Contemporary Art Shaping our Environment: Public Art and Architecture
Posted: September 13, 2011 | Author: lorna | Filed under: Articles | Tags: architecture, art, chihuli, dion, public, sato, shinohara | Comments OffWhere art and money meet there has always been a debate regarding quantification of the creative products being produced. But, to begin to appreciate creative contributions to society one only has to reflect on the vast offerings shaping our environment.
The impact art has on society can be seen in the appropriation and activation of space through permanent or ethereal means. The value art has in regard to altering the environment lies in its ability to address social concerns, be part of current dialog, engage the public, influence the way people see and relate to the world. Art can be functional, decorative or symbolic. There are many different strategies and mediums artists employ for altering the environment. Inevitably there is overlap among artistic categories (e.g., environmental design could be public art, or a public art piece could also be a monument, etc.). Below is just a sampling of several contemporary public artists and architects who are using traditional and non-traditional art practices to re-shape our environment.
Throughout history art has re-defined the landscape of urban, rural and virtual spaces. Most notably, during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy, the Medeci family recognized art as a source for bringing power and prestige to a city and those who manage it. The Medici family used their patronage with artists like Botticelli to create influential portraits of their family and supporters as in 
the Adoration of the Magi. They used the architectural genius of Filippo Brunelleschi to complete the design and execute the largest brick dome ever completed, finishing the Florence Cathedral and proving their power over the city. Even now, although to a less volatile extent, art has the ability to transform neighborhoods and cities into culturally and financially thriving, sought after locations.
Public Art
Public art can be publicly or privately funded by non-profit organizations, government institutions or private individuals. While artworks that have been commissioned for public use are usually selected by a committee and run through a democratic process in which the public has a voice, the process can still be problematic in many ways. Funding for these works can be called into question by taxpayers. Politics surrounding the chosen artist or the design can effect the creation of the original piece by diluting it. Sometimes the commissioned piece is not necessarily wanted by the community for which it was intended. Sometimes the piece itself, in completion, ends up falling short. But benefits to public art can outweigh deficits. Public art sculptures can revitalize communities by adding a desired destination for tourists or simply revitalizing a location and making it an attractive and functional public space. Public sculptures can represent the history of a place as well as bring about a certain awareness not previously acknowledged.
“It’s gonna happen fast—I know that much” was an ending statement by Dale Chihuly in a press conference regarding a proposed Chihuly museum that is slated to be built in Seattle Washington’s Seattle Center in 2011. Although criticized for his decorative aesthetic and lack of conceptual depth, Chihuly continues to spread the cult of glass art throughout the world.
Born in Tacoma, Washington in 1941 Chihuly is part of the Studio Glass Movement. He is responsible for founding the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. Chihuly’s public art pieces span the globe. They include everything from fragile pieces hung from corporate or private indoor ceilings to more pedestrian accessible pieces that can be experienced in the open air by passerby.
On entering Chihuly’s home city of Tacoma one can see the Chihuly Bridge of Glass. This 500 foot pedestrian bridge links Thea Foss Waterway and the Museum of Glass and incorporates three Chihuly components: two free-standing, blue, blown-glass assemblages and his “Venetian Wall” – an eighty foot long windowed wall encasing a collection of colorful glass vessels. What Chihuly offers with his public art is one man’s view of aesthetic beauty. He presents the world with his fragile craft and asks viewers to suspend their disbelief while trusting them to look and not touch.
Not all public artists are focused primarily upon the decorative. Japanese, American artist Norie Sato has made a career out of combining her creative and organizational abilities with function and planning. Her public art installations are context driven and focus on transportation, parks, universities, airports and other civic structures. Her art practice blends aesthetics with
practicality. Like many city funded public artists she starts projects by researching the history of the site location as well as finding out information about the people living there; relying on public input and feedback. Her work materials have included sculpture, glass, terrazzo floors, integrated design work, landscape, video, and light.
Sato is best known for her all-encompassing role in Seattle’s light rail system project. She is using the theme ‘cultural conversations’ to guide the project. For this project she worked as curator (securing several other artists to work on portions of the light rail), artist and planner (working within the constructs of an engineering and architectural plan). Research led her to incorporate symbols of history and culture at different sites along the light rail. In creating works like this other things need to be taken into consideration like practicality, law and politics. Sato’s stone carved lion sculpture, Pride, is to be the first of several that will guard the Columbia City Station’s South Plaza entrance. The lions are inten
ded to be a modern twist on the traditional Chinese lion entrance guards.
Juame Plensa is a Spanish born artist whose figurative sculptures gracefully transform public spaces in the United States, Europe and Japan. His most famous work is Crown Fountain situated in Millennium Park in Chicago, IL. Unlike traditional fountains, Crown Fountain combines elements of surprise, technology, architecture and the idea of community interactivity to engage the viewer. With a shallow black granite reflecting pool park goers are enticed to splash around between two glass towers which project 50 foot tall faces (one at a time) of over 1,000 Chicago residents using LED lights. Water playfully pours from the mouth of each respective face into the reflecting pool that is enjoyed by adults and youth alike. This piece is socially relevant, functional and creates a visually stunning destination for all seasons.
Japanese born artist Tadashi Kawamata creates public art installations that are more like urban interventions. They are sometimes temporary and sometimes permanent. Working with the concept of chaos in the urban setting Kawamata uses simple and/or found materials to create imposing architectural structures that intertwine, growth-like, with pre-existing architecture. In 1989 Kawamata created a temporary outdoor installation in Toronto, Canada. This project, created between two empty neo-classical bank buildings, utilizes a complex structure of raw timbers cobbled together in monolithic scale to depict fractal imagery (almost nest-like) representing the constant destruction and construction of the urban process of development. While Kawamata’s conceptual concerns may elude the average passerby, the scale of his works and simplicity of materials are at once striking and yet accessible.
“My work is not really about nature, but rather it is a consideration of ideas of nature,” says Mark Dion. Massachusetts born installation artist Dion is known for creating work that challenges the cataloging and presentation systems used in museums of science, history and art. Through his work he questions the methods and abilities of dominant institutions for being keepers and sharers of accumulated history, be it anthropological, sociological, astrological, etc. Beautiful in its straightforwardness is his installation Neukom Vivarium in Seattle, Washington’s Olympic Sculpture Park.
Neukom Vivarium is a complex ecosystem of ferns, firs, elders, hemlocks, Oregon grape, slugs and a variety insects among other things surviving on a giant, horizontal decomposing log inside a terrarium style building. Visitors can witness the process of
growth and decay through glass windows from outside, or (when the building is open) they may enter and see the transformation close up. There are also guides available to answer questions regarding the artist’s intentions as well as how it was built and what has happened with it thus far.
Dion’s piece succeeds in many ways: The iconography of the tree is the perfect element to add to a sculpture park situated in the Northwest where the balance between logging and conservation is always a hot topic. Like the Locks, Dion’s installation offers itself as a place of learning for artists, scientists and the general public. The time-based element of continuous transformation leads viewers to want to return and see the progress time and time again.
A contemporary current in art right now includes community involvement along with an eco-friendly edge. An artist collaboration that is transforming public spaces using those pre-requisites in Los Angeles, CA is Fallen Fruit. This artist group (David Burns, Matias Vlegener and Austin Young) creates community projects that use fruit as a symbol and practical object. Issues of desire, relation to the land – Los Angeles in particular, ownership and mythology surround projects like Public Fruit Tree Adoptions in which fruit trees are donated to the public who in turn must plant them in public spaces or on the periphery of private ones. The benefit to the public is both practical and aesthetic. Fallen Fruit, in fact, nourishes the body and mind.
Architecture
Like public art, architecture is endowed with its own difficulties. Unlike public art, architectural structures are usually brought about lacking a democratic process involving the community. They are often privately funded and as such do not follow the same democratic protocol which relies on the support of the community. Although architecture often needs to follow some guidelines or restrictions regarding location continuity, a building can be erected that completely disregards established architecture in favor of an imposing form. But, the idea of architecture is changing to include green concerns and alternative living spaces. This approach to architecture departs from the notion of the traditional egocentric dominating structure in favor of the pedestrian.
In a field where “celebrity” rules Frank Gehry is no exception. Since gaining attention for his “easy edges” cardboard furniture in the 1070’s he has won numerable awards and fame for his architecture. “I have always believed that art leads the way for architecture. Now it is technology’s turn. But art will always be there to inspire architecture.”, stated I.M. Pei in regards to Gehry’s designs. With his deconstructivist approach, and complicated, gravity defying designs Gehry continues to make his mark on the land to either the awe or discontent of those effected.
While some of his older architectural feats are a welcome compliment to their location (Loyola Law School in Los Angeles for
example) other newer works like the Experience Music Project in Seattle, WA come across as gaudy, imposing, pretentious and overdeveloped. Where his style succeeds is in the spectacle that doesn’t overpower – Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain. A welcome attraction to the area, the Guggenheim takes into consideration the history of the city as a steel town by using metal sheeting on the outside (titanium, to reflect the sun and create contrast with the gray sky), and mirroring the image of the ship with it’s free-form shapes in recognition of the river by which it sits. A dominant site from the river, the Guggenheim Bilbao manages to blend modestly street-side. As part of the revitalization effort for Bilbao and the Basque County this after completion this project immediately made Bilbao a worldwide destination.
Although NY isn’t in need of any more attractions to make it a destination, the landscape architecture of the NY High Line is something to behold for many reasons. Designed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro the High Line operates as both functional green space and public art. The NY High Line was created on what once was a 13 mile long elevated train track which ran through Manhattan’s West side – the meatpacking district. The track has been re-purposed as more than just a park. It is a walkway removed from traffic that houses many native plants, seating, a place to exhibit temporary artworks and interesting spaces like the 10th Avenue square at 17th.
The 10th Avenue square easement is basically riser style seating directly above and with a focal point on moving traffic. There are two audiences for this ongoing performance: those seated looking down on the traffic whizzing past and those down below on the street looking up; both are separated by a giant wall of glass. Being on the High Line side of the glass is like being able to stop time for a spell while you watch the rest of the world, ant-like, scurrying around.
A project like this is years in the making and requires support and funding from the city, and individuals. Without the help from Friends of the High Line this old railway would have been demolished. Now it is used as a serene walkway for commuters and general visitors, habitat for birds and butterflies, and a destination for art and nature lovers. In addition, the re-purposed High Line has begun rejuvenating neighborhoods associated with it.
Sometimes it is not the object that an artist makes that is the art, it is having the ability to recognize things that surround us in
our everyday lives as art. Hiroyuki Shinohara is a Japanese architect who recently did a study on bicycle street vendors in China. He wrote about the unique designs of the bicycles and how these vendors help “animate” parts of the city by bringing human interaction. Often times during city planning and development buildings are erected, streets re-routed, public art installed, but the human element can be overlooked. The simple art of buying food from a food cart can temporarily re-connect one to some of the most basic necessities in life: food, shelter, warmth and social interaction.
The public art and architecture that re-shapes our environment goes through a complicated process of design, evaluation, funding and execution. In the end, we as citizens and pedestrians have to live with it. In contemplating the value of this process one needs to realize that society needs the arts to reflect who we are and where we have come from. Without that intellectual and aesthetic reflection we all become complacent in the tedium of the mundane, content to live in a vacuum of stale ideas.
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