Proposal for public art

In his ‘City of the Sun’ utopia, written in 1602, Tommaso Campanella imagined murals throughout the city presenting discoveries in the arts and sciences, from mathematical figures to poetry, to the arrangement of the Earth and stars. His book inspired the Bolshevik revolutionaries to set up a public monuments programme of key philosophers and political figures, with the aim of turning streets and squares into enlightening places.

Ours may not be an age for grand monuments, but public art should still feed the mind and stimulate the senses. Public art plays an ever-growing role in urban policy across the world, and the cost and mass of artworks is growing steadily. Some of this new public art works to good effect. London projects such as Poems on the Underground and Platform for Art have brought art into the often-alienating environment of the Underground, giving commuters a pause for thought or another angle on the world.

But too much public art in the UK is produced by worthy committees, with their staid and paternalistic ideas of public identity and the role of art. These committees tend to fund art for a variety of political reasons - to help create public identity, ease social fragmentation, or to tie people to place. This has produced a new genre of bland ‘community art’, where – for example - every seaside town or city ends up with sculptures of fish and sea birds, or inner city areas get children’s handprints or representations of the community ‘coming together’.

Another problem is that too much public art is delivered to order, as a bureaucratic part of urban development that is not justified or questioned. For example, many UK councils have a ‘Per cent for art programme’, which means that a percent of all money for development must be set aside for art. Under this system, art is made not from political will or passion but as a rubber-stamping exercise.

For public art to be lively and good it should be contested, with more public discussions about artworks, and with artists and architects putting their case for their work and explaining their aims. The Fourth Plinth Project in Trafalgar Square – with a rotating series of artworks and ongoing debate about what should be on the plinth - was a positive development in this respect.

Here are a number of suggestions for how public art might be improved:

1. Continuing support for the more successful public arts programmes, such as the Fourth Plinth project and Platform for Art; and looking for new ways in which art can be shown in public.

2. Ending obligatory public art funding, such as the ‘Per cent for art programme’. Public art should be argued for and justified, rather than waved through as a bureaucratic measure. Also, cutting back on the money distributed through established committees, such as the Arts Council, local councils and Lottery Fund.

3. Instead, public art policy could encourage new alliances of people to discuss and decide which art ends up in public, for example: ad hoc committees of artists; public debates and votes for public artworks; calls for public subscriptions to fund public art.

4. The aim of public art funding should be much more exploratory, and less driven by the ideological needs of a moribund bureaucracy. Public art can serve a range of functions – to be beautiful or visually striking, to make us laugh or think, or to make a political point. Whatever its motivation, this should come from the ground of social life – the style and conviction of the artist; the views and character of the people who live in the area – not from committee bureaucracy.

5. Finally, to put on free public tours of urban spaces – for example, talks by architects or historians – so that residents can learn more about the styles and history of the buildings, monuments and artworks. Access to this knowledge could enable city residents to enjoy and gain more from their journeys through the city, and develop their own artistic views and tastes.

A walk around a city such as London is already an aesthetic experience – and if public art was less clichéd and more vibrant and surprising, it could be a lot better.

To respond to this, login, and then click on 'Add new comment' below.