Do you have any memories related to Robert Indiana’s Love sculptures? Or Anish Kapoor’s “Bean” in Chicago? What about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron-colored gates in New York’s central park? How about one of those giant spiders by Louise Bourgeois…or those cows on parade? Did you ever take a picture with one of these or another public art work? Well, I surely have (see me below). Something about the interactive nature of public art, and the feeling that it informally exists in its spot for me, rather than for a gallery space or for someone’s wall, really helps me enjoy public art. And I think regardless of if you like a piece or don’t, it inevitably makes you aware of your space, your participation in it, and someone’s efforts to enrich or change it. As a friend recently reminded me, these works at least make you ask, “Why is this here?”

Saying hello to a Juan Munoz sculpture

The definition of public art differs depending on whom you ask and why you are asking. For example, must the government supply the funding for a project to officially be labeled as public art? Is graffiti public art (see also: Banksy)? Is my neighbor’s daughter’s sidewalk drawing a piece of public art? Is the Love sculpture even public art if it sits on the Museum’s private property? Raquel Laneria sheds some light on this murkiness in her Forbes article “Why We Love – And Need – Public Art.” But whatever the official definition – to me, its an art work in a public space that I can personally access – and I agree with those “nonprofits, federal organizations and private investors who believe it is something indispensable to city life,” and with Darren Walker, who is quoted in the article as having said, “public art is a public good.”

My collage of art, found within a three-block stretch of Washington Street in Indianapolis.

I recently attended the walking tour of George Rickey: An Evolution (I highly recommend it – the last guided tour is August 16) in downtown Indianapolis. Our guide, Mindy Taylor-Ross, prefaced the tour with some Arts Council info and mentioned that Indy was at one time pursuing a ‘percent-for-art ordinance,’ which would provide a more or less stable (though small) funding source for public art in Indianapolis. Many other cities, including Seattle and Chicago, already have similar ordinances. A percent-for-art ordinance states that a percentage of publicly funded capital improvement projects (usually between .5 and 2%) is reserved for the commissioning of public artworks, which generally end up inside the building or on its outlaying property. In my interpretation, this ensures that as long as the city spends money on building projects, public art projects will exists in these spaces. While I’m sure there are a lot of politics and red tape involved in this process, theoretically, this is a good idea. Though with the current government leadership such legislature is likely not a priority, perhaps it could be pursued once more when times are less rough. The Project for Public Spaces website indicates a few other funding sources for public art – public/private sector collaborations, percent and non-percent for art programs, soliciting developer participation, and several other alternatives.

For fun, I polled some friends to find out their favorite and least favorite public art works. Many respondents voluntarily said that the reason they liked it was because they can still vividly see it when they think about it. Pretty cool.

“Loved it”
Eero Saarinen, Gateway Arch (the St. Louis Arch); J. Seward Johnson Jr, The Awakening; Juame Plensa, Crown Fountain; James Yamada, Our Starry Night; Igor Mitoraj, Tindaro Screpolato; the Pineapple Fountain in Charleston, SC; Jim Benedict, Forks, Cheese, Hangers; Magdelena Abakanowicz, Agora.

“Not so much”
Julian Opie, Ann Dancing; Pablo Picasso, Untitled, Chicago. (especially with the baseball caps); Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Big Sweep.

What public art works do you like or dislike?

The Awakening

"Look I can too." Photo by Joe Wallace

I recently traveled to Spain where I had the pleasure of re-visiting a favorite museum, the Reina Sofia, in Madrid. I trekked to the museum district for what I believe are two must-see works—Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and Salvador Dali’s Muchacha en la Ventana. It has been my experience that even if art museum visitors don’t understand what a piece means, most can at least appreciate what great works like these mean to art history or to an artist’s career. For me, taking pleasure in the viewing experience of these paintings comes very easily as well. Guernica’s scale alone (over 25 feet wide and 11 feet tall) begs for a few extra minutes of consideration, not to mention its iconic, violently contortioned figures and the work’s importance to Spanish history. I enjoy Muchacha more for its peaceful, contemplative nature but also because of a personal memory I associate with the work—a reproduction was sent to me from my brother while he lived in Spain. (The painting’s ‘girl’ is Dali’s sister.)

Salvador Dali, "Muchacha en la Ventana", 1925

What made my museum experience particularly memorable this time around was not my enjoyment of these two works, but instead how disturbed and confused I felt after seeing another work—a film by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali called Un Chien Andalou (which you can view here—warning, please view it before showing your kids). It was bizarre and crazy and I didn’t want to understand it. Though my museum companion explained that it was a Surrealist masterpiece and pivotal film studied and known by any film buff, I didn’t and wouldn’t like it. Even after I learned that its shocking opening sequence—a man slicing open a woman’s eyeball with a razor blade—is one of the most recognized moments in film history, it did not matter, I could not take pleasure in this piece. All I could do was reluctantly appreciate it for its place in film history and its creators’ reputed genius. Because this visit left me feeling unusually more out-of-touch with the art than other visits, I was determined to find a reason to like Un Chien.

Still from "Un Chien Andalou", 1928. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Surprisingly, it took three minutes of research on the trusty web to find that 1) my uncomfortable response was exactly what Bunuel and Dali intended for me (according to Roger Ebert and many other critics) and 2) my aesthetic interests in other art works can be loosely connected right back to this very film. In my defense of #1, I am aware of the Surrealist affinity for shock and non-sense, but the required 15+ minutes of weirdness made possible by the film medium (versus the limited seconds I would have to spend with surrealist paintings to “see” it in full) made this work seem particularly off the wall—sorry for being slow to figure that out, Mr. Ebert. And in regard to #2, please allow me a quick ‘degrees of separation’ exercise. Un Chien has been (more than) rumored to have influenced David Lynch, the director of the Twin Peaks series and several cult classic movies. David Lynch’s Blue Velvet directly influenced Gregory Crewdson, a photographer of large-scale, highly orchestrated, strange and dream-like images. Crewdson was a major interest of mine during my undergraduate study of photography and inspired the aesthetic of many of my projects, including my thesis show. And there you have it, a reason for me to be thankful for Un Chien Andalou. It seems the IMA can claim similar thankfulness, as it boasts Crewdson’s Untitled (1998) in its collection.

Gregory Crewdson, "Untitled", 1998. From the IMA collection.

So, I’ll charge you with the same task I assigned to myself—the next time you stumble on a piece of art that offends, frightens, discourages, enrages, or plain annoys you, try not to dismiss it. Instead, let it be that much more of an inspiration to find a reason to relate to it. You might find that you can alter your entire experience of it.