ART OR EYESORE?
Public artwork can be evocative, as long as it’s in the right location,
This may make me seem unsophisticated — scratch that, I may well be unsophisticated — but I think most public art should be decorative before it is anything else. In residential areas, or heavily trafficked areas where a lot of people work or do business, public art should exist to make the people who have to encounter it every day like their city a bit a more.
I say this on a day where I paid a visit to a sculpture the Star recently described as “Toronto’s most hated new piece of public art.”
That description was on visual arts critic Murray Whyte’s defence of the sculpture, Three Points Where Two
Lines Meet, at the triangular traffic island where Bathurst St. and Vaughan Rd. converge just south of St. Clair Ave. W. It is a deliberately unfinished-looking metal construction in primary colours, like an oversized toy Meccano Set frame, that overhangs the sidewalk.
I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it. I found it mildly interesting. It ain’t pretty, and it obviously isn’t intended to be.
That’s part of what Whyte likes about it. “It’s not easy, no — I’ll give you that. Nor is it pleasant, agreeable, cute (well, I think it’s kind of cute), acquiescent or blithely decorative,” he wrote. When he looks at it, he sees “a development industry run amok, wedging bolted-together condomini- ums into every available space with little regard for scale or context, polishing them up with a sparkly marketing campaign for a hard sell.” He calls it a critical metaphor “for our city’s quick-build affliction, its just-add-water development agenda, its disregard for land use and public space.”
“That said,” he goes on, “I don’t have to live with it.”
Carolynn Ross does have to live with it, since her home is nearby and she walks, cycles or drives past it every day. She says it is a missed opportunity. “It’s already an area that’s angular, and not very attractive,” she said. “It needs to be softened.”
Ross doesn’t need to be reminded of the aggressiveness of the development industry, of the crowding of the city, of the perpetual construction, because the neighbourhood nearby is already to some extent dominated by those things. A little grassy parkette would have been nice, she said. Or something that softened a harsh corner. I sympathize with her. I often appreciate art that makes a statement, that evokes strong emotions, that takes effort to think through. In museums, in film, in books, sometimes in music, I have sought out those things.
But when it comes to public art placed in spots where people have no choice about whether to live beside it every day — often to have their own community defined by it — I think “difficult” or “challenging” are among the most damning things you can say. A piece may well succeed as art — making you think, making you feel — and at the same time it makes the neighbourhood a worse place to live. Which in my books, makes it a failure as a contribution to the community.
The parkette across the street from your house shouldn’t be something you have to endure. The walk to work is not necessarily the place to be forced to confront harsh truths about human nature and society every day. Toronto’s weather and traffic already provide enough mood suppressants.
I do think there is a place for public art that isn’t upbeat. The Vietnam War memorial in Washington, the sculptures commemorating the Irish potato famine on the Toronto waterfront — I like both of them very much. Not despite, but because they are haunting. But both are constructed in areas you visit in order to contemplate and reflect. They aren’t right there in your community’s living room.
It’s also true that taste is subjective, and that there’s a long history of public art that was widely hated at first and came to be beloved. With any given piece, maybe time will mellow the impacts.
But the controversy itself is an occasion to remind those commissioning and building such pieces that they ought to consider that it will be, for better or for worse, a compulsory daily feature of many people’s lives. If the intended effect of a piece is to evoke depression or anger or confusion or some other strong negative emotion, perhaps a different location is a better place to do it.
It is great if a piece of public sculpture or architecture can function as good art — rewarding repeated visits, making you realize something about your environment or feel something that sticks with you and endures. But unlike in other art forms, these ought to be secondary goals. First, do no harm: a piece of public art should make the surrounding community a more pleasant place to live, work or go about your day.