Art and Spatial Politics

The readings from this week led me to reconsider public space within the city and specifically the role of public art. The urban public space is anything from a neutral zone. In our capitalist democratic society, our public art is advertising. Billboards flood the city displaying text and images directly leading to a specific, understandable, and often thoughtless meaning. The vast majority of modern public art is comprised of abstract or minimalist sculptures. Two examples in Chicago are the Richard Serra sculpture in Grand Park and the UIC Skyspace created by James Turrell.

Richard Serra

James Turrell

Here we have public art works that are very ambiguous and non-threatening to the public viewers. These art works are visually pleasing and were probably funded by the city of Chicago or, in Turrell's case, the University of Illinois in Chicago. These pubic art works work in a similar way to urban public parks. They are made for people to enjoy. They are a step away from the fast pace, utilitarian functions of the city. They add beauty to the city. On very few occasions is public art threatening.

Here we have public art by Barbara Kruger. While this work was far from being commissioned by the city, Kruger has taken the advertising space as a way of bringing her highly confrontational art into the public space. I am not sure why more have not followed Kruger's approach to bringing her art out of the confines of private spaces and displaying it for all to see. Why is critical art so absent from the public space? 

One aspect of this that was not mentioned in any of the readings was that of public and government funded art programs and institutions. Most art is, in some way, funded by the public and/or the government in some way. Whether it was a commission or the publicly funded grant that the artist received at the beginning of their career. There are somewhere around 109,000 non-profit art organizations around the country that are publicly funded. The problem with critical art in the public space is that it becomes potentially hazardous to the ability that artists have to continue and further their work. One of the most recent and popular examples of this is the notorious examples of this is the David Wojnarowicz and Smithsonian ordeal. 

Still from Wojnarowicz's A Fire In My Belly

When Wojnarowicz's video A Fire In My Belly was removed from the Hide/Seek exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, it appeared that the largest issue that made the controversy so complicated, was the fact that the Smithsonian is largely a publicly funded institution. From what I understood, it seemed like the Smithsonian was caught in a complicated dilemma. If they were to remove the piece, the Andy Warhol Foundation stated that they would cut all funding to the NPG in the future, also stirring up commotion about art censorship, but if they allowed the piece to stay in the exhibition they would put their federal funding in jeopardy. In regards to art within the public space, I think that G. Wayne Clough made the right choice in the removal of the piece. By doing so, the Smithsonian secured further federal funding while simultaneously drawing a massive amount of attention to the piece, and Wojnarowicz's work in general. By removing the video from the museum, the video was brought into the public space, largely through the internet, that probably saw far more public attention than the projects at Pier 18, even though all of them were outside in the public space. 

Images of Gordon Matta-Clark's Day's End

Gordon Matta-Clark's Days End is another unique approach to public art. Here the site-specific "installation" (or maybe "modification" is a more appropriate term) is in an abandoned pier in the Hudson River Harbor. He stated that he "wanted...to make it possible for people to see it" and wanted it to be non-threatening to visitors. Matta-Clark related this work with homeless and workers. Here is art that is not confrontational while also not commissioned by the city. It is not work that is intended to improve the image of the city while it is also not meant as a critique of mass culture. It is not federally or publicly funded. This work, in a way, seems to remove itself from any sort of politics within our capitalist democracy while making a unique and original use of public space. 

Master Builders and Resistance

In The Uses of Neighborhood Parks, chapter 5 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs directs attention to neighborhood parks within cities. Jacobs prefaces the chapter by claiming that large parks, such as Grant Park and Central Park among many other examples, are too diverse from each other to be able to generalize the standard urban park. Instead, Jacobs turns towards neighborhood parks which are typically intended for "general bread-and-butter use as local public yards."

In order to generalize urban neighborhood parks, Jacobs refers to four diverse parks in Philadelphia, all established at the same time, as the same size, and with the same intentions. The first park is Rittenhouse Square. Of the four parks, Rittenhouse is the most successful. Because the square has a diverse surrounding neighborhood consisting of apartments, a library, a church a cultural society, art galleries, and restaurants, the park flourishes with people on various schedules throughout the day. 

Washington Square is an example of a park that is the complete opposite of Rittenhouse. The park is "filled with perverts." Jacobs believes that the suffering of the park is not due to the creeps that dwell within it, but because of the surrounding neighborhood. This park is not surrounded by a diverse neighborhood, it has a perimeter of office buildings. Office workers are the only civilized people that use the park. The park only becomes alive during the lunch hours, while leaving it deserted for the majority of the day. Jacobs claims that the park used to maintain a good population until the surrounding neighborhood changed into the business district that it was at the time this book was written. Jacobs goes on to state that it is not the offices that led the park to its demise, it can happen in any park that is surrounded by people who are all on the same daily schedule. "Liveliness and variety attract more liveliness; deadness and monotony repel life."

Moving on to the third park, Franklin Square, Jacobs describes a park that is constantly being used. Jacobs refers to this type of park as a "Skid Row park." This is the park that is surrounded by shelters, missions, cheap hotels, and pawnshops. Comprised of primarily the homeless, these types of parks are filled on a twenty-four hour basis. 

Jacobs is claiming that the park is not what is going to develop a strong, diverse neighborhood, but it is the strong, diverse neighborhood that will develop the park. She directly presents this idea when she writes, "It is obvious that a place that looks like a jail yard will neither attract users nor reciprocate with its surroundings in the same fashion as a place that looks like an oasis."

As the chapter continues, Jacobs brings the reader's attention to another factor in determining a successful neighborhood park from an unsuccessful one: design. Successful park design is broken down into four elements.

1. Intricacy - If a neighborhood park is to attract a diverse group of users, it must be complex and suiting to the various needs. The park cannot be understood at one glance but it must offer a greater amount of visual stimuli in order to gain appeal. The park only needs to be intricate at eye-level.

2. Centering - A park needs to have a common area that is at the center of the park. This way, when users walk through the park, they will never feel like they are walking in the same place. Most neighborhood parks are just a center with no surroundings resulting in an incredibly dull area.

3. Sun - If a park is surrounded by buildings that block the sun from large areas of a park, this is going to have a large affect on the amount of users. But to have too much sun would affect the amount of users just as well. The park needs to be well balanced between areas that receive a lot of sunlight and areas which provide shade.

4. Enclosure - While there should not be so many buildings to disallow sunlight, there should still be enough buildings to give the park an enclosed appearance. When a park is surrounded by large buildings, it appears to be a feature of the city as opposed to a side project. Enclosure gives the park credibility and importance.

To close the chapter, Jacobs addresses the "demand goods" or activities within parks. If a park cannot generate a diverse crowd based on its location and design, then there must be an initiative to create events that will draw a diverse crowd. Music and drama are a huge part of this. Free concerts and plays within bandshells often draw a large and diverse crowd. Jacobs suggests other minute activities that can stimulate a diverse crowd such as, places to hire and to ride bikes, places to dig in the ground, outdoor pig roasts, kite flying, and ice skating.  

Photography in the Urban Milieu, 1930s-50s

The reading that briefly summarized the New York School photographers was very informative. 

In William Klein's New York, we see photographs made in the city that were quite unusual during this time. There was a small interest in photography as art. The small amount that was considerable was of a much more formal aesthetic, such as the work of Henry Cartier-Bressan, Walker Evans, and Alfred Steiglitz. Klein and his high-contrast, grainy, gritty, utterly informal photographs depict multiple lifestyles and visual aspects of New York City. The book is split into 7 chapters and with the images there is no accompanying text. To the opposite end, there is an abundance of text within the images.

During the time that Klein made these photographs, he began working for Vogue magazine. I find the relationship between Klein having a new day job at Vogue and his use of advertising text in his work to be incredibly fascinating. Although he was making work separate from the type of photographs one would find in Vogue, he was heavily influenced (whether knowing or unknowing) by the visual stimuli of the marketing and what that did to the image of the city. Klein even stated that he would be inspired by things "all over the place, three million a day, blowing in the gutter, over-flowing ashcans, the New York Daily News." He also said, "Fashion magazines were our art magazines." With any magazine, as with any city, there is an extreme abundance of advertisements.

 

In these photographs, we are seeing the intensive visual stimuli that the city produces. The images suggest that the advertising and text is unavoidable in creating photographs in the city. There is no escape. By portraying all of this advertising in the Klein's art, we see these signs and texts as what Gleber refers to as the "art of the street".

In relation to the past reading by Anke Gleber, Klein can be considered as a "flaneur". He is drawn to the visual stimuli produced through this massive amount of advertising, yet approaches it with a "blase" attitude. Klein states, "I was never after news, of course, just the dumbest, most ordinary stuff." If Klein is looking for the "most ordinary stuff", and there is an obvious amount of advertisements within the work, then William Klein, in relation to Gleber's interpretation of Georg Simmel's thoughts, is experiencing a reactionary defense to the over-abundance of visual stimuli presented by the city.

Although there is a great deal of advertisements photographed in the images of New York, most of them do not hold the advertisement as the primary subject within the frame. This method is further suggesting that Klein had a more casual response to the over abundance advertising visual stimuli within his art inspiration from magazines, his job at Vogue, and the city itself.

The Navigators: Flaneurs

In Man of the Crowd, a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator is sitting in a London coffee shop observing people. After a short while of witnessing a various sort of moderately intriguing people, the narrator spots, through the window pane, an old man who instantly draws his attention. Leaving the coffee shop, he pursues this man, not to confront but to observe. The man speeds up and slows down, aimlessly crosses streets, and settles in a bazaar until close. Once the night is over, the narrator stops, allowing the old man to continue on his way, in the same place the pursuit began.

Walter Benjamin refers to the old man as Charles Baudelaire's interpretation of the flaneur. This is one who dwells in the majority's exterior allowing the city as a whole to be his interior. The old man does not want to be alone so he becomes a part of the crowd, a deceptive illusion of social interaction. The man becomes a part of, while simultaneously separated from, other people. 

The ideas of Baudelaire as stated by Benjamin regarding the flaneur, can be ascribed to the photographs of Manuel Vasquez:

Manuel Vazquez, Trace 20, 2008.

Manuel Vazquez, Trace 23, 2008.

Manuel Vazquez, Trace 3, 2008

These photo montages display a crowd of flaneurs. While compiled together within the frame, the darkness surrounding them isolates each person from the next. Like the Man of the Crowd, they are separated from, while also a part of, the crowd. By leaving the smallest amount of environmental context, before none at all, the walkers appear to be in a shared urban setting. Each person goes a different direction and, because of the emptiness of the black, appear to be completely aimless. Aside from the cultural context presented through the style or trend of the walkers' clothes, these people are all anonymous. We are not told who they are, where they are, or where they are going. These ideas can be related to Benjamin, as he refers to people in a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, "the anonymous consumer who enters a cafe and will shortly leave it again, attracted by the magnet of the mass which constantly has him in its range." and continues, "an enormous crowd in which no one is either quite transparent or quite opaque to all others."

Anke Gleber furthers the idea of the flaneur. By observing how others have theorized the perception of the modern city, the flaneur is found in the center of two extremes. Here is a diagram:

While the flaneur seems to gravitate more towards the viewpoints of Georg Simmel, because of the flaneur's indifference, he is still separated.The flaneur is a result of the modern city producing a vast amount of visual stimuli. The flaneur takes part in what the perception of modern city has to offer, while simultaneously rejects the physical and utilitarian advancements offered by the modern city. The flaneur sees the train and accepts the visual stimulus that the train has to offer, yet does not take part in the physical nature of it; the train has the ability to transit at a faster pace.

While the modern city is based on visual stimuli, (trains, streetlights, traffic signals, advertisements) what would the perception of the city be if it became more of an audio stimuli? The roar of the train that is unmistakeable, the obtrusive honking of multiple horns, the consistency of sirens flowing in and out of buildings are all audio stimuli. The sound of the city, while still increasing stimuli, seems to do so, but  much less desirably than the image of the city.