The judge flipped through pictures of the work in Lewis Greenberg’s yard.
“I’m looking at sticks sticking straight up,” said St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Permuter. “I’m looking at all sorts of metal wrapped around metal.”
And so his ruling on Thursday hinged on this: Even if Greenberg’s yard project in Ballwin can be considered art, it’s still dangerous.
Now, the retired art teacher has 30 days to clean up his property or face a $1,000 fine for littering and storing hazardous materials.
A trial concluded Thursday after hours of testimony from a Ballwin police officer talking about the condition of the lawn, and from an adjunct St. Louis County Community College art professor talking about why the project constituted art.
In the end, Permuter said he feared a child might fall off a bike and into one of the many sharp objects on Greenberg’s lawn or protruding from his mailbox.
For years, Greenberg’s structures of wood, plastic, steel and aluminum have vexed neighbors in the Whispering Oakwood subdivision. He has said the works are a statement on the Holocaust.
A mosaic of chipped granite serves as the pathway to his door, and the Star of David appears throughout the work. Floodlights illuminate the yard at night.
In the summer of 2007, dozens of residents showed up at a Ballwin Board of Aldermen meeting to complain. Shortly after, the city cited Greenberg for violating litter and hazardous material ordinances. The case has been winding its way through the courts since.
Greenberg’s attorney, David Howard, said he plans to appeal Permuter’s ruling and hopes to keep Greenberg from having to dismantle the project.
During the trial, Howard and Greenberg’s other lawyer, Veronica Johnson, noted that a city administrator called Greenberg in 2005 and told him that his work did not violate city ordinances. The Board of Aldermen didn’t act until political pressure from residents, the lawyers argued.
Joseph Angert, the art professor, testified that the project would be considered art and fit the “contemporary abstract” genre.
But City Prosecutor Keith Cheung said that didn’t mean it wasn’t a threat to public health. What if Greenberg wanted to commemorate the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with barrels of radioactive waste, Cheung asked? Would that also be art?
“Yes,” Angert replied, “If you survived.”
Greenberg’s attorneys showed the judge several pictures of large rocks and a model of a reindeer with antlers in other Ballwin yards.
“The law is applied to (Greenberg) in a different manner than his neighbors,” Howard said.
Howard noted that in the five years Greenberg has worked on the project, no one has been hurt. Cheung scoffed at that notion.
“I guess you have to wait until somebody actually impales themselves before the court finds it’s dangerous,” he said.
Greenberg declined to comment.
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He is not psycho and his art is not dangerous.
Looks like a bunch of junk to me.
To be a jew is to be a cretine. This kind of “mind” created communism too.
Hey, is this art? It looks like rackets rather than an art.