mid-1980s to early 2000s | ‘in found’ happenstance order

[ref. (LINK) W. R. Latheby “SCRIP’S AND SCRAPS”]

[25 & 26.01.2025]

Geoff Yeomans (1934-2021): Drypoint, 1987

27.03.1987 Paris Lecture: ‘Towards a Context | Forum Des Halles’

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TOWER OF BABAL

On the of plain of Shinar, the Semitic tribes are building a city and a tower — the top of which should reach heaven. The Design Team for this build programme will be artist-led.

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History 2: Cambodia

“Cambodian artists of Classical Angkor were professional artists, members of powerful unions… Angkor decayed because of decadent art.”

Ad Reinhardt – Artist

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“…we have gotten past ego and sharing conflicts in our work. So we’d thrash things out without getting bent out of shape. That left us open and excited about other people’s ideas.”

Mark Saltzer – Architect

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Maybe you think things are ok…But someday the monotonous and ugly spaces you live and work in will be organised as intelligently and as beautifully as the spaces have been in some painting.

Ad Reinhardt, 1946

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Public:

…of, concerning, or affecting the community or the people…maintained for or used by the people or community…participated in or attended by the people or community …connected with or acting on behalf of the people, community or government, rather than private matters or interests…open to the knowledge or judgement of all.

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Public art served commemorative or functional purposes broadening the appeal of public policies and institutions. Public art was used to focus, interpret and reinforce accepted social, national and civic values through comprehensible forms and symbols.

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ART AS A PUBLIC COMMODITY

David Patten 1st December 1993

Public Art and the use of artists in the planning and execution of designed environments, particularly in urban areas, has been a feature of public policy over the past twenty years. Do we get enough of what we want or do we only get the sticking plaster on the scars of urban re-development?

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Definitions Examples

Some History Brunelleschi, Tatlin, Seattle

Collaborations – Sheffield Hallam University

Seminar Issues Bute Avenue, Cardiff

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‘Fifty years from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs…Britain will survive, unamendable in all essentials.’

John Major 22/4/1983

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LINK THE CAPITAL CITY TO ITS WATERFRONT INFRASTRUCTURE & PUBLIC SPACES

Major City Square, Major Boulevard

Urban Square, Urban Park

Light Rail System with 5 Stations

Major Commercial Developments

Bute Town Estate (Tiger Bay)

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Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)

Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

His work marked a decisive moment…in the relationship between the artist and the community. Whereas in the Middle Ages the works of Giotto and Cambio were the fruit of ‘participation’ or rather ‘delegation’ by the community, Brunelleschi rejected these principles…instead he developed his personal ideas and vision of universal significance.

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Typical Collaborations:

Artist + Artist

Artist + Architect

Artist + Landscape Architect

Artist + Engineer

etc.

Artist + Client

Artist + User Group(s)

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“…I didn’t want to see myself doing a piece, a sculpture, or getting a commission. I felt more like a shepherd herding a flock of ideas along month after month, one affer one…”

Alice Adams – Artist

“…you have to realise that not every artist can do this sort of work.”

Jack Mackie – Artist

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The artist’s role was ‘as a unit of initiative’ in the work of the collective: the artist ‘invents’ the form, and the collective, drawing on the specialised abilities of its members, ‘develops, realises, constructs’ and so on.

THE ONLY THING THREE ARTISTS CAN DO TOGETHER IS SWEEP THE STREET.

Vladimir Tatlin – Artist

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In the absence of a notion of citizenship and critical public dialogue, the public artwork is unlikely to be for, or of, the public.

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The Parthenon was made possible by the Athenian wholesale sacking of their conquered neighbours – a hideously cruel process which involved such atrocities as the extermination of the entire male population of the city state of Melos.

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identification of materials & themes

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“What happens if you put a composer together with an engineer working on a roadway… We’re very shortsighted in our thinking.”

Jack Mackie – Artist

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identification of sites & opportunities

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a schematic plan & methodology

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a concept & philosophy for public art

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SHU BRIEF

To provide vision and professional responsibility, through:

• an overall concept and philosophy for public art

• a schematic plan and methodology

• identification of sites, routes and opportunities

• a framework for the involvement of others.

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HTA2SJ – Public Art and Social Issues

COLLABORATIONS AND DESIGN TEAMS

David Patten – 13th May 1993

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“…identify sites…”

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YEAR ZERO

“If our people were capable of building Angkor…”

Between 1975-79, Pol Pot (Brother 1) breached the UN Convention on Genocide with the slaughter of 1.5 million people and the persecution of the remaining 6.5 million population.

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Public Art:

the hero on a horse, the admiral on a column.

Art for Public Places:

…large-scale outdoor sculpture, site-specific sculpture and architectural or environmental sculpture.

Art of Making Places Public:

…involved not just in creating objects for ready- made spaces but in the shaping of public space itself.

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“…it (public art) will place itself not in front of but around, behind, underneath (literally) the audience in an operational capacity.

Scott Burton – Artist

“Public art’s immediate concern is not with the artistic but with the work it is meant to perform. It should be open, available, useful, common and near public spaces.”

Siah Armajani – Artist

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Government constrains art practice through:

1. Licensing Laws

2. Taxation Systems

3. State Education and Training

4. Censorship (direct and indirect)

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1630 Covent Garden Plaza

1660 Patent Theatres Act

1663 New Licensing Act

1727 State Censorship (Walpole)

1768 Royal Academy

1768-78 Theatre Royals in Norwich, Bath, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle.

(1789 Bastille Stormed)

1851 Great Exhibition

1864 & 72 Public House Closing Act

1871 The Fairs Act

1875 Public Entertainments Act

1878 Metropolis Management and Building Act Amendment Act

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“The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, And we that live to please, must please to live.”

Garrick

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Since when, multiplying layers of bureaucrats have developed to attend to the licensing, taxing, controlling and ‘supporting’ of the arts.

The aims and purposes of policy are extrinsic to the creation and enjoyment of the arts.

The resources offered to implement policies are plainly inadequate to the task.

John Pick: ‘The Arts in a State’

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History 3 – Courbet

The symbols of traditional skills and established social relations and means of production in studio practice centering around the Artist.

“The reassertion of high-Romantic individualism and the reassertion of ‘the studio’ as a place of unique and private creation coming under threat through the shift of art practice towards a new set of revelations to social relations… and unfamiliar publics.”

Terry Atkinson – Artist

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History 4 – Constructivism

…to transform cultural practice in relation to productive mode and social formation.

“A RATIONALISATION OF ARTISTIC WORK IN PRACTICE to ‘socialize’ the flourishing forms of art and forcibly ‘APPLY them to actual social activity.”

Aleksei Gan – Artist

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“Execution of the design and model of the Monument of the Third International.

The design was executed by V. E. Tatlin. Detailed development of the design: Tatlin, Meyerzon, Shapiro, Vinogradov. Model built by: Tatlin, Meyerzon, Shapiro, Vinogradov, Pchel’nikov, Terletskii, Dormidontov, Stakanov, Khapaev. Glass work: Dymshits-Tolstaia.”

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Study the old masters.

Look at nature.

Watch out for armpits.

Ad Reinhardt, 1956

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a framework for the involvement of others

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Current Developments: SEATTLE

1973 City and County ordinances (one-percent-for-art).

1973 Sea-Tac Airport (Stella et al). 

1974 State ordinance (one-half-percent).

1975-80 Viewlands-Hoffman Substation.

1976-83 N. O. A. A. (Armajani, Burton etc).

1980 First Avenue Plan (on-going).

1985-90 Downtown Seattle Transit Project.

Collaboration between PBQD Engineering. TRA Architecture and Jack Mackie. (Artist) plus Alice Adams, Kate Ericson, Vicky Scuri and Sonya Ishii (Artists).

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“…we were inserted into this system that was based in engineering, then architecture, and then an arts component.”

“…an engineer said ‘you can’t do that make concrete hang out in the air like that’. I said ‘I know I can’t, but you can’.”

Jack Mackle – Artist

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As Athenian civilization waned, the state veered towards the promotion of inspirational, repeated stereotyped notions of good conduct. The arts, thus, became decorative, unchallenging and the dialectic collapsed into inertia.

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“I left the solitude of the studio…(and) found myself part of a community of skilled professionals, working towards a common goal… We were never territorial about which ideas belonged to architecture and which ideas belonged to art.”

Sonya Ishii – Artist

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1. Fund process as well as product

2. Resource practice (and not promotion)

Requirements (citizenship):

• Debate

• Vision

• Active History

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ARTIST + ARTIST

POOL SKILLS & RESOURCES

SHARE EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE

PROMOTE DIALOGUE AND DEBATE

ENSURE ACCOUNTABILITY

PROVIDE SUPPORT

WATCH EACH OTHER’S BACKS

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History 1: VEDIC CULTURE

RISHI-DEVATA–CHHANDOS

THE KNOWER–THE KNOWING–THE KNOWN

ENGINEER–ARTIST–BUILDER

SAMHITA–THE CHANNEL–THE ARCHITECT

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At the Greek Olympic games in AD 66 Nero won the lyre-playing contest. He immediately embarked on a commercial tour of Greece, and, on his return to Rome, promoted himself in a series of concerts to invited audiences.

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“Public art was a promise that became a nightmare…the kind of design team that just gets together around a table is like a situation comedy. It is cynical and unproductive.

You get what the real-estate developed and the arts administrator want, because they control the money. The whole emphasis is on who can get along best with the others Involved at the expense of vision and fresh thinking.”

Siah Armajani – Artist

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1. AVOID BEING MARGINALISED

2. TAKE CONTROL

To ensure vision and fresh thinking in the public realm.

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History 2: Ancient Greece

The Artist as Citizen

The Role of Debate: critical tension (dialectic) between inspiration and criticism gave the arts their central significance in public life.

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Current Developments – NEW YORK

Battery Park, World Financial Center.

Collaboration: Cesar Pelli (architect), M. Paul Friedberg (landscape architect), Scott Burton & Siah Armajani (artists).

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“The new public artist will be involved not just in creating objects for ready-made spaces but in the shaping of public space itself.”

Ken Johnson, Art in America

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“We can be citizens with something to offer besides self-analysis. We can be part of society, and not just a small elite supported by a wealthy minority.”

Siah Armajani – Artist

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To be part of things or not to be part or having been part of things as they’ve become, to part from that part that was part of things as they are or not to part?

Ad Reinhardt – Artist

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“Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art, and its context, were meant to be… Otherwise art is only show and monkey business.”

Don Judd – Artist, Guardian: Obituary 22/2/1994

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We have a choice: either we participate in this imaginative structure and bring ourselves into being over and over again (the imaginative life is a continuous life). Or we opt out and let someone else do it for us. But we should choose carefully because there isn’t much time. In dreams begin responsibilities.

Jeanette Winterson: ‘Imagining a new… London’

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The aim of BUILDING FUTURES is to provoke discussion on the place (role, position, status etc.) of the artist in urban regeneration.

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Public art is not here to enhance architecture… nor is architecture here to house public art. They are to be neighborly.

Siah Armajani – Artist

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…artists of place know that the work they do is about recovering the place, not decorating the site.

Jeff Kelley

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…a site represents the constituent properties of a place – its mass, space, light, duration, location and material processes…

Jeff Kelley

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…a place represents the practical, vernacular, social, cultural, cerebral, ethnic, political and historical dimensions of a site.

Jeff Kelley

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SHU TALK – 4TH FEBRUARY 1997

Build a seaside pier

at c/PLEX

‘c/PIER’

1. KEN JOHNSON – THE NEW PUBLIC ARTIST…MID-1980S…USA

2. C/PLEX – LEAD ARTIST

3. TELL ME E-MAIL

4. SHU DRAFT BRIEF

5. COLLABORATION & CREATIVE RESPONSIBILITY

6. OTHERS & GLUE

TWO SEATTLE TEXTS…SLIGHTLY CONTRADICTORY

7. SONIA ISHII – NON-TERRITORIAL

8. ALICE ADAMS – SHEPHERD

THREE TACTICS TO MEET THE CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE TEXT BASED

9. SHU CONCEPT 1

10. SHU CONCEPT 2

MODEL BASED

11. CARDIFF BUTE AVENUE VIEW

12. BUTE AVENUE CONCEPT MODEL

IDEA BASED

13. C/PLEX VIEW…INERTIA

14. PIER…175M LONG…LINK TO TOWN CENTRE AND THEN BUSTING THROUGH THE ARCHITECTURAL

SCHEME…ESSENTIALLY A THREAT. BUDGET AVAILABLE TO DO THAT – ALL THE PUBLIC ART IN ONE PLACE, NO MERGING WITH OR MODIFICATION BY ARCHITECTURE. NEW SCHEME MATCHING THE PIER… LONDON ON THURSDAY.

END NOTE

15. JACK MACKIE – NOT EVERY ARTIST

NOR CAN EVERY ARCHITECT, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, ENGINEER, CLIENT, ETC.

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Public Art in Sandwell is:

• a product of two interlocking variables – ‘art’ and ‘public’

• a cooperative activity

• people orientated

• place specific

• supporting sustainable regeneration and urban form improvement.

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Each of these projects highlight:

• different approaches to commissioning

• the potential for new partnerships

• cooperation and collaboration

• cross departmental working

• support needs for cross departmental working.

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…tell me what the term ‘lead artist’ means as quickly as possible for a publication I’m doing!

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The lead artist will be appointed to work with the design team and will be responsible for conceptual underpinning and the identification of opportunities for others.

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Taking responsibility for creating a framework for the involvement of others.

The lead artist is the glue which holds together the idea of collaboration.

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“…public life has become emblematic not of what is shared by a constituency but of the restless, shifting differences that compose and enrich it.”

Patricia C. Phillips

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“Sites are like frameworks. Places are what fill them out and make them work…A place is useful and a site is used.”

Jeff Kelley

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…public areas, paid for with public funds, furnish private redevelopment projects with the amenities necessary to maximise profits.

Rosalyn Deutsche

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…how can public art counter the functions of its ‘public’ sites in constructing the dominant city?

Rosalyn Deutsche

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“…public art is treated as if it were a production of fixed strategies and principles.”

Patricia C. Phillips

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“In another place one would need another art.”

Jeff Kelley

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Jochern Gerz

1958 Steine – Mahnmal gegen Rassismus

Saarbrucker Schloss

“Where there are people, there are burial places…when there are a lot of cemeteries, and no people, it’s an almost mathematical metaphor for saying that something’s wrong.”

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Public art can contribute to urban renewal only by becoming an integral part of the complex process of planning, consultation and decision making which creates change in the city.

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I placed a jar in Tennessee, 

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness 

Surround that hill.

Wallace Stevens: Anecdote of the Jar

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Art and architecture have different histories, different methodologies and two different languages.

Siah Armajani

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…only in a newly significant relationship with a non-art audience can any ethical dimension come back to art…some kind of social component as well…I feel that the autonomy of the studio artist is a trivial thing…Who cares if you paint it blue instead of red?”

Scott Burton – Artist

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Part of a hands-on (let’s get visual) design team collaboration.

Taking creative responsibility for certain aspects of design development.

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“Public art…does not have to mark or make a common ground.”

Patricia C. Phillips

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“…cyclists crouch over racing handlebars, dress in Bermuda-length Dayglo Lycra, wear Star Wars stormtrooper helmets and Darth Vadar breathing apparatus.”

Peter Millar: The Times 12/09/95

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“…it is not enough…to collect artworks and distribute them here and there for public appreciation.

The (site) is too vital to be turned into a surrogate sculpture museum.”

Seattle Arts Commission

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2001 (LINK) Birmingham Public Art Framework, unadopted

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To be part of things or not to be part or having been part of things as they’ve become, to part from that part that was part of things as they are or not to part?

Ad Reinhardt – Artist