in all honesty, levity aside, the Quad Ice Project is well worth a visit. While the steel poles and wire mesh may not be to everyone's liking, the ice itself is of truly breathtaking beauty. Michael Van Valkenburgh has created an environment in which it is impossible to ignore what is so easily ignored: the very essence of the beauty that is winter.

To see this exhibit is to be excessively cold, but it is also to appreciate the spectacular inherent in even the most prosaic of all materials. Van Valkenburgh allows the ice to show itself. The Radcliffe Quadrangle Ice Project is precisely that, a demonstration of ice, of its limitations, its beauty and the hold it has on all of our imaginations.