ONE PLACE AFTER ANOTHER - Monoskop

public-places mode: “I don’t like doing commissions in the sense that I go and look
at a site and then think of something. Once I have been asked to consider a certain
place where one of my sculptures might possibly be placed, I try to choose something
suitable from what I’ve done or from what I’m about to do. But I don’t sit down
and try to create something especially for it.” 8 Whether they were voluptuous abstractions
of the human body in bronze or marble, colorful agglomerations of
biomorphic shapes in steel, or fanciful plays on geometric forms in concrete, modernist
public sculptures were conceived as autonomous works of art whose relationship
to the site was at best incidental. Furthermore, just as the conditions of the
site were considered irrelevant in the conception and production of a sculpture (because
they functioned as distractions more than inspirations), so they needed to be
suppressed at the point of reception if the sculpture was to speak forcefully to its
viewers. Again in Moore’s words: “To display sculpture to its best advantage outdoors,
it must be set so that it relates to the sky rather than to trees, a house, people,
or other aspects of its surroundings. Only the sky, miles away, allows us to contrast
infinity with reality, and so we are able to discover the sculptor’s inner scale without
comparison.” 9
Thus the central issue preoccupying the artists of such public commissions
(as well as their patrons or sponsors) was the proper placement of the discrete art
work so as to best enhance and showcase its aesthetic qualities. The particular
qualities of the site—in this case we are speaking primarily of the site as a physical,
architectural entity—mattered only to the extent that they posed formal compositional
challenges. For the architects involved, the art work was usually considered a
beneficial visual supplement but finally an extraneous element to the integrity of
a building or space. Contrarily, in many artists’ views, the site remained a ground
or pedestal upon which, or against which, the priority of the figure of the art work
would be articulated. Such thinking was predicated on a strict separation between
art and architecture (synonymous with the site) as two autonomous fields of practice,
and it promoted complimentary visual contrast as the defining (formal) relationship
between the two.
By bringing the “best” in contemporary art to a wider audience, by siting
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SITINGS OF PUBLIC ART: INTEGRATION VERSUS INTERVENTION