Public Realm In Art

The quality of the public realm is vital if we are to be successful in creating environments where people want to live and work in. This is why artists are being commissioned to create artworks designated to be displayed in the public sphere and accessible to everyone. The role of art in the Public realm, both contemporary and historic coexisting, is a very important part of a city's character. The art works can be in indoor public spaces such as banks or in the hall of a building and outdoors in parks for instance, roads or streets in busy cities or rural areas. But it is important to say that public art doesn't necessitate the same process and doesn't have the same function as an artwork exhibited in a gallery. This is what will be expanded upon in the course of this essay, by way of a variety of examples, in order to discuss how artists engage with the public realm and will also delineates a map of different approaches of Public art.

What distinctly characterizes contemporary public art is that is known as site specific, In Situ, so it's designed for a particular place and it manipulates an important range of media. The presence of public art contributes to create a multifaceted situation: spatial (where?), reflective (why?), temporal (since when?), artistic (what kind?), politic (who decided?), aesthetic (do I like it?). But mostly, his presence and absence game helps us to draw an urban contemporary concern. It is important to distinguish different kinds of interventions in the public realm. For example, art works made in public or carried in public on the artist's initiative like a Pop up show. For example Kim Soo-Ja with her "Botari truck" that she exhibited at Venise biennale in 1999 is a truck-sculpture that she carries through big cities all over the world. It is a kind of nomad structure with which she explores globalization network. This work responds to specific purposes such as resistance, sociologic art, and awareness and is different from commissioned art. There are also art manifestations in public where the only purpose is to open a museum in the city, to install a public presence in the art works, to broadcast art in big cities to a non-specialised public. Similarly, S.M.A.K. founder, Jan Hoet has organized a public exhibition in the streets by offering one corner to one artist for two months. Fifty artists participated; included Pipilotti Rist who was showing a video in a parking, Joseph Kosuth displayed neon writing under the roof of the municipal library and little bits of grass turf in the pedestrian area by olafur Elliason. Figure 1 Public art can provide an extra value that is useful for the city and that is beyond what artist have traditionally been doing in galleries. We're going to take the example of Vito Acconci's "Addition to MetroTech Gardens". Vito Acconci, an important figure of the New York conceptual art scene has elaborated a very heterogeneous practice over the last 30 years. He uses a vast range of media such as performance, sculpture, architecture, text and installation. Vito Acconci was commissioned to revive an empty parcel in Brooklyn. In 1996 he designed "addition to MetroTech Gardens", a labyrinth made of different plants such as Japanese honeysuckle, grape vines, or English Ivy, which were all covered with metallic fences, and they enclosed fifty seating areas. Acconci got the idea from two private gardens already present in the area that were surrounded by metallic chains to stop the general public to access. The artist responded to his discovery by reversing their exclusive status. This work engages with issues of personal boundaries and social organization Vito Acconci's aim was to develop an environment of communal space for private reflection and private spaces for communal interaction. Another form of public art, which this time is in close relation to the nature rather than the city is the Land Art, also called Earth Art. Artists leave their studios and go work in the desert, in forests, woods or in the fields but that doesn't stop them from exploring urban territories. Land artworks depend on climate, season cycles and therefore depend on materials according to the time of the year as they only use natural materials found in nature. Some interventions hardly modify the landscape, for example, footprints in the snow; others disturb it massively, for example big piles of soil, giant drawings on the floor. Some of those realisations require real building sites, need very long months of preparation and take considerable measures. Most of the time the artwork is not perennial. Land art oeuvres appear in a given time and space and naturally disappear or are destroyed, dismantled by the artist himself. Photography and videos play key role in the broadcast and memory of this particular artwork. All these approaches reconsider usual site space of production and exhibition of the artworks. It is question to experiment new practice emancipated from traditional art forms thanks to some avant-gardists. Walter De Maria traces a 4827 meters line in Tula desert in the Nevada and he also constructed a gigantesque field of lighting-conductor waiting for flashes of lighting. Figure 2

Richard Long collects stones and assembles them in a long straight line in the Himalaya. Figure 3 Robert Smithson draws with the help of bulldozers giant "spiral jetty" in the Great salty lake in Utah. In Colorado, Christo tightens four hundred meters of fabric crossing a valley. Michael Heizer digs Nevada desert.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Jean Verame paints rocks and mountains. The signification of those works is held in the perfectly inseparable nature of the intervention and the space or the landscape in which it is taking place. They invite us to travel to the artwork. Public art have different purposes and therefore is divided in several different types of art forms. Figure 6 Figure 7 We could talk about commemorative art, which have become more and more important after the world war to commemorate dead soldiers. Originally commissioned by private clients, most of the time to have traces of their families lost in battle. The artworks were usually small objects or statues and were kept in a cabinet. When commissioned for the general public they started to grow in size and become more impressive. Their main purposes are to remember important people or, for the ones made as memorials, to have a place for the general public to pray and to commune with loved and lost ones. They are objects of mourning or objects of celebration representing influential figures, for example, scientists, poets or even celebrities. Usually, commemorative public artworks are more likely to be figurative and hold various sculptural and architectural features. Many of paragons depicted in the sculptures represent heroic silhouettes standing on high columns, seated models or colossal figures standing on plinths. These heroic statues were originally key characteristics of European countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in order to mark geographically a territory and to strengthen the cultural and political aspects of a dominant regime. At this time the memorials were built in strong materials such as stone or bronze as they were designated to last forever. This has now changed since the twentieth century. Indeed, commemorative art can perfectly be ephemeral. American artists Christo and Jean-Claude are good representatives of temporary public art. To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Nouveau Realiste, they wrapped two monuments in Milan. One of Leonardo Da Vinci at the Piazza della Scala and the other one, which was a monument dedicated to Victor-Emmanuel II King of Piémont-Sardaigne at the Piazza del Duomo. Figure 8 They have transformed those traditional monuments for an ephemeral period and added to the sculpture a memorable value thanks to the scandal behind this Happening. They reveal monuments by hiding them. Regarding hidden sculpture, Austrian historian, Robert Musil has argued "There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument" (1987:61). In fact, when contemporary work of art start to spread in public spaces, we see them but we don't always look at them. Public art statues or monuments become entirely part of the urban landscape, they blend in the streets and buildings. Despite their commemorative values, monuments and memorials have short-term life recognition towards the pedestrian's eyes. They become anonymous ornaments of the city. A commemorative public art invite the viewer to remember; yet, usually the affect it has on the spectator is to be unmemorable or worse, it becomes undetectable. The intention of commemorative public art is to guarantee that the public will remember a capital event or people via a certain representation of a person or something that happened in the past that had an impact on a generation in the form of a public artwork. It is said that trying constantly to remember is the opposite of normal humans psyche functions. Forgetting is the natural way of the mourning process. Sometimes, memories are synonyms of unpleasant events that remind sadness, anxiety, fear, and angriness. The instinct reaction would be to block the recollection of those memories to protect one self like described by Nietzsche as motivated forgetting. In 1994 Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche described the theory of Motivated forgetting as a defense mechanism of forgetting in order to move forward. We must forget in order to move on. He declared that "Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all" (1874:10). The artist intention is to contain those memories in one object or installation and to revisit the manifestation of loss. Some artists use freely the public realm as giant canvases. Daniel Buren puts paint aside. No representation, no expressivity and most importantly no Chefs- d'oeuvre. For some time he is going to work, think, and exhibit differently. An impersonal vertical band constitutes the paint signification. Buren paints straight lines alternated with white and blue. They're always 8,7 centimeters and they can be painted on canvases, wood, paper, glass, fabric or wallpaper. This pattern first appears on canvases that he started making in the mid sixties. He then started working on the street, on walls or billboards by sticking layers of stripy paper. He makes ephemeral installations, but perennial environment as well like "Les deux plateaux", which is an installation of columns in the courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris. He is considered as a nomad artist, his work is developing by working in Situ. He transforms or integrates specific environment that composes the work itself. His work is manual, critical, yet philosophical and allows him to invite the viewer to question some issues "What are we looking at? How are we looking? What do we see? He also questions status and functions of art institutions and the way they present artwork. Through the inner development of his work, gaze is stimulated as well as being questioned. Figure 9 It is likewise for Pascale Marthine Tayou from Cameroun. He works most of the time with plastic objects, those that have invaded his country. Chair, buckets, plastic cups and colorful bins. Their proliferation have made traditional object to disappear and have replaced them. He covers metallic fences with multicolor plastic bags. When the wind blows away all the installation becomes animated and sounds like rustling foliage. The installation implicates a sort artistic and philosophical nomadism. Similar to a camp that we put up and take down in random spaces. The work is geometrical variable; it doesn't occupy the space but structures it. Through limpid and labyrinthine structure, the artist makes new places for travelling thoughts.

Figure 10

Public art has been linked with the reformation of the city. Public art is a principle of amending the versatile environment through the art. It is not an art form; it exploits the arts to benefit those involved in developing the quality of the environment. As artists, communities and supporter continue to initiate work that advances ideas of community and cultural development. Perennial or ephemeral, public art must maintain a fruitful triad of the art factual, social and spatial. The general perception of public art is limited to the tradition of statuary and commemorative architecture and in the same form that artists have been using the past hundred years. The perception that public art should live in perpetuity is taken for granted. Landscape have changed, therefore contemporary art have changed considerably. Traditional forms are abandoned. Public art is experiencing a substantial metamorphosis and revolution bringing new mediums and new opportunities. Some approaches to public art previously seemed unconceivable, now the exact same works can be temporary: grandiose today, gone tomorrow.

REFERENCES: Freedman S.K., Eccles T., Cameron D., Siegel K., Kastner J., Wehr A., (2004), 'Vito Acconci Addition to MetroTech Gardens' in PLOP, Merrel Publishers Limited.

Musil, R., 1987, "Monuments" in Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, trans. Peter Wortsman (2006) Hygiene, Colorado: Eridanos Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1994), On the Genealogy of Morals. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, F., 1874, On the Advantage and disadvantage of History for Life, Hackett Publishing Compagny, Inc (1980).

Powell, Robert, (2001), Making places. Wakefield. Public Arts.

Rosenberg, D., (2003), ARTGAMEBOOK. Paris Edition Assouline,

Smith, Deborah, Fowle, Kate, (2003), To be Continued> artists intervention in the public realm. London. First Published.

www.espacestemps.net www.ixia-info.com www.art-public.com www.publicart.ie

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Kim Sooja Cities on the Move - 2727 kilometers Bottari Truck, 1997?11 days journey throughout Korea, digital c-print light box. Figure 2: Walter De Maria The lighting field 1977 Figure 3: A line in the Hilamalayas 1975 Figure 4: Christo and Jeanne-Claude Vallley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970-72 Figure 5: Michael Heizer Dissipate, Black Rock Desert 1968 Figure 6: Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 Figure 7: Jean Verame, Tibesti, Chad 1989 Figure 8: Christo and Jeanne-Claude?Wrapped Monument to ?Vittorio Emanuele, Piazza Duomo, ?Milano, Italy, 1970 Figure 9: Les Deux Plateaux?1985-1986, travail in situ ?Cour d`honneur du Palais-Royal, Paris, France

Figure 10: Pascal Marthine tayou. Plastic Bags, installation 2001