{"id":177620,"date":"2025-09-29T12:08:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/177620\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T12:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:08:06","slug":"montreal-sculptor-fights-san-franciscos-plans-to-remove-controversial-fountain-he-designed-decades-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/177620\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal sculptor fights San Francisco\u2019s plans to remove controversial fountain he designed decades ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt outside his studio and archive building in Montreal. Vaillancourt has sent San Francisco a cease-and-desist letter for its plan to remove his public fountain art piece.ROGER LEMOYNE\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The Vaillancourt Fountain was born controversial.<\/p>\n

The fiery, long-haired Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt spent four years in San Francisco erecting the brutalist tangle of concrete on the city\u2019s new Justin Herman Plaza \u2013 only to be left off the guest list for its grand unveiling in 1971.<\/p>\n

Believing that his outspoken leftism had earned him the snub, Mr. Vaillancourt flew down and crashed the ceremony, jumping into the water and stencilling \u201cQu\u00e9b\u00e9c Libre\u201d on his masterpiece in red paint, as journalists and dignitaries gawked. <\/p>\n

It was the beginning of a long and colourful existence for the Zelig-like work of public art, featuring cameos by Tony Hawk and Bono. It has survived earthquakes, changes in public taste and years of neglect.<\/p>\n

But now another controversy threatens to end the fountain\u2019s life, leaving the 96-year-old Mr. Vaillancourt in a fight to save his greatest creation. A plan by the City of San Francisco would tear up its distinctive angular limbs to make way for a public-private mixed-use development, absent the modernist monument that has galvanized San Franciscans for more than 50 years. <\/p>\n

A lifelong provocateur whose wizardly white hair belies a man who says he has \u201cthe energy of a 20-year-old,\u201d Mr. Vaillancourt is not letting his beloved fountain go quietly. He has sent the city a cease-and-desist letter and is threatening to sue with a group of cultural organizations. It may be the last great battle in the life of an artist who has never shied away from one. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t sleep! When I wake up I think of this. When I go to sleep I think of this,\u201d he said in a recent interview at his Montreal studio. \u201cWe have people around the world saying we have to protect this fountain.\u201d <\/p>\n

Joseph Armand Robert Vaillancourt grew up during the Depression on a farm in rural Quebec, where he slaughtered his own pigs, felled his own trees, and learned to sculpt for entirely practical reasons. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you wanted a hammer handle, you had to make it yourself,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

As a young man he studied at Montreal\u2019s \u00c9cole des beaux-arts at a time when Quebec artists were taking up the anti-establishment rallying cry of the Refus global, a 1948 manifesto that called for radically rejecting the province\u2019s religious conservatism. <\/p>\n

Mr. Vaillancourt rubbed shoulders with the city\u2019s mid-century bohemians \u2013 Leonard Cohen wrote one of his most famous songs about Mr. Vaillancourt\u2019s ex-girlfriend, Suzanne \u2013 with the young sculptor making his first splash by chiselling away at a tree on Montreal\u2019s Durocher Street for two years, intriguing and baffling passersby. <\/p>\n

Read more: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts reimagines its eclectic design collection<\/a><\/p>\n

About a decade later, with his reputation on the rise, Mr. Vaillancourt won the San Francisco commission with a bold plan for a 40-foot-high, 700-ton fountain of square textured concrete tubes that evoked both the stretch of adjacent elevated highway and the landscapes of his native Quebec. <\/p>\n

In 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love \u2013 and as the Quebec independence movement gained momentum back home \u2013 Mr. Vaillancourt moved to San Francisco to oversee the construction of his monumental project in collaboration with the renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, courting controversy from the start. \u201cMy job is to disturb the people,\u201d he declared in a television interview, and he quickly set about doing so, offering safe haven at his studio to American Indian activists who had been occupying the disused Alcatraz prison. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The water in Vaillancourt Fountain was dyed green during a Global Climate Strike demonstration on September 20, 2019.Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

From that point on, his relationship with the city deteriorated, he believes, although it may not have helped that his challenging design sharply divided public opinion. At the 1971 unveiling, protesters distributed handbills calling the structure a \u201chowling obscenity\u201d and a \u201cpestiferous eyesore.\u201d The San Francisco architecture critic Allan Temko compared it to the waste \u201cdeposited by a giant concrete dog with square intestines.\u201d <\/p>\n

The lore of the fountain was just beginning. It made headlines again in 1987 when U2 played a free show in the plaza and Bono cheekily spray-painted \u201cRock N Roll Stops the Traffic\u201d on one of the concrete limbs. Mayor Dianne Feinstein was appalled; Mr. Vaillancourt said he wanted to shake the singer\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

Why U2\u2019s Bono surrendered himself to the screen, one memory, rattle and hum at a time<\/a><\/p>\n

The sculpture\u2019s countercultural bona fides were secured when pioneering skateboarders turned the ledges and stairs of the plaza into an \u201cepicentre\u201d of the sport, said the local art historian and skater Ted Barrow. Nike eventually produced a limited-edition sneaker in homage to the fountain, and Mr. Vaillancourt\u2019s handiwork featured in the popular Tony Hawk\u2019s Pro Skater video games. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, nature and the City of San Francisco seemed determined to bring the fountain down. It somehow survived the deadly 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which led to the dismantling of the nearby elevated highway, but its water was later turned off for several years after a drought, and then dyed electric blue to combat algae. Last year, the fountain was drained again because of electrical issues with the pumps, revealing years of accumulated junk including several electric scooters. <\/p>\n

The structure\u2019s decay, Mr. Vaillancourt believes, was caused by the city\u2019s long-standing disdain for him and his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kept a deep rancour against me all these years,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they understood my political engagement they would have said, \u2018Armand is like that, he gave us a fantastic work\u2019 \u2013 but no.\u201d <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1967, Mr. Vaillancourt moved to San Francisco to oversee the construction of the project.ROGER LEMOYNE<\/p>\n

The latest apparent sign of the city\u2019s animus came last November when then-mayor London Breed revealed renderings for a US$30-million redesign of the space, now known as Embarcadero Plaza, and an adjoining park that conspicuously lacked any trace of the Vaillancourt Fountain.<\/p>\n

The artist\u2019s family whipped into action to rally support for the masterwork. In May, Mr. Vaillancourt flew to the city with his wife Joanne and his son Alexis, a fellow sculptor, to lobby local officials. <\/p>\n

It soon emerged that the wiry, elderly Mr. Vaillancourt had the full force of the city stacked against him. This summer, Recreation and Parks officials released a third-party report that claimed the fountain contained asbestos and lead and wasn\u2019t up to seismic safety codes; it was then deemed a public hazard and fenced off. (The family disputes the report, arguing the chemicals are present in trivial amounts and noting that the fountain has withstood massive earthquakes before.) <\/p>\n

Exploring the elements: Artist Derek Sullivan\u2019s latest project explores a famous sculpture left on Ontario farmland since 1972<\/a><\/p>\n

A further blow came in August when the parks department asked the San Francisco Arts Commission, which owns the fountain, to formally deaccession it, paving the way for its destruction. The commission is expected to make an evaluation this fall. <\/p>\n

Against this tide of setbacks, the Vaillancourts did have allies in their corner. The Washington-based Cultural Landscape Foundation used freedom of information laws to argue that the city was dramatically exaggerating the annual maintenance costs of the fountain in a \u201cruse\u201d to make the case for its demolition. (The city did not respond to a request for comment about the allegation, and declined to comment on the controversy in general.)<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Vaillancourt claims the fountain structure\u2019s decay was caused by San Francisco’s long-standing disdain for him and his work.ROGER LEMOYNE\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like starving a patient of needed medical care and then blaming the patient for getting sicker,\u201d the group\u2019s president, Charles Birnbaum, said in an interview.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of September, Mr. Vaillancourt hired a lawyer to write a cease-and-desist letter demanding the administration refrain from any further steps that would endanger the fountain and hand over all documentation related to the artwork\u2019s future. If the city fails to comply, the artist says he intends to sue. <\/p>\n

Today, Mr. Vaillancourt is still busily at work in his Montreal studio, which could only belong to an avant-garde sculptor. The 19th-century stone townhouse is crammed with curios and found art: a plush hobby horse, moose antlers, a plastic stegosaurus, the abandoned steel crucifix of a nearby hospital.<\/p>\n

One of his current projects is designing his own tomb, an ambitious geometrical balancing act of black granite, to be located in the Mount Royal cemetery. His artistic legacy and the meaning of his life clearly weigh on his mind these days \u2013 a life of fierce political engagement and democratic art whose distillation is now endangered. <\/p>\n

\u201cI live once,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I live for the people, with the people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt outside his studio and archive building in Montreal. Vaillancourt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[901,76,354,888,355,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,356,46,549,75,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-177620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-alberta","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-news","tag-artsanddesign","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-design","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}