INTRODUCTION

During the last 40 years, the public art field has undergone major growth and changes. In 1967, Calder’s iconic Grand Rapids sculpture was a landmark that opened our urban space to a major artist. Since then, public art opportunities have increased, and new aesthetics have developed bringing a radical break from the past.

Today, instead of commissioning an artist to design a work for a given site, there is a growing interest in asking the artist to focus on the particular opportunity offered by a very specific context. The work will grow out of the artist’s response to what makes this context unique

The artist is asked for a more thoughtful and thorough engagement. Not only will he/she be required to study the architectural environment and urban setting, but the history of a place, its social fabric, and the local culture are just as important. The work will need to be meaningful within the overall context. So the artist is expected to create a work that is not just a formal site-specific sculptural “object.”

As a result, the opportunities for artistic interventions in the public realm have multiplied. There are few situations that could not accommodate the incorporation of art into an urban setting. Art belongs everywhere, and that has lead to many new opportunities for artists. Besides the traditional list of commissions for monuments, fountains, or the “enhancement” of plazas and public buildings, artists have been collaborating on infrastructure projects, from highways, bridges, intersections, roundabouts... to historic sites.

This is not the “art-object” aesthetics of the 70’s, and today’s public art has never been so well integrated in its location and context. Some commissions have actually been created that have no connection to a specific urban revitalization project, and are not financed by the 1% of construction costs. The freeing of the art from the constraints of being connected to a construction project has allowed for an increase in the commissioning of permanent or temporary contemporary works and it has become a strong movement..
I myself feel that, when creating art for an urban environment, the art should be permanent, since this is the best opportunity for an artist to work as an equal team member with the architects and landscape architects.

In Europe, because of this renewed interest in public art, a more conceptual approach has developed, and I am not talking about conceptual art in general, but more specifically about the conceptualization of public art.

This new tie between the work and its context is not just a formal one. Some of the public art interventions actually do not have a physical or visible presence. So all of this leads to a new interpretation of public art, and, unlike in the 70’s, scale and monumentality are no longer important criteria.

Conceptual investigations have been a powerful trend in the aesthetic renewal of public art. By being inspired by the memory and history of a place, its social and cultural fabric, the artist has created an essential bond between the work and its environment. This bond, often invisible, goes well beyond telling the story of a particular place. It touches on fundamental questions that ultimately deal with wider issues such as the ecology, the future of our society, legal and human rights issues. It is important for public art to be a local landmark while also allowing us to reach out to more universal concerns.

The important outcome of this evolution in the public art field, is that the context has now become the most determining and influential element in the creative process, and not just its framework. Logically, it should lead to the point where it will no longer be possible to identify the artist through the aesthetic of the work itself. This would give the context its full meaning. and signal a definite break from the public sculpture of the 60’s and 70’s as typified by Calder’s works.

The use of text has become an important element in this conceptualization process, and a growing number of artists are incorporating words in their projects. This is another significant aspect of the public art of the last 10 years. Public art has also benefited from the new technological advances of the 90’s as artists are working with light, sound, and digital media.

I have elected to show some recent works to give you some idea of the public art landscape in Europe.

Herve-Armand Bechy
(translation Francoise Yohalem)