Arts debate

Too often the public who contribute to the cost don't get a say in what they would like! In most cases if a person buys something they have a choice, but with Art the choice is oftem made by others.

Of course most people who complain haven't been to meetings to discuss commissioned work before it is produced - maybe better public awareness of potential work is something to aim at?
Locally we have quite a few new pieces of sculpture - some everyone (almost) likes. Others no one likes. Does anyone ever follow up after the work has been installed to see what local people think of it?

We also need to remember that taste changes with time, as can been seen with some classical music, which is universally acclaimed today, but which did not go down well with the public when it was first performed.

Another thing to remember is that we don't want to spoil natural beauty by putting a sculpture on top of every hill top! If every roundabout has a sculpture on it, soon no one will notice tham at all.

Are we being conned? - Often we are!
One problem is that local Arts Officers will commission 'consultants' to find a short list of potential artists.
The end cost of getting an Arts Officer to pay a consultant to find a well known artist means that the cost paid is often far more then the work could be produced for when there are usually many struggling local artists who would jump at the chance to produce something significant for their own area, and at oftem a fraction of the cost! Local artists are often aware of the local public too!

Art should stimulate debate and interest as well as simply be there to make the place look nice (or otherwise) but it will stay in place long after the 'artist' has gone home.

One main difference today is that often artists do not produce their own work, but get someone else to do it (yes, I know that some masters often got apprentices to work on their paintings), but too often now the famous artist is simply an ideas person and produces nothing!

I could go on for hours! Art is fun isn't it?

Why are we not entitled to see something we appreciate and enjoy. Isn't our enjoyment the whole point?

So what should the motivations be when taxpayers? money is used to commission public art?

The public and community of the exibition space.

Are we funding the creative vision of the artist, or the ability of the artist to represent the ideas and identities of local people?

If it is public art we are discussing then then the representation of the public and locals should be the focus. The artist can develop their creative vision in their own space and with their own funds/grants.

Is the piece about the artist, or about the community?

Again, I don't see why there is such a focus on the artist. If the artist is a local, then maybe that would be relevant.

Without meaningful engagement, will the public become ever more weary of being duped by the experts?

Yes. The public needs to understand, rather than be kept out of the loop.

If public art must above all cater for the local community it is for, are we compromising the ability to take risks and produce innovate work?

I don't think so. You seem to suggest that local artists cannot be innovative. Perhaps pairing Professional artists with local ones would help include the risks you talk of, and increase quality ideas?

How can public funders help forge identities for communities and bring quality art into our shared spaces?

By engaging with the public. Rather than commisioning a distant artist to work with a space. Why can they not work with the space AND its people? Not everyone will like everything but having a say in the artistic work in your local area will encourage more tolerance to the results.

I think this distinguishes the real artists from those that produce their work to sell - whether that be for public interest, financial gain etc.

When you are an artist and believe wholeheartedly in your medium and chosen subject it shouldn't matter who likes it except yourself. If others choose to like it that is a bonus and if they dont then you should wholeheartedly stick by your subject and medium.

For instance I have based an exhibition on social issues like Domestic Violence and abuse. I know that these pictures wont sell in the financial sense but they will strike a chord with a lot of people. What drives that direction is firstly because it is what I felt I needed to express; my social conscience about such issues, secondly my outrage, thirdly my vision, a couple of things in between... and THEN to engage with an audience.

Any reaction to Art is positive, if you can move someone, evoke an emotion positive or negative then as as artist you have done your work justice.

When someone asks whether art is designed for the public community the answer is probably yes otherwise you wouldn't be exhibiting.

The real question is probably what dictates the direction of the artists His or her own vision or is it the public?

That is what I truly believe to be the deciding factor as to whether you are a real artist. Do you produce work around what sells or do you produce work that is true to yourself?

But that does leave the issue that even the best-designed project cannot consult everyone who might visit a public space, now and in the future. How could an artist possibly consult everyone who might visit a hill top or drive past a roundabout?

Also, people who take part in consultations tend to be a self-selecting sample, and many people are unable or unwilling to express a view on artwork at an early design stage.

Even with artwork being commissioned for a building with a more limited audience - a school for example - people move on. Future generations of staff and pupils will be living with an artwork long after the people consulted have moved on.

Someone, somewhere is going to have to make the final decision as to the form in which the artwork is going to go ahead, and it's impossible to eliminate the risk that some people may dislike it, however much consultation has taken place.

You could take the view that at least artists being commissioned to make work for a public space generally attempt to consult the 'public' or some section of it - there are many aspects of the built environment on which there is no public consultation at all.

Whilst the article notes that the money for this work comes from charitable donations or Government grants, the implied message is that culture and the arts are not valued; moreover, when there’s a connection between the arts and health, there is outrage at the very suggestion that the arts happen in any setting other than cultural venues.

Turner Prize winner, Grayson Perry further fuels potential misunderstanding of the public art agenda in his article for The Times on March 8th 2006. In his attack on Government spending on the arts he comments, ‘I don’t believe that thrusting mediocre culture at targets will improve health (or) enliven run-down cities…’ His argument here seems to be around the commissioning of ill conceived and uninspired public art.

The question of the subservience of the art form in relation to health targets is a realistic concern, and one that the artists involved in this agenda are acutely aware of. I think Perry is right in his view that local authorities, indeed the Government are, ‘…eager to foster spurious community identity, (parking) hundreds of anodyne public sculptures like tanks in a war of cultural aggression against the relatively uneducated.’ It does seem that the cultural box can be ticked by commissioning a quick fit sculpture and Perry’s comments that these ‘civic baubles’ can’t replace jobs and social capital are spot on, if a little obvious.

In truth, I know many artists who are passionate, not to build some great monolith, but work with those people where public and integrated art come together. And I don’t know any, who claim that public are per se, has an impact on health, but it’s this potential change in health environments and culture that can both engage people with the arts and develop people centred approaches to often difficult work. So for me, good public art within a health context isn’t about lavishing tens of thousands on grand statements, but developing creative approaches to environments and stimulating both cultural and potentially, behavioural change.

I’d like to see a broader understanding of what constitutes public art. Is it a finished piece, or is it a process? I can see a place for another Turner Prize winner, Jeremy Deller in making sense of the complex relationships between creativity, culture the arts and health, or perhaps we might see Grayson Perry designing a set of NHS disposable bed pans.

And that we commit 'art' to 'public' is really important.  Arts Council England in its introduction to these debates commits itself to "public aspirations" and "public discussion".  Editorial Intelligence, represented on the Advisory Panel for these debates, also emphasises the importance of "public opinion" and "public policy".  Obviously we all recognise and understand that 'public' is important.

So maybe it is the 'art' bit of the equation that makes for difficult territory and murky waters.  And maybe this is because we get off on the wrong foot - we assume that public art is like gallery art when in reality it is more like other things.

When it does step outdoors, gallery art (usually promoted as 'art in public spaces') rarely meshes well with 'public' ('...a sense of being laughed at or 'conned' by the arts establishment').  If, though, we start thinking in terms of an 'art of making places public' we begin to think and act in more inventive ways.  And there's nothing holding us back from being more inventive - just a reluctance to let go of old ways of thinking.

As Patricia Philips (1) has said, "As the texture and context of public life changes...public art must reach for new articulations and new expectations...a comprehension of value based on ideas and content rather than on lasting forms - a flexibility of procedures for making and placing art, and a more inventive and attentive critical process." 

Public Art South West and Ixia are both important to developing this necessary attentive critical practice - and I'm naive enough to believe that the purpose of this debate is to improve the level of public funding to essential public art infrastructure.  

The painter Ad Reinhardt cautioned us to "Watch out for armpits", and we should!  The provocation text that opens this debate is so full of armpits that it is unlikely to encourage intelligent debate. 

Of course the 'local' doesn't compromise "the ability to take risks and produce innovate (sic) work" - after all, all art is local.  And the gallery is not "the artist's space" - that's just nonsense.  And nor is this debate polarised between artist and public or process and product.  This whole thing is much more subtle and smarter than that.  "Watch out for armpits".

1. Patricia Philips in 'Critical Issues in Public Art', Senie & Webster 1992

I'd be very interested to see the evidence and reseach which backs this piece up.
'According to our reserach people find it difficult to see the value in a lot of public art' and
'public art policies are relatively uninformed'.

In my experinece, public art policies (and you can find some excellent examples on Public Art South West's website www.publicartonline.org.uk), are increasingly considered, accountable and mindful both of national, regional and local corporate issues and thinking.

..and I rather wonder what question those people who 'don't see the value in public art' are being asked.

Public art has long been a marker for those places which regard themselves as having staus, uniqueness and pride.
Public art is NOT galley art outside, it is not an artform but a principle of improving places and spaces through the intervention of arts and artists. Recent thinking, promoted nationally by organisations such as CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), by Government departments incluidng DCMS and DCLG and by Regional Development Agencies is moving towards an approach which places artists as creative engineers or creative lateral thinkers in multi-disciplinary teams which may include architects, urban designers, landscape architects and engineers, to shape and comment upon the regeneration of, or the creation of place. The artworks which result may be integrated completely within the design and experince of the whole place - Bristol's Legible City' project is an example of this.

Of course the end users of those places must be paramount in the conception and design of public art - along with all of the other things which make up the public realm.

There is also a place for temporary and ephemeral works which may challenge or engage communities in debate and comment upon their place, and may test out ideas for future work.

Public art need not last for ever. It should be revisited as often as the other elements of that place and its relevance tested against agreed criteria.

I belive that building a sound structure of accountability, involving the right people incluing eventual users in selection, and involving professional consultants and project managers is not actually a waste of the chunk of commissioning money which could be going to the artist. It is essential for a co-herent, quality outcome. Would you build a house without doing the structural foundation work, getting planning permission and designing the scheme?

Public art should delight and add quality and usabilty to a place, whether subtly for e.g. through lighting or a pallette of materials, or through an iconic work which marks a place, acts as a focal point, or through temprary works which provoke thought or reveal hidden histories and truths about a place.

It is a complex and debated way of art impacting directly upon entire communities, and surely worth continuing investment.