Outdoor Public Sculpture An Active Medium of Dialogue

Abstract

Building upon the simple premise that public sculpture takes its meaning from its context, which may be enhanced and modified or diluted and destroyed, in this essay I consider two avenues of exploration. First, I address placemaking through an examination of five modern outdoor sculptures: Alexander Calder's La Grande Vitesse, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Isamu Noguchi's Portal, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Free Stamp, and Tom Burr's Deep Purple. Each work activates a space and engages in placemaking. I also consider the negation of placemaking through a critique of a guerrilla art incident by Newsense Enterprises, a pair of self-appointed authority figures charged with the task of “closing” public sculpture. Second, I offer a conception of public sculpture where artist and audience are equal participants. To do so, I consider the intersection of commission and meaning by raising and addressing issues surrounding the creation and “post-creation life” of public sculpture. In developing this term, I have been informed by Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical notion of Wirkungsgeschichte, Louise Rosenblatt's “reader-response theory,” and Benedict Anderson's notion of an “imagined community.”