Posted by Holly Ordway in Music and Art | 6 Comments
The Aesthetics of Public Art
I have been thinking about public art – and how it seems almost to be a contradiction in terms these days. As I write this, I’m at the tail end of a summer of traveling, and have spent quite a lot of time in public spaces.
Walking around in London, I could see examples of outstanding public art: art that was made, and placed, so that passers-by can see, look, and enjoy – and to do so en route to other things. This kind of public art is ornamental and gratuitous, and in some ways is thus an indication of what it means to be human.
The lions of Trafalgar Square are an excellent example of this kind of public art. They are spectacular, and could easily be installed in a museum (if one could be found with sufficient space). They are the work of an artist; they are original work, not copies of some other, more famous public piece of art. And they are obviously successful as public art: people like them. Children climb on them (and if I had half a chance, I would too) and adults take photographs of them.
I am not the only one taking a photograph of one of the Trafalgar Square lions. Photo by Holly Ordway.
Now consider another kind of public art: the art that appears in modern hotel lobbies.
I am writing this while sitting in a hotel lobby, a very posh one that is clearly striving for an aesthetically pleasing look, and which very clearly has the money to do high-end interior decorating. In the lobby where I am sitting, there are two sculptures, both of vaguely female figures, in abstract textured bronze.
No one who has passed by has so much as turned their heads to look at them, much less paused to admire them. I cannot imagine anyone choosing to take a photograph of them. They are public-art-as-cultural-placeholder; they are in this lobby because, I suspect, people have a lingering sense that quasi-public places ought to have art. But this art is so generic, so neutral, that it is almost not there at all.
What troubles me is the suspicion that the blandness is intentional. Consider the prints that hang in hotel rooms. In my experience, they are always vaguely soothing abstract designs, or perhaps a collage of flowers, or (rarely) a landscape: nothing memorable, nothing that the eye lingers on, simply aesthetic background noise. Why not have prints of famous, beautiful, distinctive paintings? I might have seen a Monet print at some point – the water lily paintings have been reproduced so often, and in print form are so blandly nice to look at that, that they are sadly un-see-able – but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hotel-room print that made me think ‘I want to look at that and think about it.’
The problem isn’t that public spaces are inimical to real art. Consider the Renaissance paintings for public buildings – or local quirky coffee shops. I’ve been in quite a few small, local coffee shops (or small restaurants) that regularly displayed original artwork on the walls. In a place like that, as I drink my coffee, I can look at paintings or photography by local artists – people who signed their name to their work, not generic producers of ersatz culture. When I’m in a place like that, I don’t always care for the specific pieces of art in display, but that in itself speaks volumes: to like or dislike a particular painting is to engage with it in an aesthetic and imaginative way, an engagement that is simply not happening with the bland hotel-lobby sculptures in front of me as I write.
Modern public art seems designed to be bland, or to be aggressive, but it doesn’t have to be. Do we have examples of public art that are beautiful and engaging?
If you drive through small south Texas towns off the major interstates (and don’t blink and miss them!), you’ll sometimes comes across wall murals on the outsides of buildings. They aren’t “high” art, by any means, and the quality varies greatly, but they mean something – most often they depict scenes of local or state history.
Becka, a very timely comment! As I was driving from San Diego to Houston in my big move, I didn’t see any of the murals (though I’ll look for them in the future) but I did see that many of the overpass structures were painted with vivid, colorful images that evoked Texas and the desert landscape. It was a form of public art — and a public service! These freeway murals added a brief moment of visual joyfulness to the bland highway drive, and were in effect a kind of flag planted for beauty: using freeway overpasses for art rather than letting them stay bare cement.
When I worked as a consultant, I basically lived in all kinds of hotels which were chains. What I noticed was that you could find the same paintings in the same hotels from one state to another. This basically means that they were mass produced.
I think the paintings are in fact intentionally bland. This is because for better or worse, while the architecture of the hotel building changed from one location to another, the same stuff was still slapped onto the walls.
Usually when you find good art in a hotel, its likely a one-off hotel that is not a chain.
> Why not have prints of famous, beautiful, distinctive paintings?
Perhaps it goes with the territory. I can’t imagine a Monet at a Red Roof Inn?
~ Raj
Raj, you may be right about the intentionality of the blandness. It’s interesting, though, what that suggests about our response to art. Art has become domesticated — perhaps because the only ‘living’ art tends to be that which deliberately seeks to shock and offend. Why not have a Monet in a Red Roof Inn, though? Surprise people by excellence in unexpected places.
I see what you’re saying about art in public places; sometimes it is spectacular and sometimes it is downright boring and evokes no interest at all.
What I find even more unacceptable is mass produced art for the home. When was the last time you visited someone’s home and stopped dead in your tracks to look at the artwork hanging on their walls? Was it unique? Did you wonder where it came from? Did it make you want to ask questions about it?
Rebekah, indeed. I’ve often wondered how anyone could bear to buy art at a Target. (I shop at Target — but not for mass-produced art.)
The good news is that I think it’s possible to set an example on a very small scale, and have a good effect. My friend Melissa Travis (who blogs at http://hcchristian.wordpress.com/) has very interesting art in her home — several interesting prints (one of “Ecce, Homo” though I blank on the artist’s name) that indeed provoke conversation, and two original paintings by Chris Voss.. And I am getting an original, commissioned painting for my HBU office by Preston Yancey. I hope it will provoke interesting discussions!