What impact, if any, are sculpture parks and gardens having on the art world of today - Essay Example

Sculpture Parks Sculpture parks and gardens have had an amazing impact on the art world in recent decades. It is only in the past couple of decades that sculpture parks and sculpture gardens have sprung up throughout the world as one of the fastest growing segments in the art museum world. Many people however view this outside sculpture too quickly. They give a cursory glance and then walk on by to the next exhibit. Yet, to fully appreciate the impact this art form presents, we need to be able to hear nature speak through the sculpture. To do that we must stop, look and listen to what the work is trying to say. As we look at contemporary sculpture in its natural setting, we need to employ the sense to hear nature speaking through the sculpture, see the way that these natural forces work through and with the sculpture for various effects and view the animated landscape around the sculpture to see how it interacts with the world around it. In addition, different types of sculpture fit in in different ways all employing their own techniques to illicit a desired response in its viewing audience. The responses targeted by contemporary sculpture may seem to require extensive explanation to achieve the expected responses in audiences such as the Native American Indians or the Ancient Greeks who wouldn’t have the vantage point of modern society to draw from for example, but, because of their unique approach to the world, it is these societies that would probably have less difficulty appreciating the craftsmanship and artistry that went into the making of these sculptures than the more contemporary audience. Through its interaction with its natural settings, simplicity of design and the patience of the viewer, contemporary sculpture succeeds in conveying a message to cultures worldwide as is evidenced by the rapid growth rate of this particular art form when people simply take the time necessary to stop, look and listen to it. When discussing current art practices, including many of the approaches recently taken to sculpture, it is important to include the main ideas associated with the “politics of representation.” This collective term makes a distinction between the content of an image and the form of the image, or the sublime versus the visual. However, the idea goes even further by suggesting that the content or the sublime cannot have its own form or visual nature, but that the visual nature, by simply existing, can be, and is indeed indivisible from, the content whether the creator intended this connection or not. The reason for this phenomenon being that art is not static, but rather interactive with its audience and the political and social ideas of the audience’s present as well as the symbols inherent in the particular forms used and the environment in which it is placed. The postmodern movement, with its emphasis on illuminating the sublime, brings these ideas to the forefront. “The political and the aesthetic are inseparable, simultaneously present, faces of the postmodern problematic” (Burgin, 1982). Two main early theorists on these ideas are Jean-Francios Lyotard and Immanuel Kant. Jean-Francois Lyotard argues that realism in art is a form of conformism, and that the task of the modern artist is to produce “incommunicable statements” which cannot be fitted in to the easy flow of information within computerized society. In his ‘Appendix Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?’, published at the end of The Postmodern Condition, he wrote that the “only definition” of realism is that “it intends to avoid the question of reality implicated in that art” (1979). It is associated in this account with those who “pursue successful careers in mass conformism by communicating by means of the ‘correct rules,’ the endemic desire for reality with objects and situations capable of gratifying it” (Lyotard, 1979, p. 75). This uncritical use of established methods of representation is contrasted with ‘avant-garde’ art, which, he argues, uses experimental innovations in technique and structure to attempt “to make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible” (Lyotard, 1979, p. 78). This “something that can be conceived but not seen nor made visible” is often referred to as the sublime, a quality of transcendent greatness “with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation” (Wikipedia, 2006). The presence of this sublime element, then, inspires the imagination in a specific direction based on which elements remain visible or understandable. Its significance is in the way in which it brings attention to the uncertainty of meaning inherent in the work, such that no resolution makes itself apparent. “It expresses the edge of our conceptual powers and reveals the multiplicity and instability of the postmodern world” (Lyotard, 1979). Kant’s theory of the sublime, on the other hand, states that “the aesthetic of the sublime is where modern art (including literature) finds its impetus, and where the logic of the avante-garde finds its axioms” (Kant, 1790, p. 10). For Kant, the feeling of the sublime is a feeling of both pleasure and pain, the pleasure one feels at the pain inherent in the conflict between the subject’s capacity to conceive something and to represent it. For example, we have the idea of the totality of what is, but we can make no representation of it. Modern art devotes itself “to presenting the existence of something unpresentable”; “it will make one see only by prohibiting one from seeing” (Kant, 1790, p. 11). Systems of reasoning used to justify such art “remain inexplicable without the incommensurability between reality and concept,” an incommensurability that they cannot but disguise (Kant, 1790, p. 12). In constrast, the avant-gardes “continually expose the artifices of presentation that allow thought to be enslaved by the gaze and diverted from the unpresentable” (Kant, 1790, p. 12). Thus, representation, whether expressed in words or images or statuary, is not a neutral or innocent activity, but rather one with profound effects on everyday lives. Although some would argue that postmodern art relies on a non-definition of societal symbols and forms to provide the ultimate expression of the sublime, the reality is that there are no forms that have not attached to themselves specific societal meanings. However, current examples within the art world, particularly in the quickly growing world of sculpture, demonstrate how artists have been working to redefine some of these symbols by taking advantage of the sublime to influence contemporary thought. With the multiple interpretations of art that can be made, influencing contemporary thought is an inexact science in itself because of the indeterminate nature of the message contained in the sublime. By challenging our ideas of specific images or forcing us to make sense of forms that have no specific interpretation, these art forms become powerful tools in reshaping political and/or societal views and blurring the boundaries of what we thought we knew, such as those boundaries we perceive between one culture and another. It is in this context of appealing to, directly addressing and changing social opinion regarding certain issues or in influencing a mood or emotion that the world of sculpture has had tremendous impact on the art world of today. By its unique nature and often large scale, sculpture has a natural ability to command attention from the public, making itself a natural transition from the unavoidable everyday world into the world of art. Taken together, the various disciplines that make up the arts have been attributed with a high degree of significance by the political world. In a forward to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s report Culture and Creativity: The Next Ten Years (2000), Prime Minister Tony Blair characterized them as “crucial to our individual and national economic success in the economy of the future.” The arts have been attributed to higher grade averages for children who study the arts, community regeneration and job creation. In addition, it has been recognized that “the arts can inspire us, move us, trouble us, console us. The opportunity to experience the arts is fundamental to people’s quality of life” (Director of Planning and Leisure Services, 2003). In fact, sculpture has served this purpose often in the past, beginning with the Zen Ryoan-ji temple garden of Kyoto, Japan. “The power of asymmetrically placed rocks surrounded by raked gravel defies rational explanation, yet is such that the site has inspired awe and reverence worldwide since its creation in the 15th century” (Kaufman, 1999). However, the introduction of the Modern and Postmodern movements in the art world, which was reflected accordingly in the sculpture being produced during this period, with the emphasis on the sublime, had the effect of distancing all art, from the appreciation of the majority public. Yet, while other forms of art were understood less and less by the mainstream, sculpture remained approachable through its more public physical nature and more accessible through its use of recognizable structures. “Even the resolutely non-figurative forms of 1960s Mimalism evoke in materials and forms other modern manufactured objects” (Causey, 1998: 7). The Minimalist movement, far from driving audiences away, served instead to draw them closer as the reliance of artists upon more manufactured materials and fabrication processes, such as welded iron, began to blur the boundaries that had existed between the world of art and the world of the everyday. Growing out of 1960s America, this movement was a response to the corporate and industrial take-over of the world by insisting upon taking something back. “By using these industrial-commercial processes and materials, they subvert these same processes and materials. Minimalism effectively steals the language of those wielding power (the military/industrial complex), and by association, the American Federal Government” (“Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc”, 1989). While the world of art was seen to be increasingly driven by commerce and the wealthy, settling into a codified ritual of production and technique, the world of sculpture was set apart by its rapid changes as new materials and forms became available through advances in technology. Given that the 1960s was a time of turbulent change for America, this rebellious attitude on the part of sculpture served to establish this as the art form of the people, an idea that was furthered by the individuals creating the work. “Sculptors have preferred inscrutability to compliance with the values of a world increasingly influenced by marketing and entertainment. The sheer variety of materials and forms that have been presented as sculpture … makes it clear that sculpture has not been regarded as a stable concept with fixed boundaries” (Causey, 1998: 7). With such grand and public works as the land art or earth art movement of the 60s and 70s, sculpture and sculpture parks emerged fully as “an attempt to connect art to the world around them” (Peter Murray, founding Executive Director of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park quoted by Kaufman, 1999), an attempt that seems to be succeeding based upon their general acceptance and attendance by an increasing public as well as its prominent public placement. While Minimalism only enjoyed a short period of dominance in the art world, the sculptures emerging in the past few decades have retained a sense of the simplicity of style and interactive nature of sculpture produced in this period as is evidenced by several contemporary sculptors with public exhibits located in and around New York City. Sculptor Tom Otterness has worked most often to create public works of art. His work has been exhibited in numerous group shows and one-man exhibitions since the early 1980s, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Marlborough Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum (Carducci, 2005). However, Otterness is most known for his unusual sculptures scattered throughout New York City in permanent and temporary displays. Greatly concerned with the direction our society has taken, these sculptures often have something biting to say about the modern world. Although friendly, approachable and often displaying a great sense of fun, most of these sculptures speak with a negative voice about the Western world’s overwhelming preoccupation with money and the effect this has had. This concern is reflected even in his work designed for a children’s playground in Battery Park entitled “The Real World.” Installed in 1992, “The Real World” is envisioned as a map of the world beyond the playground, exposed for what it really is – a bunch of pint-sized individuals running around chasing after the penny that looms ever-large in their perspective, blinding them to other pursuits. Each of the characters portrayed within the park are designed to bring delight and enjoyment to the children who visit, but make serious social comments to the parents watching their children play, at once forcing the adults to stop, look and listen to the sculptures and entertaining visitors in an interactive environment that contributes to the messages intended. This is done through the careful creation of a series of vignettes found in areas such as the “food chain” and the fountain. The food chain consists of a series of small bronze sculptures that follow a familiar pattern. An almost friendly-looking bulldog stands in erect attention with all of his concentration focused on a cat crouching on a nearby wall. His stillness is explained by the formidable chain strapped around his neck and attached with a lobster-claw catch around the base of a drinking fountain. The flat back of the dog serves as a handy stepping stool for small children wishing to get a drink while it also emphasizes man’s superiority over the other creatures and his position at the top of the food chain. The cat, crouched low and ready on the wall, is equally absorbed in the contemplation of a small, geometrically composed bird perched at the corner, inching his way closer to a fatly wriggling worm just ahead of him. The worm is being held up by one of Otterness’ Lilliputian figures, who often serve to represent the common man too often overlooked in the capitalist society. By placing this person at this point in the chain, Otterness gives the impression that the tiny man is offering the worm to the bird as a substitute for himself, suggesting the necessity for the common man to sacrifice his fellow creatures for his own survival. The central fountain provides another allegory, this time centering around the idea of what happens when greed gets out of control. The fountain features the portrayal of a very rickety construction of a tower, representing the tower of Babble or perhaps the state of disrepair that can occur when a man grips too tightly to his money rather than investing in the world around him. Perched at the top of this tower is a Humpty-Dumpty type creature who has become fat on his own horde and is now under attack by a large dinosaur intent on cleaning house. When the Humpty Dumpty creature finally falls, he cracks open just like his namesake character, or perhaps like a child’s piggy bank, and spills out all the pennies he’d been working so hard to hold onto. The former workers hurry to roll the pennies away for their own safekeeping, failing to learn the lesson just provided. Yet the pennies have suddenly become gigantic compared to their own station in life, suggesting that they will have to come across an improbable number of lucky incidents such as this one before they will ever attain the status once enjoyed by the Humpty-Dumpty figure. All of these messages are those that can be followed by simply following the natural story order of the sculptures, each leading the eye to the next and all serving to illustrate the same storyline, that of the corporate world overshadowing and constantly oppressing the common man. Otterness worked to incorporate what he saw in the world into his art when producing the playground. More than being simply pleasurable, creating structures meant to be touched, climbed upon and interacted with, Otterness has included commentary regarding the relationships of people within the modern society, some small and dressed in the overalls that seem to be the quintessential uniform of the blue collar worker and others parading around in top hats and standing triumphantly atop the crumbling structures they’ve erected to their own greatness. The figures are symbols that speak eloquently of their position in the greater worldview. The incorporation of running water into these sculptures works to also bring in the issue of time, helping us to realize that these are events that occur over and over again, ad infinitum. These are messages that would be as clear to the Native American of pre-colonial days because of their storytelling heritage as it would have been to the Greeks, who would have recognized in these portrayals the illustration of the nature of the Gods. Also recognized as public sculpture, monuments to past events serve an important function not only in the community sense of helping others to heal from tragedies, but also in connecting the world of the everyday to the world of art through art’s ability to effectively capture, reflect and legitimize feelings of rage, grief, sorrow and joy that cannot always be expressed otherwise in the everyday world. Although designed and planned prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Brian Tolle’s Irish Hunger Memorial captures the sense of tragedy, despair and loss associated with both events. Created on a half-acre base of limestone transported from Ireland itself, the monument focuses on the fragility of the land and features the roofless cottage of a typical Irish farmer during the famine period, from 1845-1862, in which more than 1.5 million people died of starvation. Everything placed on top of the limestone base was brought to New York from Ireland, including the cottage, carefully reconstructed on site stone by stone. The cottage is surrounded by 62 species of Irish flora grown from native seeds and allowed to grow wild on the site, presenting an authentic landscape that illustrates both the wild beauty and the delicately balanced nature of the bogland ecosystem. To symbolize the empty potato harvests that occurred in 1845, 1846, 1848 and 1849, fallow potato ridges have been pulled into the landscape, planted in between with clover. A wall surrounds this empty quarter-acre crop area to symbolize the Gregory Clause which was added to the Poor Law of 1847. This law stated that “any person occupying more than one-quarter acre was not eligible for any form of governmental relief” (Frankel, 2002). This, of course, led to widespread evictions and homelessness, resulting in the great migration to America. It is said the roof remains unthatched as a reminder that many families were forced to pull their roofs down as a symbol of poverty in order to qualify for relief aid while others simply crept into their homes to die, knowing the thatch roof would eventually fall in on them and provide them with the closest thing to a Christian burial they were likely to receive. To further evoke the spirit of Ireland, and recognizing that the famine didn’t occur in one province alone, there are thirty-two stones placed randomly about the site, each from one of the 32 counties of Ireland. “The pilgrim stone is inscribed with a cross of arcs, a motif of great antiquity that is associated with County Kerry’s St. Brendan” (“The Irish Hunger Memorial”, 2006) and is reminiscent of the many cross-decorated stones that can be found throughout the west of Ireland. These are invariably associated with sites that are considered sacred. The cross of arcs is “a motif of great antiquity that is associated with County Kerry’s St. Brendan” (“The Irish Hunger Memorial”, 2006). Visitors to the site have the option of looking out over the cantilevered overlook at the Hudson River, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, or east toward the site of the World Trade Center and St. Paul’s Church, which proved to be a refuge for the thousands of 9/11 rescue workers that arrived to help following the terrorist attacks. “The western entrance to the Irish Hunger Memorial provides a formal, ceremonial passage that leads to the center of the memorial, the Slack Cottage. This entrance recalls the neolithic passage graves of the Boyne Valley: Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth” (“The Irish Hunger Memorial”, 2006). Tolle’s work required less sculpture than the works of Otterness and others to portray the ideas, feelings and emotions of his subject, but he is able to do so through the careful reconstruction of a piece of Irish countryside in an obviously contrived and determined place in New York. That this site happened to look upon the site of the World Trade Center tragedy and that it provided a quiet place of remembrance and honor to the fallen was coincidental in its original design, but purposefully incorporated in its execution. The site was dedicated to the memory of those who fell at the World Trade Center and elsewhere upon its opening and reflects the more somber, reflective mood of the country following the attacks as opposed to the playful, almost evilly whimsical creatures of Otterness’ creations prior to the attacks. Like the work of Otterness, the work of Tolle incorporates images and symbols that would be immediately recognizable to more primitive cultures like the American Indians as well as to the highly sophisticated early cultures of Greece and Rome. Living as close to the land as they did, primitive cultures would immediately recognize the symbolisms of bad harvests, starvation and lack of sufficient shelter as well as the sacred underground of the otherworld. Early cultures like the Greeks and Romans also would have associated the underground passageway with the passage of the dead and the fallow potato rows and marked stones as signs of a great disaster. Other works serve to highlight the increasing need of people to recognize the importance of nature to our daily survival as well as to call into question many of the concepts questioned by Otterness. As part of an intensive municipal redevelopment effort enacted in Toronto, the city’s predominantly underground convention center received a 100-foot-tall leaning tower graced with a woodpecker and a yellow-bellied sapsucker leading down into “Turtle Pond”, a terrazzo floor filled with sea turtles, frogs and lizards all presided over by a watchful raven (Maksymowicz, 1999). Nearby, a skyscraper entitled “Mountain” imitates its namesake in both form and power. Likewise, several of the first sculptures to be commissioned or purchased for Seattle, Washington’s Olympic Sculpture Park reflect a close tie to nature while remaining essentially symbolic rather than realistic. “Wake”, created by Richard Serra, is comprised of “five undulating pieces of weatherproof steel, 14 feet high and 75 feet long, each curved to cut the air as a ship cuts water, evoking the force field of a ship’s motion and the churning currents behind it” (Hackett, 2004). With its simplicity of design, the piece is again open to a wide variety of cultures and understandings, all of which would point to the power of the sea and the interaction with man. Yet, because of their size and the ability of people to walk among these pieces, the installment instills a sense of wonder and powerlessness that is severely reduced in the world of modern machinery and power structures that seemingly control everything. Another piece, “Seattle Cloud Cover”, actively commissioned for the park, consists of a glass bridge spanning a railroad track. The glass is embedded with pictures of the various moods of the Seattle skies and punctured here and there with holes that afford pedestrians on the bridge to view the trains passing below them. This piece, throwing the viewer out of context by placing the sky below their feet, also serves to remind visitors of the transitory nature of nature as well as our dependence upon it for our welfare. Although the sculpture of Otterness requires very little investigation to discover the meanings of the pieces and the work of Tolle requires much, both evoke of sense of curiosity and approachability for the mainstream public that is not typically present in a formalized museum setting. Projects in Canada and elsewhere highlight the multi-functional nature that sculptural art has embraced as well, forcing the mainstream public to interact with art on a daily basis as a regular part of their lives. Rather than insisting the people visit the museums, these works attempt to bring the museum to the people as much as possible. When specific locations are required, the world around the park is often incorporated as a part of it, as in the children playing on Otterness’ playground serve to emphasize the innocent blindness of the Lilliputians striving for a chance at a penny dropped from the multi-national conglomerates that have suppressed them and the comfort amenities of Olympic Park are themselves pieces of art with messages of their own. The highly interactive nature of these parks as well as the increased availability of them to the public via their location, their public access or even their presence on the internet as well as their ability to satisfy the needs and desires of the public in finding a means of expression or understanding the world around them has led to the surge in popularity of sculpture parks and gardens around the world. This popularity has also served as a bridge for other art forms to make a new entrance into the public world. At the same time that these parks are serving to break down the barriers perceived between the public and the world of art, sculpture parks and gardens are serving other purposes within the greater public such as illustrating environmental needs, rebelling against the political or economic status quo or responding to a great community event, whether that event be celebratory as in the Australian sculptures created for the 2004 Olympic games or tragedy as in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. This increased sense of wonder at the works opening up before them as well as the applicability of art to the everyday world has spurred many in the mainstream public to venture to the front doors of the museums with increased confidence even as it has led the way for artists in other mediums to find their way back to a viewing and appreciating public. References Blair, Prime Minister Tony. (2000). “Forward.” Culture and Creativity: The Next Ten Years. 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