New Orleans, LA, October 23. There are four great reasons to spend time on New Orleans’ legendary Esplanade Avenue, at 2326 Esplanade, and surrounding cultural sites beginning on Saturday, October 30th, from noon until five, continuing on Saturdays throughout Prospect 5, January 23rd.

REDART is the most recent permutation of work by artist and planner Robert C. Tannen whose lifelong focus on environmental issues began as a teenager making sculptures from debris on the beaches of Coney Island where he was raised. Consumer objects doused in red warn of consumerism’s contribution to climate change, and underscore the dominance of Chinese manufacturing.

He first showed environmentally themed work at artists’ collectives on East 10th St., including the Tanager Gallery in 1956, and the March and Brata Galleries in 1957. At 18 and 19 at the time, he was the youngest of the artists showing at the collectives that initiated the movement of American abstract expressionist art. He also exhibited wrapped objects there before Christo. His exhibitions of animals in formaldehyde were exhibited in the 1960s, before Damien Hirst, and monumental concrete block constructions before Sol LeWitt.

Since residing in New Orleans beginning in 1971, he has shown work revealing the significance of the city’s diverse architecture, infrastructure and neighborhoods and their response to the challenges of the environmental threats here, even as he worked as project director for the planning and siting of the second bridge over the Mississippi in New Orleans; the identification and protection of the historic neighborhoods of New Orleans; planning for Riverwalk, a festival marketplace development at the river adjacent to a suburban style shopping mall, New Orleans Center, in the heart of downtown New Orleans, adjacent to the Superdome; sited the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition and planned for the residual uses of its riverfront site after the fair; siting of the Arena adjacent to the Superdome and a million square foot regional distribution center in the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District.

His large ubiquitous sheet metal shotgun houses have been shown at galleries and museums since 1974. His large fiberglass fishes resting on their bills have influenced other artists including Frank Gehry. In a response to the House Floats that replaced Mardi Gras parades during the Covid pandemic last year, he hung a casting of a 1,018 lb Blue Marlin, largest ever caught by a woman in the Gulf, Linda Koerner, “afloat” from the balcony of 2326 Esplanade, Tannen’s home and studio, and his wife Jeanne Nathan’s headquarters for the Creative Alliance of New Orleans, (CANO), an arts and economic development advocacy non-profit aimed at increasing support for the creative industries sector of the city’s economy. The Marlin’s placement, as well as the red soaked buoy on the sidewalk in front of the house warn of the not so long term possibility that Esplanade, despite sitting atop a prehistoric river
ridge, may be well underwater.

Tannen has placed reddened refrigerators, washing machines, generators and more throughout the garden/jungle surrounding the 19th century house. Ironically, the garden’s canopy consists of beautiful but invasive Chinese Fan Palms that started with one small plant, now innumerable.

Also in the garden is a work by landscape architect and artist Robin Tanner, no relation to Tannen, except for receiving each other’s mail. His Liberaguity, is a reimagining of the material, color and configuration of the American Flag. Tanner, best known for his landscape design including the beautiful Enrique Alferez Garden and the Japanese garden in City Park where Esplanade Avenue gives way to what once was a plantation, has also recently placed a labyrinthian work in the Crevasse 22 | River House sculpture garden in Poydras, Louisiana adjacent to the Mississippi River. Crevasse 22 began life as a pop-up sculpture garden for Prospect 3.

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