A Brief Look into How Public Art was Made For You…Or is it?

By Marina Atchison

Ok, so we all have some idea of what public art is right?

Well, just to give you a more formal explanation: public art is art in any media intended to be staged in a public domain, usually outside and accessible to all.

Now, when did public art first began? Much of it can be argued that public art goes back to the Greeks and even the Mayans, but I will start with a more recent time when public art was formally called public art.

Much public art began during a time known as the Socialist Realism movement. This movement occurred during a time of economic depression and the rise of fascist regimes. Mao Zedong’s The Cultural Revolution is an example of the socialist movement. As you can see the picture below, Mao is a great leader surrounded by a glowing halo, and beneath him are his happy, loyal followers.

Despite the propaganda posters, the movement was known to have a realist depiction of contemporary art. A better example would be Diego Rivera and his murals during the revolution of Mexico. As for the U.S., they began their first display of public art during the time of the Great Depression as part of the New Deal Program.

What developed out of the The New Deal Program was the Art-in-Architecture (AIA) program that is still a huge part of government art funding today. The AIA helped soldify the principle that public art in the U.S. should be truly owned by the public. Also from the AIA came the percent-for-art program that requires a fee, or percentage, that is placed on large scale development projects like new buildings or other construction projects in order to help fund public art.

Between the 1970s and 1980s, ecological issues began to surface the nation. Land art was termed as art that reconnects the urban environment with nature. With the support of the Public Art Fund, Agnes Denes’s “Wheatfield-A Confrontation” is an example of land art where she planted a wheatfield on two acres of landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center.

Throughout the reading, I will address public art that faced criticism and how it has shaped future public art. One such controversy was Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc”.

Serra’s piece was commissioned by Manhattan’s AIA program, and was approved to be commissioned specifically for the Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan. The Tilted Arc received complaints that the Arc was an inconvenience because it created a large divide that block much of the plaza. Serra fought an 8 year battle over the piece’s site-specificity. Serra quoted that “to remove the work is to destroy the work.” While the work was removed, the case revealed that the audience is a major factor of artistic intervention in public space.

Also during the 1980s and 1990s, a new movement called New Genre Public Art began to surface. New Genre is described as socially engaged, interactive art for diverse audiences with connections to identify politics and social activism. So what this means is rather than metaphorically discussing social issues, people of the new genre wanted to empower the people without a voice, but also maintain an aesthetic appeal. Two examples below, Felix Gonzalez-Torres confronts AIDS and Alfredo Jaar questions “America” thinking it means strictly the U.S. and not including all of America like Latin America.

Also becoming more prevalent, were the anti-monument movement that questioned what monuments were truly representing. Claes Oldenburg’s “Lipstick (Ascending) in Catepillar Tracks questioned this very notion

The original monument was the catepillar track that was from World War I. Oldenburg, as a collaboration with architecture students from Yale University, was originally built inflated with wooden treads that later deteriorated but was rebuilt using steel and fiberglass. The site was a used a speaker’s platform for anti-war protests during the Vietnam War. Besides anti-war protests, there were also pro-feminist rallies, student strikes, and black revolutionary organizations such as the Black Panther Party.

As far as monuments go, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial created a large disagreement in it’s overall design for the public. Maya Lin originally won the design competition to create a memorial, but the public’s outcry of it’s unconventional design, including one public official calling the wall a “black gash of shame”, led Lin to defend her design in front of the United States Congress until a compromise was reached. The compromise allowed Frederick Hart, the 3rd runner up, to be commissioned $2oo,000 to create “The Three Serviceman”, which was 4x more than what Maya received.

Public art today can be defined to almost anything: permanent or non-permanent, 2-D, 3-D, or even 4-D. Public art can be environmental, political, or interactive. The only real limitations is that it be in a public space, where anyone can view art freely.

Many think that public art is a form of gift from the government and organizations to the people. While this does relate to a gift economy in which public art usually does not ask much of the people, except maybe to value and enjoy the work, and because this is PUBLIC art we are talking about, there is almost a bartering, or market economy with this. The art effects the people’s choice and opinion of what kind of art is usually displayed. The art I have selected to share all provide an enjoyable presence for those to see, but they also provide a free voice to the artist or to those who voices were not heard.