On Monday, February 21, 2011 at 4:40 pm, I attended at collaborative art lecture about how public art plays a huge role in community and politics. The four panelists that spoke were Diana Boros from the Political Science Department, Lisa Scheer and Billy Friebele from the Art and Art History Department, and Katie Ganz from the Languages and Cultures Department.
Diana Boros discussed how politics is prevalent in public art. She defined politics in this setting as a multitude of unwritten rules and interactions that affect the way people interact with the world around them. Politics affects the public because it beautifies spaces, creating pride within the community, it is a direct political critique, inspiring protest, and it is a demonstration of new ideas a viewpoints, introducing new concepts to others to share.
Lisa Scheer then discussed what makes public art public, sharing with us her various sculptures that she had been commissioned to make for the public. To her, public art usually incorporates the environment and identity of the location as well as the people living in it, making this piece special to the locals who come to feel as if the artwork is also theirs. Lisa personally adds abstraction to her work. In her opinion, abstraction is evocative and has many meanings due to latent imagery (i.e. her sculpture outside of the New York courthouse that resembles a flaming torch but also has helping hands which were inspired by the aftermath of 9/11). When viewing public art, Lisa states that the viewers are not the audience, but instead participants.
Billy Friebele went on to discuss his experiences as an artist, getting his audience to become participants, as Lisa had discussed. He had his viewers explore the site itself as an artwork. In doing this, the entire landscape becomes public art. Another project he did was site-specific mapping in Washington D.C. which was projected onto a library wall. This is a new age for public art because up until now, that wasn’t something that could be done. Another interesting thing to note is that public art doesn’t have to just be outside anymore, it is virtual as well. It truly is a new age for public art.
Katie Ganz brought a new perspective on public art by describing public art in Paris, France in the past and in the present. She spoke about how Napoleon III hired Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann to put an end to Paris’s identity crisis and create a new sense of pride and community between citizens and government officials alike. The Baron created new and efficient roadways with monuments at each end, creating a sense of symmetry the city had lacked beforehand. He also made it so that treelines were even with the sight of a building, again adding that layer of symmetry. Because he increased the aesthetic beauty of Paris, he relinquished some of the unrest that the city was experiencing at the time period. Fast forward to now: direct political critique is rampant in Paris. There artists have placed all kinds of statements on these 19th Century monuments. One of the more popular ones that people really enjoy interacting with is the invader art (pictured below). However, there are more radically political statements seen around the city such as "Je ne veux plus [I don't want any more of...]" which are little pieces of paper in which people write what they don't want any more of in the city. Also, artists in this day and age do not put their art up in the air but closer to the ground because this is where the modern day viewer is looking. In these ways, Paris's art is extremely participatory.
After this lecture, I found myself wondering if my art that I consider to be public is interactive. I made a postcard for class which in its own way is public art because it isn't meant to be hung on a wall or plopped in the middle of a room. My postcard is meant to be something plain on the outside, but as you open it up (in an unconventional manner) you are forced to view each part of the picture separately. Also, the motion of opening this card is meant to emulate wind because my card is about how windy it is at St. Mary's. Although the visual aspect of my card didn't come out as nicely as I would have liked it to, the concept still made sense and it still forces the viewer to participate in my work of art. Going to this art lecture has given me some more ideas about how to present my artwork next time and it has given me a much better perspective on public art.
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