Urban Art- Public Art in a Semantic Comparison (Emphasizing the Art of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century)

Document Type : Original/Research/Regular Article

Authors

1 PhD Student in Art Research, Department of Higher Art Studies, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran.

2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Visual Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

In the developments of postmodernism and with the beginning of the discourse of the generality of art in cities, the relationship between the work of art, artist, audience and urban context with new relations becomes meaningful and due to new approaches of artists in the city, its relationship with urban institutions and a wide audience creates a variety of approaches in the field of works and theories of theorists. Cities as a context of discourse and multiculturalism, become a platform for the presence of art, and communication with a wide urban audience becomes the goal of art. In the midst of these developments, urban spaces, that previously designed only by urban organizations and their careful planning and collaboration with artists, became the context for the entry of various arts. The relationship between art and the urban has faded; the art-urban component is accompanied by the artist-audience component, and here the public art discourse begins.
In the public discourse of art, which most theorists have defined as "public art," artists ideologically turn to the public context to communicate with a wider audience. Because, in addition to environmental contexts, Urbans were considered as a context for discourse with a wide audience, governments and urban institutions try to create a discourse context for art and intervene by creating a percentage for art works. However, urban developments in the postmodern period, which are based more on audience-oriented approaches and define the urban space in relation to the urban audience, do not consider most of the artworks of the public art genre in relation to the urban and the urban audience and after the first decades of this approach, the public art controversy begins. Its conflicts are mostly between urban theorists, audiences, artists and institutions that support art works. By Criticizing the works, they demand the coordination of art with the urban context, the cultural and pluralistic context of the city, the urban audience and its association with local institutions.
Therefore, it seems that despite the semantic similarity in the basic components of urban art and public art, the mixture of these two areas and the semantic ratios of components such as audience-citizens, city-public spaces and institutions-artists are different. Because, despite its proximity to urban-public spheres, the discourse of public art is different from that of urban art and is based on artist-centered components. Therefore, it seems necessary to question the ratio of similar and different components in the two genres of public art and urban art, both in the semantics of the terminology for it and in its basic components that are the audience-environment and artist-institutions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to answer what and how the art is in the public spaces of the city; through the two terms of public art and urban art, by examining the common and differential components of these two areas, which is based on terminology and analysis of works.
The research method in this article is descriptive-analytical and comparative. It begins with the collection of historical artworks and documents related to the art of public spaces in the city and the extraction of its variables has been done by analyzing related texts and artworks in both: urban and public areas. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the article, research, collection and classification of works and texts have been done by comparative study in two areas of city and art and to enter the main and semantic issues in these two areas, how and why the discourse of the generality of art in the second half of the twentieth century has been discussed historically and socially. Its semantic aspects have been studied in the terminology of public art and urban art and in terms of comparing the commonalities and differences between these two areas, the important semantic components that have been found in both how and why of Public Art and in the semantics of terminology, have been analyzed by comparing the artworks and discourses of this period. Examples of research have been selected from the important and prominent works in this field in the public spaces of the city and by analyzing and studying the previous fields of works and their turning to the public space of the city, public and urban questions have been studied.
Researches show that the art of public spaces in the city, after the changes of postmodernism, freed itself from previous constraints such as: purely aesthetic, political, memorial, heroic, messaging, etc. and by re-reading the city and space, found a public context for its expression. Its expressive approaches, sometimes in the form of interactive installations, re-read the urban context. Sometimes, with the conceptual ideology of artists, questioned the meaning of place with Its presence. Sometimes the artist's conceptual idea became so original that changed the urban context and confiscated it in its favor, and sometimes expressed its message in relation to it. During this period, the city became a place for the narration of artists, audiences, and public and private institutions in the form of multiple contexts. Its space that moves structurally and identity between the past, present and future; created a multiplicity of time-space that is no longer imaginable in urban spaces.
However, what separates the components of urban art from public art is the meaningful dependence and location of urban art to the public spaces of the city and its connection to the audience and urban life. Urban art transforms the spatial-local contexts of the city into a new context for the evolution of events and offers a new reading of the city and art to the audience present in the place. Interactive approaches between art and society predict the technological nature of new art, a futuristic function, and a place for the city. Urban art considers the urban components that have been, are and are becoming. In this multiple context, art is identified in relation to the location of the city and moves in the intermediate relationship between the artist-institutions and the audience. The confrontation with the city is sometimes personal, sometimes is through the institutions of the art world and sometimes is against the institutions of power; but it always participates in the urban landscape discourse.
The components that in public art lead to the space-time of the place and the extension of the artist's idea in the audience, here become one with the space-time of the city and accept its container. Therefore, despite the widespread use of the term public art in the postmodern era and the application of the term public to works created in the field of urban landscape; the nature of the basic components of these two areas are different. In public art, priorities are understood in artist-centered and audience-oriented ratios; whereas in urban art, these proportions find meaning primarily in the location of the city and below the audience of the citizen. Where it was located, where it is and to where it extends. It is dynamic and evolving and transformative, participating in the artist's participatory idea, creating a new context for reading, and creating a new encounter with the event.

Keywords

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History

  • Receive Date: 02 November 2021
  • Revise Date: 28 January 2022
  • Accept Date: 28 February 2022

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