Sculpture in Public Places
Sculpture was born from figurines crafted at the dawn of man. Some tribes practised cave painting, while others made their totems in stone, clay, ivory, and wood. Egyptians cut obelisks from native rock, Greeks constructed temples with columns and statues, Romans built arches and colossi, and kings erected monuments to their battles and themselves. In the democratic age, unexpected icons like the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the Sydney Opera House appeared to celebrate industry, science, nationhood, and the arts. Those who live in the countryside have mountains, trees, and the sky for spiritual nourishment, while the citizens of cities can only hope that their overlords allow them an integrated and aesthetic environment that reflects their culture, history, and community.
Large European cities like London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin have sculptures from every era that juxtapose the old and the new. Rome has the visible bones of the old empire flanked by Fascist parade avenues, Catholic churches, palaces of rich families, and human-scale squares which have room for neo-classical fountains, cafes, souvenir shops, chic boutiques, neon, noise, roaring motorbikes, and all the racket that a living city generates.
Anyone who has ever lived in the country knows the claustrophobia of the city and how it feels to be confined to narrow streets and towered over by buildings. Humans need open space for their souls to breathe. Those who live in large cities are bombarded with sensory input, which is responsible for the stress and the excitement of city living. Early in the development of American cities, land for squares and public spaces was set aside. As cities grew, it wasn’t practical for the inhabitants to travel long distances to get the open space they craved, so parks were created. Sometimes this land was donated by civic-minded benefactors or, in the case of many European parks, ex-royal pleasure grounds were made public. If we accept that we have to live and work in crowded cities to support ourselves and our families, we should have input on what our public spaces will be like. Sculpture is often the last thing to be added to a park because it is expensive and subject to damage by disgruntled residents. A park is a natural home for sculpture, as it is already a beautiful location, so even a ragamuffin piece could look handsome there. Sculptures may become favourites, go unnoticed, or become universally disliked, and as all dictators have observed from their reserved seats in hell, statues can be knocked down and dragged away.
Street settings for sculpture are more problematic, but can have interesting solutions. West Berlin and East Berlin were both restructured after the Second World War, and have done an excellent job of incorporating sculpture into a modern city. West Berlin has a drainage problem, calling itself the Venice of the North, and supports a network of above-ground water pipes, but sculptural solutions have been found in giant modern pieces such as Adolf Behrens “Berlin,” a loose knot of fluted stainless tubes. It's in startling contrast to the sad, truncated tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church or the mounted statue of Frederick the Great, but the contrasts of history live comfortably together. Wide country streets in North America became main thoroughfares with large football field intersections that would dwarf a Roman fountain, and in a strictly capitalist society, public art doesn't generate revenue, so it ostensibly has no purpose.
After the war, East Berlin created its version of Soviet chic, with interminable rectangular blocks of buildings and the windswept spaces between them, which, for some, hold a severe beauty. Yet the official East German artistic vision is a retro space-age TV tower. From almost anywhere in the city, you can find your direction by it, like navigating by the moon and stars. It fits its situation because it rises from launchpad-sized Alexanderplatz. Appropriate sculpture can add scale, history, mystery, and importance to a place. A sculpture, however, must be chosen to have particularity and universality. It should represent its era, its location, and also have longevity, not only in design, but also in the public imagination.
Equipping public spaces to be more livable has a price. Someone has to buy, install, and maintain whatever is installed there. Architects and planners now create spaces in front of large buildings by using corner cutoffs and building setbacks. Depending on the size of the found space, benches & shrubs are possible. Sculpture in these locations occupies less space and is less expensive.
Sculpture in public places democratizes art by bringing it outdoors. Living with art is no longer a preserve of the privileged. Yet in a rather American way, we tend to segregate our duties and pleasures. For open space, city dwellers go to a park, go to a mall for shopping, go to a sports complex for exercise, and go to a gallery for art. This fragmented approach makes every facet of every activity suffer by dislocating it from everything else. A sane, healthy living space should be integral to its surroundings.
Public parks are good things; people need them. Sculpture parks, however, are a step backward as they reinforce elitism and segregation. We should surround ourselves with some of the best examples of what artists, sculptors, architects, and town planners can produce. It is possible to be surrounded by beauty and thoughtfulness in the street, the bank, the shopping mall, and in the workplace, without having to make a trip to a gallery.
Old can mix with new, and different interests create diversity. Variety makes a powerful statement. Look at I.M. Pei’s glass and steel pyramid in front of the Louvre, Botero’s chubby bronze characters in a Florentine piazza, Chicago’s reflective Cloud Gate known affectionately as "The Bean" planted in windswept concrete, Joe Farfards’s circular filigreed iron corral “Mind’s Garden” in a flat Regina field, the HSBC atrium in Vancouver which barely contains Alan Storey’s precise monumental motion “Pendulum” The behind-glass location of the latter, solves the problem of vandalism and protects the piece from weather, but should a sculpture be protected from being climbed on and touched? Yet the original of Michelangelo’s David is kept indoors. The Copenhagen harbour mermaid has been damaged at least eight times, but has always been put right. Like painting over graffiti, repairing damage and supporting creative alternatives to youthful self-expression is good policy in maintaining any public space and its sculptures.
Much effort and expense are channelled toward winning garden awards, yet in the Northern Hemisphere, flowers bloom only half the year. The same applies to Northern fountains; water freezes. Good choices of sculpture to be installed should thrive in all weather. Government and business often overlook the practical and healing role that well-chosen installations have in making a place attractive and memorable. Sculpture is an ideal candidate for lifting any location from banal to sublime.
A wealth of locations for locating public art exist, but local governments, when deciding how money should be spent, often overlook the practical and beautiful role sculpture has in making a place important. They concentrate on lighting and the smooth flow of traffic. Citizens' groups, which have a tendency to celebrate themselves by erecting boosterist welcome signs that are reminiscent of frontier-town timber gateways, could spend the same time, money and effort installing something that transcends politics and commerce. Well-chosen sculptures that make people contemplate their society and how they fit into it are more valuable than banal beautification projects like painting flowers on crosswalks. A statue of a politician is about as enlightening as a painted flower.
These decorations are fads that fade quickly, while a timeless work of art should say something profound to those who see it daily.
