It looks like any other penthouse above Central Park: same dazzling views, glossy floors, massive flat-screen TV.
Except there’s a 13-foot-tall sculpture of Christopher Columbus on the coffee table.
Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of “Discovering Columbus,” the temporary installation by Japan’s Tatzu Nishi. Unveiled yesterday, it does what good art should: It makes you look, and it might even make you think.
Sure, plenty of people are thinking, why mess with Columbus? And isn’t there enough scaffolding in this city already? Well, yes. But this city is full of art you don’t see and, trust me, no one’s gotten a good look at this statue since Gaetano Russo finished chipping away at it in 1892. It’s fresh, it’s fun, the views are to die for — and it’s free. It even comes with its own aerobic workout, since you’ve got to schlep up six stories to see it. (For those who can’t use the stairs, a hoist is available.) No wonder they make you sign a waiver first promising not to sue the city, the artist, the Public Art Fund and everyone else. Go ahead and sign it. You’ll never take Columbus for granted again.
Some artists wrap things — remember how Christo swaddled parts of Central Park in The Gates? Well, if you loved The Gates, you’ll love this. (And if you hated it, well . . . )
Nishi, an exuberant, peroxided 52-year-old, likes to surround sculptures and put them on eye level, or close to it, anyway. And he surrounds them with actual living space.
PHOTOS: COLUMBUS STATUE EXHIBIT
COLUMBUS GETS A ROOM AT THE TOP
He did it in Liverpool, where he draped a functioning hotel around a statue of Queen Victoria. Now he’s done it here.
As the Public Art Fund’s Nicholas Baume put it grandly, “After 120 years, with only pigeons for company, Columbus is finally getting a taste of the American dream.”
Start climbing and you’ll see things you may never have noticed before, like the bronze ships’ prows and anchors that jut out from the statue’s granite base. And then you’ll see the things you’ve seen before but didn’t really want to, like scaffolding, pigeons and traffic. Strangely, from up here, on a clear fall day, they look pretty good.
And then you’re there, at the top. You walk through a green door and into a narrow entranceway, which has a rug, big beveled mirror and some odd kind of new-car smell.
Enter the living room. It’s patterned with pale pink and gold wallpaper that looks very Louis Quatorze, but get up close and you’ll find images of hot dogs and Marilyn Monroe, the Empire State Building and Elvis. Yup, that’s America, all right, as gleaned from the movies.
The TV is tuned to CNN — someone’s idea of upscale viewing — and there are serious books like “The Power Broker” and “The Audacity of Hope” and . . . oh, my God, you stop looking because there’s Christopher Columbus on the coffee table, a few magazines and newspapers scattered around him.
He’s looking pretty good for 120 years, a real master of the universe carved out of marble. With one arm on his waist, head lifted, he looks ready to strut the catwalk.
Frankly, he looks smug as hell.
Why shouldn’t he? He’s got all of Manhattan at his feet.