New Ideas and Debate on Public Art: Reflections on Legal & Illegal Art Europe

I did not know it, that Europe would be the most graffitied place I had ever been. It is too much!

It is everywhere. Sometimes it is a masterpiece of enormous proportions; or, maybe it is a tiny image, politically understated yet provocative, hidden among graffiti tags on a slender alley's wall. Other times, it is debatable whether there is anything 'artistic' at all; if what you are seeing is plain ignorance; a teenage angst brought to life; or, the worst we have seen, desiccation of another, much more historically important or beautiful piece of art.

We have seen thousand year old ruins and statues spray painted. We have seen beautiful modern art sculptures covered with globs of paint or wax or worse.

So we continue a debate - what is Public Art: What is damage?; What is political?; What is juvenile?

In the Balkans, in Italy, and in France the lines of officialdom begin to blur.

Art is so useful here, so expressive, so 'cutting edge' and/or deconstructive. But, one has to ask - where would a modern open-minded society dare to put restraints on production, placement, or culpability of displaying public art?

Reticently, we have had a debate about how to use better, more temporary public art displays as environmental art. Our debate centers both in the sense of art display and in terms of its social and environmental impacts.

We are seeing some types of art, especially grafitti, causingdamage, social stress, and reinforcement of negative values. How can this negative become a positive, we ask ourselves? After seeing so much damage and vandalism to property by 'artists' we were happy to find that some artists were looking for compromise and solutions. One art exhibit in particular really seemed very well thought out in Marseilles.

In this exhibit, a photography group has produced large paper prints of two separate expositions. The first group of photographs takes up the concepts of spirituality and public spiritual displays in India. This was a terrific exhibit which stretched over several blocks in the historic foothills surrounding the Vieux Port area.

The second exhibit was apparently produced by either the same photography exhibition group or very kindredly inspired artistic spirits. This exhibit collects recent and historic photographs from the neighborhood where it is exhibited.

What impressed us and drew te fire together for our debate on producing meaningful, and harmless art in the form of intentionally temporary exhibits.

What are some of the benefits of producing temporary public art exhibits?

Our debate about basic questions concerning placement, quality, temporality, and nature of Public Art is one that we give more thought to now than before we reached Europe. The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How - of whether art and its display in public space should continue to exist is, to us, now unquestionable. That more art on public display produces more thought, insight, debate, camaraderie, and a more sociable urban aesthetic is, to us, obvious.


But... are there ways for all 'public' art artists to improve their art. Can it be made more green? Can we put moral or critical restraints on ourselves in order to not offend or to reach different audiences? Are some lines too important not to be crossed? How do we distinguish between art and vandalism? How can art collectives strengthen social fabric and explanation of art?

In temporary photography exhibits we see in Europe (and those described above in France) there is specificity.

Here, we found in two exhibitions a melding of Marseillaise social history, of green arts technologies and recycling, of bridge-building, of mosaic collage, of spirituality, of international ambassadorship, of much to make neighborhoods and cities humane. These were progressive, thoughtful, for everyone.

Art can be fun. It can be interactive. It is something which we can identify with, be critical of, and be proud of (sometimes, all of these we can find at one and the same time)...

Public art is a tradition as old as humanity. Let's support it!

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Useful Public Art in the Mediterranean: Murals, Spray Can Art, Mosaics

Murals, spray can art (and illegal graffiti), signage, and public art all play such important roles in defining cities, towns, and urban cultures. Public art viewed from the point of view of the traveler can become windows into the cultural world around us. Art in all its forms enlivens places we visit. For protest, aesthetic, and celebration, they are windows into a new world. Intentional art given for public purpose seems to do most good.

Public art provides a structural usefulness for people who live in the places we visit. It creates a ‘sense of place.’ Murals break up the monotony of hard flat surfaces. They tell stories and pass history between generations. Mosaics are like painting and plastic arts mixed. They seem particularly appropriate and historically resonant in the Middle East and Mediterranean

In Egypt, public art is often filled with ancient symbolism. It is a way to reach back into dim history while bringing forward contemporary aesthetic values. In Alexandria and Cairo, public art is everywhere. Aesthetics are not only on walls and in statues and sculpture put up in prominent locations, but on the painted market carts that rumble gently through the street delivering goods and selling merchandise.

Here in Cyprus, public art and architecture has been a part of public life for literally thousands of years. Villages are built on ruins of older villages containing theaters, frescoes, and mosaics several thousand years ago. But, today, art is increasingly important to meld modern sentiments, expressions, and politics with stories and history of by-gone eras. One particularly smart combination of public art in modern city expression we saw recently in Cyprus was the use of spray can collaborative muraling to surround ancient historic sites under reconstruction Spray Can Artists (graffiti artists who have gotten permission for the placement of their art) compete on tin panels securing restoration sork in the historic center. The contrast of the ancient and the contemporary provide a nice springboard for visitors and locals alike to see themes emerging without vandalism or public conflicts. However, the madcap artistry and tensions expressed by these youthful artists has a temporary functional utility which is sunsetting as the project of restoration moves to completion. Temporary Spray Can Art Installation outside Historic Site - Cyprus

Unlike murals, spray can art, public sculpture or mosaics (where agreements are fixed in advance with private or public property owners for permission to display art)): Graffiti is thought of as having positive and negative effects. But, by definition, graffiti is a nuisance. While it may be beautiful, it creates unbalance as someone has been hurt financially or otherwise. We have seen Roman historic sites 2000 years old spray painted with the usual swear words or propositions of love common n juvenile art. These ugly and selfish displays, which exist everywhere thoughtlessly and without any merit, take away from the artistry of others. Some solutions which we have seen are to provide temporary graffiti boards, to create competitions of juried spray-can art exhibitions, and for owners to turn ver more private and public spaces for display of public arts.

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Public art in Mumbai

written by nathan 

Lively, vivacious Bombay - the heartbeat of India.

Public art and public-ness are everywhere in Mumbai (Bombay). Mumbai is a city which mirrors our modern times. Even its name is a willingness for change. Mumbai is Bombay.

In Mumbai, we stumbled upon the School of Art near V.T. station in downtown. Here they have mural art and spray can (graffiti art) covering the public walls. These canvasses are painted by some great students.

One of the pieces I really love is a graffiti collage of murals in which a character from one mural gently reaches around the corner and pinches a car in an adjoining mural. It symbolized for me an often playful and communal character at work in public art.

Our friends Jenny and Hank Sultan of San Francisco would love the murals of Bombay. They are longtime supporters of public art. Jenny and Hank are some of our favorite friends to think of when we stumble

upon great public art. Hank has been a long time supporter of Precita Eyes, in the Mission District of San Francisco whose mission it is to produce and preserve mural arts. Jenny and Hank would love the murals

surrounding the large campus courtyard at the Arts University in Mumbai. Even more than this, they would love the kilometers of murals painted on the walls running beside train tracks around Mumbai.

What can we each do to preserve and promote more public arts in our community?

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'Step-by-Step' the story of a giving tree

This is the story of a Giving Tree. It lives on a beach and everyday at high tide the tides come up and give it a bath. When the tide is high, its low trunk is a step to keep you dry. When the tides are low but the high sun burns the skin and the hot sand burn feet on the sand the tree provides shade and keeps you cool. Birds sit in the tree in the cool evening breezes and sing to lovers who watch sunsets beneath the branches. The tree has held many swings. Tire swings. Swings made of drift wood and washed up rope.

One day the tree was surrounded by trash that swept up onto the beach in a storm. There were many nets which had stuck together in the terrible surf. There were also toothbrushes, empty bags, and plenty of empty cans of soda (lots of straws too which lost their bottles in the surf). Most of all there were shoes. Lots of shoes. Mostly flip-flops and sandals people may have lost on the beach in the waves. There were also fishing lures, Styrofoam, and fishing floats which must have come a long, long way because they said 'Made in Japan' on their sides.

One day a nice couple arrived from the other side of the world. They had been best friends in high school. When they grew older they they married and separated. Sadly, they had recently lost the husband and wife. Luckily they met again, fell in love, and decided to get married. They were very happy people and treated each other like each day was their honeymoon. They had come to the island before the trash came back and spent every evening watching sunsets beneath this giving tree.

They picked up shoes for two days and other trash. They kept the shoes in one pile and the interesting trash they thought people could reuse in another. With empty bags collected off the beach they separated all the bottles and cans to be recycled. They put the other trash in all the left over bags.

That night, as the sunset, they counted the number of shoes they had found between Monkee and Big Easy beach. They had collected over 250 and not one matched. What would they possibly do with all these shoes without their pairs?

The next day they made jokes with the people who passed as they separated the best shoes from the most broken and torn up shoes. "Are you missing a shoe?" they asked.

But they remembered an old man they had met on an Island near Iryan Jaya, too far from anywhere in between Australia and Indonesia in the far, far Pacific. The old man collected trash and hung it on the beach as art. They had been very moved to see such amazing uses of washed up trash. The old man had told them he hung bottles and shoes in tree to keep away bad spirits and carry his message of the need to clean the oceans all over the world. He told the happy couple that the shoes had found them and brought them to his island to learn what they could do to save the oceans. They could not be here, he said, if they were not wanting to work on his special mission, because the bottles in the trees would keep any bad spirits away.

When this couple remembered the old man, they knew what they could do with their collections of trash. Over the next two days they spent half their time collecting more shoes and the rest of their time using the piles of fishing lines and pieces of of net to tie their shoes to the trunk of their giving tree.

The next day they returned and found that the waves of high tide had undone much of their work and a string of maybe 80 shoes was drifting off from the tree back into the sea. Quickly they regathered the the shoes and tied them more firmly to the tree. The tied up floats to test how high the tides came up. When the water came up the next morning the floats got seaweed on them and they were able to test where the needed to tie the shoes with more knots.

People stopped by as the couple worked on their tree. In the evening, the trunk and the main branches were completely covered in sandals and flip-flops. There were floats attached that bobbed like mobiles in the wind. They looked up and down the beach, Not a piece of trash could be seen in either direction.

"Step-by-Step", the woman said to her loving partner who held her as they watched the sunset under their giving tree, "Step-by step, together we can clean all the oceans in the world and make the beaches all beautiful again!"

"That's it." Her husband responded. They had a name for their giving tree.

The next day they found a piece of driftwood that must have washed up years before in the mangroves behind the giving tree. The wrote "Step-by-Step" on it and tied it with some rope and hung it on the giving tree.

This is a picture of the happy couple who traveled around the world to sit under a tree they loved and watch beautiful sunsets. But they found a storm had thrown trash on there beach including lots of shoes, especially sandals and flip-flops.

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