What is Public Art?
So, we have a definition. Now the question is why? Why make public art? What can it do? Must it do anything?
Public art (beyond traditional galleries, museums and sculpture parks) engages individuals and communities with installations, sculptures, murals, and performances, etc., often addressing social, cultural, and environmental themes. It's a powerful art-tool that can reshape public spaces into vital and dynamic venues of shared experiences: fostering inclusivity and shared identity, celebrating diversity, challenging norms, reflecting evolving societal values and catalyzing dialogue. Public art can be an important and effective investment in community. And whereas private art is typically more personalized, reflecting collector's aesthetic choices, public art often deals with broader local or even universal themes.
Public art comes in various forms, each serving a unique purpose and engaging audiences in different ways. Here are seven common types: (there are more!)
1. Sculptures and Installations: Often large-scale, sometimes interactive experiences in public spaces
2. Murals and Street Art: Paintings or posters on walls, often in urban settings, often neighborhood-centric
3. Land Art: Often in rural settings, using the environment and nature as a canvas
4. Performance Art: Public based performances which often engage audiences unexpectedly
5. Transformative Installation: Adding a sculptural or virtual layer on top of existing physical objects
6. Digital and Augmented Reality (AR): Tech-focussed and sometimes interactive, can be web/device based, or live in the real world.
7. Protest Art: Any of the above used to make a social and/or political statement
(this is more of a "category" of public art than a "type")
What other categories can you find in the art below?
What recurring themes do you see?
1. Sculptures and Installations
Evgeniy Vuchetich
The sculpture depicts the figure of a man, holding a hammer aloft in one hand and a sword in the other hand, hammering the sword into a ploughshare, a tool to till land for crops. This action symbolizes man’s desire to put an end to war and transform tools of destruction into tools to benefit mankind.
"Guardian for International Peace and Security", New York City, U.S.A.
Jacobo and Maria Angeles
A guardian for international peace and security once sat on the Visitors Plaza outside UN Headquarters. The guardian is a fusion of jaguar and eagle and donated by the Government of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is created by artists Jacobo and Maria Angeles.
"Nelson Mandela Memorial", Nelson Mandela capture site, South Africa
Marco Cianfanelli
An innovative sculpture on the site of the 1962 arrest of political leader Nelson Mandela. The memorial was created for the 50th anniversary of his capture and consists of 50 steel columns, evoking his 27 years behind bars.
“Non-Violence” or “Knotted Gun”, New York City, U.S.A.
Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd
"Puppy", Bilbao, Spain
Jeff Koons
A clever combination of temporality and permanence, the puppy’s 40 feet tall form is made from a colossal stainless-steel structure on a concrete base, which is coated with a living garden of flowers. Based on the shape of a West Highland white terrier, it's a fine example of contemporary public art that spreads a message of exuberance and joy, particularly in the spring and summer when the flowers are in bloom.
Anish Kapoor
Inspired by liquid mercury, this curved, mirrored form is cleverly designed to reflect the city’s skyline and the clouds above, shining it back to the public in new, distorted ways. Underneath the belly of the sculpture is a 12-foot-high arch, which visitors are welcome to walk under and see themselves reflected in the mirror as they pass through.
"Yellow Pumpkin", Naoshima, Japan
Yayoi Kusama
"Baby Things", Folkstone, U.K.
Tracey Emin
Emin created a scattered array of small-scale bronze casts across the English port town of Folkestone. The casts are of objects relating to early childhood, including small soft toys, children’s shoes, and garments of clothing. From a glace, they look like cast-offs thrown from a child’s pram, but on closer inspection their bronzed permanence becomes clear. These interventions highlight the town’s high rate of teenage pregnancy, and the vulnerability that both the young mothers and their babies inevitably face.
"Tilted Arc", New York City, U.S.A.
Richard Serra
Tilted Arc was a controversial public art installation - advocates characterized it as an important work by a well-known artist that transformed the space and advanced the concept of sculpture, whereas critics focused on its perceived ugliness and saw it as ruining the site. Following an acrimonious public debate, the sculpture was removed in 1989 as the result of a federal lawsuit and has never been publicly displayed since, in accordance with the artist's wishes.
"Tribute in Light", New York City, U.S.A.
Paul Myoda and Julian LaVerdiere
The twin beams of this 9/11 memorial reach up to four miles into the sky and are comprised of eighty-eight 7,000-watt xenon lightbulbs positioned into two 48-foot squares, echoing the shape and orientation of the Twin Towers. The installation can also be viewed from a 60-mile radius around lower Manhattan.
The artist imported12 icebergs from southern Greenland, which he arranged like the 12 digits on a clock. During the Paris Climate Conference he installed them in Paris’s Place du Pantheon, so onlookers could watch them melt, in his site-specific work "Ice Watch". The 12 blocks took 12 days to disintegrate—the length of the conference. The ten-ton pieces of ice traveled via shipping container to Denmark and then ten hours by truck. Some have asked "what is the carbon footprint of this environmental art-commentary?"
"The Falla", Valencia, Italy
PichiAvo
This Spanish duo unites classical art and graffiti, creating beautiful contemporary art mixed with traditional iconography. "The Falla", an 85-foot sculpture, was created for Valencia’s Fallas Festival, where fallas are set aflame in honor of St. Joseph’s feast. Although PichiAvo’s works have acquired immense global recognition, the Falla served as an opportunity to bring their style back home. Their works are deeply rooted in tradition, making the Falla a rediscovery of the Fallas Festival’s core values.
"Clouds", Beijing, China
Wang Yonggang
Wang Yonggang has created a public artwork that hovers amid Beijing’s Xicheng District. The work demonstrates floating cloud imagery with reflective surfaces. Not only is it an obstruction of reality by echoing its surroundings, but it also constantly adjusts the atmosphere with it’s flowing state.
With the intent to merge traditional and contemporary Chinese aesthetics, Wang Yonggang integrates environmental components to achieve a sense of continuity. While this perspective is commonly seen in Chinese scrolls, the audience is able to interact with this public artwork as well. With its fluid forms, Mirrored Cloud pushes viewers to engage and discover its patterns. The public is encouraged to climb, play, or sit on the structure, as a means of melding virtual and reality.
In Berlin, thousands of concrete slabs have been neatly arranged in honor of the Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust. The public art piece is simultaneously an immersive installation and a memorial. With such a delicate subject, the artwork has faced immense controversy but remains among the most popular sites to visit in Berlin.
Eisenman creates a haunting space, reminding the audience of the large-scale mass murder that took place many years ago. With a desire to move away from Jewish symbolism, Eisenman explores the notion of feeling lost within space and time instead. In this sense, he considers the artwork a “field of otherness”.
CowParade is an international public art exhibit that has featured in major world cities. Fiberglass sculptures of cows are decorated by local artists, and distributed over the city centre, in public places such as train stations, important avenues, and parks. They often feature artwork and designs specific to local culture, as well as city life and other relevant themes.
Artist and storyteller Fernandes created this sculptural piece as a gateway to a pedestrian bridge. It's based on a story told by local Puget Sound Salish tribes, the indigenous people of that area. It was commissioned by the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.
2. Murals and Street Art
Untitled Set/Setal mural, Dakar, Senegal
Artist unreported
Set/Setal, which literally means "clean" is a social movement of young people that shook up the Senegalese political scene in the 1980's. During this time, the walls of many Senegalese cities, especially Dakar, were transformed with paintings urging the cleaning and beautification of public spaces.
Active since the 1990's the satirical street art of the anonymous artist known as Banksy has adorned walls all over the world.
"Do women have to be naked . . ." New York City, U.S.A.
The Guerrilla Girls
The Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous art collective that began appearing at art-world events in 1985 donning gorilla suits, has long skewered the underrepresentation of women in the art world, among other issues relevant to the feminist artists, through their appearances, performances, posters, and writing. They’ve organized protests at major art institutions that have excluded women or engaged in tokenism, with some of those eventually commissioning art from the collective.
"Untitled mural" South Delhi, India
Shaheen Bagh members
This mural depicts women of the protest group named after a road in Delhi. They were protesting the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act, which granted a faster road to Indian citizenship to all those who felt they were being persecuted due to their religious beliefs. All those, except muslims.
"Mural of Louis Armstrong", New Orleans, U.S.A.
Eduardo Kobra
The mural of Louis Armstrong was unveiled on the 118th anniversary of the musician’s birth.
The street art was created to commemorate Armstrong in the neighborhood where he came up and jazz flourished. A native of Brazil, Eduardo Kobra has painted similar murals in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Moscow, and Sao Paulo.
"JIDAR stamps", Rabat, Morocco
Ed Oner
3. Land Art
"Zadar Sea Organ", Zadar, Croatia
Nikola Bašić
The coastal city of Zadar, Croatia, has the world’s largest aerophone! Following World War II, Zadar underwent rapid reconstruction and architect Nikola Bašić proposed a revamping of the seawall, suggesting a “sea organ”. He constructed a network of underground tubes, all with various lengths, so the waves could interact with the wall. This reconstruction led to a new art piece creating a broad range of musical tones.
Today, visitors are able to mingle on the stairs leading down the sea. Underneath lies the organ pipes, triggered by the waves, creating compositions that fluctuate with the sea’s mood.
Robert Smithson
Built at the mouth of a terminal basin rich in minerals and nearly devoid of life, Spiral Jetty is a testament to Smithson’s fascination with entropy. Its precarious location lends itself to the structure’s inevitable disintegration, yet its impressive size and deliberate shape command the surrounding landscape. Constructed from 6,650 tons of rock and earth, the spiral continuously changes form as nature, industry, and time take effect.
4. Performance Art
Pussy Riot
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich—better known as Pussy Riot—were arrested in 2012 after disrupting a church service in Moscow. The impromptu performance of the band’s song "Punk Prayer," in which they shout “Mother Mary, please drive Putin away,” protests the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for Russia’s president, whom the trio see as an imperialist autocrat. The feminist band was sentenced to two years in prison on the charge of “hooliganism” because they offended churchgoers and “had intended to insult the Russian Orthodox Church and undermine public order.” The trial attracted broad attention to the state of freedom of speech in Russia and Amnesty International protested the court’s decision.
"Money to Burn", performance in front of the NY Stock Exchange
Dread Scott
Money to Burn is a performance that was enacted on Wall Street. Starting with $250, I burned money—singles, fives, tens and twenties, one bill at a time, while encouraging traders and others on The Street to join me with their own money. Referencing street “peddlers” of bygone days, I repeatedly sang the words “money to burn.”
Money to Burn explored a taboo. But at the same time this performance only made physical what happens on stock markets around the globe every day. In a transgressive act of burning my own money, some of which was generously provided by a grant from the Franklin Furnace Fund, my performance alluded to the absurdity of a system based on profit. It’s crazy to burn money on the street but it is the height of rationality to have a market where billions of dollars can vanish in an instant and where even houses and food can evaporate. Unlike the “irrational exuberance” behind closed doors of trading firms, Money to Burn took place in public for all to see. It was the ultimate act of destruction of value—this money was not exchanged for anything.
Unknown street performer, New York
Banksy
5. Transformative Installation
Artist Ai Weiwei made waves in an unnamed installation drawing attention to the refugee crisis in Europe. Wei, whose family was taken to a Chinese labor camp when he was only a year old, strung up about 14,000 bright orange life jackets used by refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East and seeking refuge in Europe along the columns of a well-trafficked Berlin concert hall. While it might seem like a misplaced effort—Germany takes in more refugees than any other country in Europe—the piece was mounted to coincide with the Berlinale, a massive film festival that attracts Hollywood power brokers, celebrities, and the press.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and landscape elements wrapped in fabric their work was typically large, visually impressive, and controversial, often taking years and sometimes decades of careful preparation – including technical solutions, political negotiation, permitting and environmental approval, hearings and public persuasion. The pair refused grants, scholarships, donations or public money, instead financing the work via the sale of their own artwork.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude described the myriad elements that brought the projects to fruition as integral to the artwork itself, and said their projects contained no deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic impact; their purpose being simply for joy, beauty, and new ways of seeing the familiar.
Hans Haacke
Marking the six month anniversary of September 11th, a poster designed by artist Hans Haacke appeared on scaffolding and media walls throughout New York City. The poster itself was blank and white, consisting only of die-cut silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers.
When the poster was mounted or plastered on a wall, the underlying posters appeared through the die-cut silhouettes, effectively reminding the pubic that September 11th created a ubiquitous filter through which everyday realities have become measured or seen.
Max Neuhaus
6. Digital/Augmented Reality Public Art
An augmented reality public art project and memorial, dedicated to the thousands of migrant workers who have died along the U.S./Mexico border in recent years trying to cross the desert of the southwest in search of work and a better life.
Norm Magnusson
"The Writing on the Wall" Berlin
Shimon Aktie
Artist Shimon Attie shined a light on the vibrance of Berlin's Jewish community in the time before World War II. Using a slide projector, he lit up buildings with photographs taken nearly six decades earlier to bring the Scheunenviertel—the Jewish Quarters—back to life.
7. Protest Art/Art of Social Conscience
Meysam Azarzad
Public protest art in Iran has long been a popular form of expression and dissent, conveying messages of strugle, liberation and defiance. The poetic message above reads: "As Iranians saw her face, they rubbed their own faces to the ground."
"Projection mapping" is a projection technique used to turn objects into display surfaces for video projections; these objects may include buildings, buses, trains, or, as seen below, monuments. This technique is especially useful for creating art of social conscience.
Untitled wall art in South Delhi, India
- Boniface Mwangi, Kenyan artist
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