Art In The Public Realm – Article for Calgary Urban Development Publication
Having invested in several new pieces of world-class contemporary public sculpture for its East Village redevelopment, the City of Calgary wanted an engaging and informative piece on the role of public art in reviving urban areas.
The creative energy of a city is fueled by the inspired efforts of all its citizens but public art can help spark the imagination of a place. Don’t set off any alarm bells but East Village is about to be set on fire.
Public art will serve as communal hearths for East Village, as memorable gathering places where a mix of people can come together and share ideas and inspiration. As Yves Trépanier of Calgary’s TrépanierBaer Gallery notes, “For creative cities, public art is the new town square”. And for East Village, the art in that square will definitely think outside the box. Public art is an opportunity for Calgary to reimagine it’s identity and say something different about itself. In East Village, Cowtown is about to go contemporary. As Clare Nolan of CMLC says, “Expect the unexpected.”
Public art today is a catch-all term for a wide variety of creative practices. From ephemeral sculptures to digital media to kinetic art, a greater diversity of art objects is willing to get out of the gallery and into the open air. A Victorian view of public art was often cast as so many bronzed examples of monuments, memorials and civic statuary. Basically dead men on pedestals.
Whether they were up there for valour or vanity was often beside the point. The aim was veneration, not conversation. The possibility for a creative dialogue – or even just cocktail chatter – is more soberly constricted when you’re being stared down at by some sombre-looking guy. This type of public art feels duty-bound to speak only of itself. Eventually that energy gets old.
Leave it to the 1960s to pop that point of view. Public art found new forms and tricks and started playing a regenerative role in civic spaces. The soul inherent in a piece of original art – in something privately- crafted not mass-produced or politically-motivated –was given value. Public art came to be appreciated for what it can do rather than for simply what it is. The vital space around the art – all that open civic land – came to matter as much as the vitality in the art.
Or maybe what happened is a new generation of urban planners played with their toys too long in their old backyards. Certainly that could explain the career of Claes Oldenburg. The Swedish-born sculptor – famous for his oversized replicas of everyday objects – is the world’s hippest old guy artist. But his sculptures show off the kid at heart. For Cologne, Germany Oldenburg mounted an oversized and overturned ice cream cone angled onto the roof of a shopping center as if lazily dropped by a giant 7 year old in a rush. Philadelphia has a 45 foot wooden clothespin and Minneapolis a 29 foot cast- iron red cherry balanced on the tip of a giant spoon.
Oldenburg is just one of many artists who think in a big way about public space. And not all of them feel the need to go so large. It’s not the size of the object but what you do with the opportunity that matters. Public art offers the possibility of thinking differently about a space and acts as a catalyst for the social good. Such is the theory. Chicago put that theory to a public test.
Millennium Park was the result of a massive redevelopment project to repurpose a long neglected 24 acre parcel of land that is considered Chicago’s “front door”. It’s a green roof built over a tangle of train tracks and other dead space. Planners chose to make public art a prominent feature of the park, commissioning 2 pieces to provide an interactive community experience that would get people coming to and talking about the area.
Crown Fountain by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa consists of 2 large LED video billboards crossed with water spouts. Every so often a stream of water spurts from a video image of one of 75 different faces. It’s high-tech and hypnotic. British artist Anish Kapoor contributed Cloud Gate, which its many loving fans call “The Bean”. It looks like an amorphous bubble of mercury and is polished to a super reflective brilliance. It’s become the city’s biggest photo magnet. Over 2 million people visited the park in the first 6 months alone.
More than being popular for its own sake, the park has proven a benefit to the entire area. The positive energy in the park also surrounds it. Over a billion dollars in new real estate projects are planned for the next 10 years and hotels, restaurants and retail already situated nearby have gone from sleepy to successful. What was once a forgotten parking lot is now a cultural and economic renaissance.
Calgary itself has a recent convert to the placemaking potential of public art. The new community of Ramsay Exchange is now anchored by Dennis Oppenheim’s Device to Root Out Evil, otherwise known as the upside down church. Made from steel, aluminum and hand-blown Venetian red glass, the piece is provocative and memorable. The Glenbow smartly seized on the opportunity to bring the internationally-acclaimed sculpture to Calgary and arts-minded developer John Torode knew it would give his mixed use development a dynamic edge. “Art is about conversation and curiousity”, Torode points out. This historic neighbourhood now has some new energy and something to talk about.
East Village has learned from all these lessons. Through the mandate of its art program, “Art In The Public Realm”, CMLC is committed to bringing value and vitality to the emerging identity of East Village through a mix of public art installations. Working with the street-savvy TrépanierBaer Gallery, CMLC has established critical guidelines to ensure that the public art selected for the area will make a useful mark. “It’s about contributing to the social value of Calgary”, says Yves Trépanier. “The site-specific pieces will be both innovative and inviting and provide opportunities for dialogue and social interaction”, he notes. The aim is to engage, inspire and delight. And even provoke debate.
Derek Besant knows how to do all of these things. The Calgary-based mixed media artist is always willing to push the perception of public art. Besant’s I Am The River is a series of large-scale photographs that bring a shimmer and sparkle to a previously neglected portion of RiverWalk. The images turn utilitarian objects into gallery walls and get people talking. Submerged in the safety of their own bathtubs, the people in these portraits look like they’re floating through an aqueous dreamspace as pure as at their moment of birth. The scenes reflect the long tradition of the Bow River, this perpetual force of renewal that moves Calgary along. The river is both our heritage and our future and flows through everyone who lives here. Besant gives that energy a poetic voice.
Through its vitality, its pulse and pizzazz, public art will help signify that East Village is not only the historic center of Calgary but now its creative heart. And East Village will definitely push the boundaries of how Calgary perceives itself. Expect the unexpected.
© Barry Dumka
