Page 31 - Studio International - October 1972

The public sculpture problem

Lawrence Alloway

Most twentieth-century art is produced signs and themes, but it is an unstoppable flow creates an image beyond that of its constituent
privately (initiated solely by the artist himself) of variants rather than a succession of classic material parts. Image-making has to supplement
and becomes public information later. Once the points. Hence it does not help a sculptor working form-giving in public sculptures; examples are
art object exists and gets circulated beyond an for a public site: Mickey Mouse in concrete or the Statue of Liberty in New York Bay and Eros
intimate audience that the artist can control, it fibreglass is no more a solution to the problem of in Piccadilly, both of them legible and learnable
enters the domain of public knowledge. Some public sculpture than the White Rabbit in as images. (Albert Gilbert has recently been
artists accept, others resist, this diffusion; marble at Llandudno, North Wales. If an artist claimed for art history, but this is a second
resistance obligates them to a programme of takes a sign from an existing store and displaces reputation, additional to his ability to coin, in
curatorship to reduce the proliferation of it by transformation we are entitled to ask what the Eros, a long-term image.) New sculptures
unanticipated readings. Oldenburg is an the gain is. Max Bense has pointed out that the would probably be less reminiscent than
example of an artist who considers variable path of a sign, through different uses, is the Gilbert's pagan image, but that is the problem.
interpretations inevitable and Stella, who has path of its alteration' and not every phase is of What body of preparatory doctrine, outside the
displayed a development that claims equal interest. For example, at what point in its realm of art itself, can sculptors refer to ?
evolutionary coherence at each step, is an path is Nicholas Munro's King Kong? The This is not an easy question to answer: it is
example of the effort to exclude free readings by congenial beast is clearly now merely part of a neither a matter of overt political engagement,
closing his work as he goes. In this sense the hypothetical group of play sculptures, which is with a readymade stock of slogans and images,
problem of 'going public' faces every artist, but OK but not much. To the exhaustion of nor of aesthetic detachment, adding a few more
the term public sculpture means something classical iconography, then, we must add the self-referring works to the environment. Both
more specific. It refers to art that is intentionally unavailability for direct quotation of the positions seems more simple than the situation
public from the outset, designed to occupy an now-autonomous popular arts. can tolerate. A point of reference can be located
unregulated site (by which I mean a place A great deal of current sculpture acquires its in Tatlin's Monument to the Third Republic,
outside gallery, museum, or park limits). meaning in one of two ways : either in terms of 1919-1920. It was built, and duplicated twice
The nineteenth century closed the tradition of style as subject or of history as content. The recently, as a model for a building, but its
public sculpture and the twentieth has not forms of an artist's work, insofar as they are possible relevance is sculptural rather than
established one. A part of the success of learnable, constitute a pattern of information architectural now. As a summarizing social
nineteenth-century monuments came from the that is essentially iconographic. As the structure it was like, and influenced by, the
artists' capacity to draw on extra-artistic fields constraints and repetitions of form are perceived Eiffel Tower, but remained unbuilt. Its
of knowledge. They could represent a hero, a a subject emerges, the artist himself, not in an ascending spiral and triple zones of occupancy
personification (of a virtue or a city), expressionistic sense but as the source of this set are insistently symbolic but not banal. The
memorialize an individual or a battle, without of decisions as opposed to other possible sets. Vesnin Brothers' Pravda Building project, 1923,
any scarcity of legible signs. The choice of The artist's style as subject is a perfectly which incorporated signs, ads, and loudspeakers
classical robes, ceremonial dress, or modern adequate source of meaning in galleries and in its open structure, is part of the Tower's
clothes, for example, all held iconographical museums but it is not necessarily sustaining to heritage. These and other works constitute a
meanings that were easily available in the larger public for the sculptures called public. distinguished public art on paper. It is the
non-esoteric literary sources as well as in The same objection holds against sculpture in Piranesi syndrome but with reference to a
baroque or classical prototypes. In addition to which the referent is the tradition to which it projected future rather than to a classical past.
an accessible iconography the public sculpture belongs. Here a work of art is an abbreviation In the absence of a support system the
of the last century usually maintains a sense of standing for a tradition and its position in a monuments remained unbuilt, but to ignore
scale that makes it visually distinct even in form-series is its meaning. This kind of content them in favour of routine formalist objects is to
cluttered sites. Hence the clarity of iconography presupposes a deterministic view of (art) history withdraw from one of the challenges of
was equalled by a clarity of human contour and in which full information about the present is twentieth-century art. Constructivism, in the
gesture. In earlier 'Documentas' when the park assumed to be available to the artist. Formality, light of recent exhibitions, reveals a new
was used for sculpture the eighteenth-century therefore, summarizes the artist's historical usability in its compound of formal
figures along the ruined wall of the Orangerie awareness and the work's position in time sophistication and symbolic accessibility.
were always more coherent and readable against becomes its content. It was noticeable that many of the
the sky than the Moores and Picassos and the It seems to me that the production of public contributors to the Peter Stuyvesant
rest of the hardware below. sculpture is not compatible with this narrow Foundation's City Sculpture Project seemed
It is clear that the resources of the tradition base, in which the artist retains for himself the uninterested in public sculpture. To William
that made nineteenth-century sculpture legible role of exclusive donor of meaning. What is Turnbull 'the problem of public sculpture is
cannot be revived as if nothing had happened. needed, maybe, is a sculpture that has to do with largely with the public — not with sculpture'.2
What we have now is a cluster of public arts that the formation of idioms. An idiom can be both According to William Tucker, 'the idea of
are not in the hands of sculptors or painters at the 'style of speaking peculiar to a people' and designing a sculpture for a particular site, even
all. Obviouslytelevision, the movies, advertising, `an expression whose meaning is not predictable if chosen oneself,'seems to me a gross limitation
packaging, ceremonies, peer-group games from the usual meanings of its constituent on the sculptor's freedom of action'. Turnbull
constitute a set of public arts, though elements' (Random House Dictionary, would just pass on to the public a slight increase
characterized by continuous flow and unabridged). For my purpose the first sense in the demand for art appreciation and Tucker
replacement rather than by monumentality. suggests the need for a broad-based sculpture would hold sculpture to a sum of internal
Popular culture has created an inventory of and the second sense suggests a sculpture that decisions locked away from the environment.
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