3- public art controversies
Cities invest in public art to attract tourists and add interest to their streets, but public art often causes controversy. For example, consider Seoul, South Korea, which instituted a policy that builders of large projects had to pay for a public art piece. Many residents were not pleased with some of the resulting art. Although the guidelines were recently changed, the unpopular sculptures remain, and there is an ongoing debate about what to do with them.
Even the extremely popular Cow Parade has been a topic of controversy in a few areas. Since 1999, fiberglass cows have been installed temporarily in over 50 cities worldwide. The cows are decorated in different ways—painted with bright colors, dressed in ethnic clothing, or covered with mirrors or flowers by local artists— and then auctioned off to raise money for charity. But some residents have questioned whether the cows are really art; they think the animals look cheap or are not in good taste, and some have objected to the decoration of particular cows.
The following article was written in response to a controversy about a public sculpture in Phoenix, Arizona. Before the sculpture went up, many citizens felt that the city shouldn't spend $2.4 million on the project, and for a while it looked like the city might back out.
Since it was completed, the work, called "Her 30 Secret Is Patience," has earned several awards and has been well received by the local residents. It's a large transparent structure that appears to float above the city. The artist, Janet Echelman, says it "makes visible to the human eye the patterns of desert winds." During the day, the piece casts patterned shadows on the ground. At night, its bright colors slowly change through the seasons. Echehnan has a number of public art pieces in many cities, including Richmond, British Columbia; Porto, Portugal; Madrid, Spain; and Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Ah, public art. The very words suggest committee battles and last-mtinute vetoes. But if you think people are usually arguing over how these artworks actually look or what they represent, think again. In most cases what upsets people is location, durability, safety, effect on property values, traffic patterns, how to fund the project, and other logistical issues, says Bob Lynch, president and CEO of a nonprofit organization that oversees public arts programs.
A: PUBLIC ART VERSUS MUSEUM ART
In 1999, San Diego public arts administrators rejected a proposal for a sculpture built from boat scraps because residents thought it would be too weird for the proposed location downtown. So the artist, Nancy Rubins, took her work to a museum a few miles away, and it quickly became a hit. "It's been used extensively in articles and travel magazines. 1 It has become a favorite image of the area," says Denise Montgomery, spokeswoman for the Museum of Contemporary Art in nearby La Jolla. The arrangement had mutual benefits for the public and the museum. But Robert Pincus, art critic for the San Diego Union- Tribune, is quick to point out why: "Now people don't complain about it. Part of the reason they don't is that it's on museum grounds. Museums can do what they want. But if it was out in public, they'd be outraged."
B: CAUSES OF CONTROVERSY
It could be that in modern times, artists are finding it harder to make a statement. Many artists have used art to try to surprise or shock people. But Kim Babon, a sociologist of art at Wake Forest University who studied hundreds of people's reactions to sculptures, found that context, not content, is what people care about the most. "People were concerned with the way art fits in the urban environment," comments Babon. What it comes down to is the flow of daily life: does a sculpture in a plaza break your routine by forcing you to take a different route to work? Does it break a city's routine by reducing use of a parking lot or park? And, just as important, does it break your visual habits or associations with a certain space? Babon says that people learn to care about a place because it has a particular meaning or because they use the place for a particular purpose. If an artwork seems to conflict with the meaning of the place or if it interferes with the way they use it, they are not happy.
C: LESSONS WE'VE LEARNED
If history reveals anything, it's that the art often outlives the controversy it creates. A senator once complained about some modern buildings making his city look cheap, and the architect was jailed. Lynch says all kinds of people wrote negative comments about how the city was wasting money on extremely ugly, distasteful objects. This senator lived in Athens almost 2,500 years ago, and was complaining about buildings such as the Parthenon! Now just try imagining Athens without the Parthenon and the other buildings on the Acropolis.
The same goes for the Eiffel Tower and Pablo Picasso's 1967 Chicago sculpture. Interestingly, Picasso's was privately funded, meaning that the city's money was not involved. but the work still caused controversy. Both works occupy prime spots on public land and were widely disliked at the time they were built. Nowadays, however, both are easily recognized symbols of the cities where they are located and don't seem the least bit controversial. Scandal may have propelled them to fame, but over time something else kicked in: people got used to them and eventually grew to love them.
According to some public arts administrators, one way to reduce controversy is to involve the public in the decision process, so the space is used in the way that appeals to the most people. Another trend is integrating public art into the surrounding space. Artists are expected to consider the use and appearance of the area in their designs. Gone are the days of "plop art," when works were erected by a select group of experts without considering public opinion. Increasingly, public art is designed by architects with the goal of blending harmoniously with buildings or planned spaces. Of course, if art is forced to meet rigid criteria , the risk is that it could become merely decorative. And the worst artistic offense of all, says Pincus, is blandness. Janet Echelman, a well-known public artist, says controversy is a good thing. "It's good for art to make us think, to give us a shared experience that creates a dialogue, makes us talk to each other, including strangers." So whether they call it unsightly or elegantly beautiful, at least there'll be something to whisper about. The stranger the better?
