Page 61 - Studio International - July August 1972

of modern building. The impulse to construct there are for example in the oeuvre of an
a kind of chamber architecture results in works
of great elegance and sensitivity at the gallery
scale. Out of doors the object must hold its own
against an ever increasing scale of surrounding
building. If it partakes of the same aesthetic, the
construction simply evaporates, overwhelmed most successful modem public sculpture has
by its larger relative. come about by intelligent choice of an object
The nature of the artist's work has become, which then works independently and in
largely because of his methodology, serial and
not intermittent. There are few final works (as
building is usually the most successful, as in
industrial designer or in the work of Cellini or the placing by Mies Van der Rohe of works by
Bernini) but instead a stream of similar or Lehmbruck.
gradually changing objects. The client buys what Because the sculptor works, and is trained,
is available at any one time and commissions are very much apart from the architectural or
essentially for more of the same. Some of the building process his response to a commission
for a public work is inevitably defensive. He is
not expected to design an object for a specific
situation, but rather to provide a generalized
opposition to its setting. In this case the most form conveying a private obsession. The chances
violent contrast between the sculpture and the of the requirements coinciding are remote.
There is however a considerable wish on the
part of sculptors for involvement in the larger
scale and many excellent attempts have been
made to bridge the gap. The recent RA show
and the Stuyvesant programme have all
produced some excellent large objects though
few would stand an actual public exposure, and
most are ideas which carefully avoid the problem
of public involvement and participation.
In practice a public sculpture faces all the
technical and legal problems that a building
does : it becomes subject to a host of regulations
and the common law. A sculpture must firstly
survive, and here its weight, imperviousness
and siting are critical. Any lightweight fragile
object will disappear within days, and a normal
paint finish will rapidly erode. The fashion of
placing a sculpture directly on the ground means
that it is immediately accessible to the passer-by,
who will inevitably fall over it and sue for
damages. The common law requires that the
owner of any object is responsible should the
object cause any damage to anyone, even though
reasonable precautions were taken. The granite
base is a real advantage in a public sculpture,
which should also refrain from shedding
fragments into the public way.
In the recent attempts to introduce sculptures
into the surroundings of the Hayward Gallery,
a large work in glass fibre by Francis Morland
lasted a week, in spite of being propped nightly.
Nicholas Munro's fibre-glass boats were linked
together with chains, yet one was tossed
overboard within a fortnight. Neville Boden's
painted sculpture had to be wheeled back into
the gallery nightly. The only work to stand the
stress was Bernard Schottlander's large steel
piece which required to be re-painted only
twice in the six months it was outside the
gallery.
Experience with the first Stuyvesant pieces
shows a similar experience. Yet much modem
sculpture, for all its pretensions to an
environmental scale and to a social involvement,
very carefully avoids the true parameters of
public sculpture. Unless the limitations are
understood the work has little chance of survival.
This is probably a depressing note on which
to conclude, but then there are many other kinds
of public art: fireworks, kite flying, processions,
banners, performances. All are well suited to
the kind of art now being produced. The
permanent work of art in a public space may
merely be nostalgia for a lost world of Italian
piazzas, filled with people and cafés by day, or
ghostly with echoes of Chirico by night. q
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