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Politics, Michele Bogart asserted in a recent lecture, is the main issue when it comes to questions of public art and urban beauty. Bogart, Professor of American Art and Material Culture at Stony Brook University, was chosen by the Art History department to present “The Politics of Public Beauty: New York Answers and Chicago Questions” as part of the School of the Art Institute’s Norma Lifton Lecture Series. In addition to her academic work, she served as Vice President of the Art Commission of the City of New York for a four-year period. This experience led to the publication of her most recent book, The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York City and Its Art Commission, from which the lecture partially derived.
Bogart began by recalling a formative experience she had as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, in which she was asked her opinion of Marc Chagall’s “Four Seasons” (1974). Her response—that the large glass-and-stone mosaic, located in Chicago’s First National Plaza reminded her unfavorably of urban graffiti—and the chagrin with which she recalled saying so, served as a revelatory introduction to the potential issues surrounding the perception of public art in cities and the role that regulatory bodies and politics can and do play in the creation and commission of such works. When individuals or organizations bring plans for public art before the commission of which Bogart was a part, she claimed, they typically have the somewhat obvious aim of garnering popular attention for a certain event, action, or person. In overseeing the creation and commissioning of public art—especially in cities, where varied ethnic and political groups coexist—this requires creating harmony between goals and perspectives that are often quite different. Given the tendency for disputes to arise, public art works may become, at best, compromises and, at worst, ugly and meaningless objects that, Bogart asserted, “trivialize place.”
According to Bogart, New York City’s former mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, showed a great deal of “mayoral scorn” towards public art. She illustrated this assertion by showing pieces that had been approved by Giuliani and rejected by the art commission. Specifically, there was a quite abhorrent statue of Teddy Roosevelt as a “typical New Yorker,” mouth contorted into an expression of anger, which had been approved by the mayor and vetoed by the committee. This statue, she claimed, was one example of what can happen when a mayor’s taste on art and beauty varies widely from that of the committee or public.
Bogart continued to discuss similarly bad taste, showing other projects that were designed to impart “a bit of whimsy” to the city. Highlights varied from toucans on light poles to impart a sense of “Caribbean-ness” to a neighborhood to little frog sculptures and an Alaskan sled dog in public parks. The problems with these potential pieces of public art, according to Bogart, included shoddy construction and a lack of concern about how they might fit into sight lines or the urban environment. The people and organizations who had given these pitches had done little to support their causes, as they showed little regard for place, the urban environment, and the idea of art.
Perhaps the most important observation that Bogart made was that the most valuable elements in creating public art and urban beauty are restraint and simplicity. When these ideals are not possible, she asserted, temporary public arts projects are also good options, due to their impermanence. Before they disappear, however, they also create the possibility for the public at large to learn and experience something new in the city.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “Gates” (2005) in New York City’s Central Park is one such example of a work that created the possibility for the public at large to learn and experience something new in the city. Concluding her discussion of the variety of special interests that come into conflict when public art works are commissioned, Bogart observed that Chicago is fortunate that Mayor Richard M. Daley is aesthetically-minded and generally concerned with art’s relationship to the urban environment. Specifically, she was pleased with the lack of whimsical animals in our city, a certain bronzed cow being a lamentable but notable exception. Ultimately, it was somewhat rewarding to hear that Chicago’s urban environment is situated at the forefront of public beauty.
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