By James Elkins
It's a vision that strikes fear in the heart of any mariner: a sinking vessel halfway toward oblivion, its stern pitched up and pointed toward the heavens, its bow already below the waves, aimed for bottom. It is the moment before disaster, the iconic image of a sinking ship, the last thing one sees of a vessel that's lost, scuttled, doomed — except that, hey, maybe, it's not.
That's because the stricken boat, or half of a boat, only appears to be sinking. It's just one of the many arresting, witty and utterly captivating works created by a young French artist named Julien Berthier.
Berthier's perpetually sinking boat, which was christened Love, Love, is a sculpture created from a vintage French sailboat. The sawed-off vessel only looks as if it is about to go down forever but, in fact, the little tub floats very nicely, dabbling along like a puddle duck that has bobbed under the waves with its tail in the air. Some onlookers who have mistaken the seaworthy sculpture for a real calamity have called the authorities.
More often, however, people who whip out cell phones to alert the Coast Guard instead end up taking snapshots. And that's exactly the sort of response that Berthier wants to achieve....READ MORE
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