On the issue of the concept of public sculpture in urban space

Pleskachevskaya Angelina Petrovna Postgraduate student; Faculty of Arts; Lomonosov Moscow State University 121069, Russia, Moscow, Bolshaya Nikitskaya str., 3 plesangelina@gmail.com

Today, public attention to the phenomenon of sculpture and other objects of plastic art installed in public spaces is increasingly becoming more active. Many solutions are criticized from an artistic and aesthetic point of view and/or seem inappropriate in the context of a place in an open public space, the landscape of which not only accompanies the daily life of the population, but also forms stable cultural and other associations with a particular area. The sustained public interest in the phenomenon of sculpture in the urban environment actualizes the research topic, whose practical significance is determined by the development of specific recommendations for both urbanists and citizens themselves. The theoretical significance of the study is determined by the fact that for the first time it offers refined scientific definitions of the concepts of social and public sculpture.  The research is based on theoretical works by domestic and foreign authors devoted to the phenomenon of social, urban sculpture, including those containing a statement and offering solutions regarding the development of the terminological apparatus.

Monuments and sculptures, sculptural groups and street art objects have become integral elements of the improvement of megacities. The placement of a public sculpture shapes and changes the appearance of a megalopolis and can cause conflicts related to the ambiguous perception of the corresponding objects in the established visual appearance, urban associative series.

There are a number of approaches to defining aspects of spatial placement of sculpture in public places ^[1-4], while there is no unified point of view in the subject area, reflecting in many ways the very crisis of society and, in particular, the harmonization of public opinion, which becomes a key narrative in describing modern cultural development and the philosophy of metamodern.

The difficulties in forming a dictionary of scientific research are also influenced by the radical change in aesthetic standards and social demand for decorative and architectural design of public spaces in the last half century, in particular, the concepts of public art and street art are being developed, justifying the creation and preservation of certain plastic solutions in urban spaces.

In the absence of unity in scientific terminology, it is difficult to scientifically investigate aspects of the perception of a new sculpture by the viewer, the appropriateness and choice of solutions for placement in public space, the resolution of public conflicts and the adoption of sound practical decisions in the subject area. The materials of this publication are intended to help eliminate certain terminological contradictions.

Researchers have different approaches to the identification of the concept and to the description of the essence of public sculpture. Many authors believe that this is a decorative and monumental structure erected in the interests and at the request of society in a public space for its decoration and ennobling. However, it is appropriate to note that in the broadest sense of the word, any sculpture placed in a public space and serving the interests of society can be considered public, including, for example, monuments of monumental art erected in honor of a certain historical/outstanding personality and/or an important event.

One of the solutions to terminological and semantic contradictions is proposed by A. O. Kotlomanov ^{[5, pp. 71-72]}, who draws attention to the existence of two related, but independent concepts – public sculpture, created at the request of society and functionally designed to interact with it, as well as sculpture in society, that is, reflecting the meanings and space of public placement any sculpture that is in public unrestricted access and in the sphere of everyday social existence.

Due to the still not well-established vocabulary of art criticism in the Russian language in the subject area, authors often demonstrate caution in the terms used.

As, for example, N. G. Goncharenko, who, recognizing the dominant features of monumental sculpture in the public environment, emphasizes that "a work created for a certain urban context, intended for dialogue with the viewer and with the environment, can rather be attributed to "public" sculpture; its creation presupposes support from the authorities" ^{[6, c 39]}. N. G. Goncharenko outlines in advance the subject area of applied research on public sculpture, excluding any monumental sculpture from it ^[6].

Foreign critics and art practitioners of the middle and second half of the twentieth century shift their focus to the fact that sculptures, being placed in the everyday space of being of different people (in free public access), are necessarily called upon to participate, in the succinct expression of the famous art producer Patricia Phillips, "in creating comfortable conditions for human existence" ^{[7, p. 93]}. The corresponding ideas about the social purpose of art as such echo the idealistic aspirations of Soviet society, especially vividly expressed in plastic art and architecture in the 1930s, that is, several decades earlier than in the West.

Against the background of ideas about the social purpose of sculpture placed in public space, there are grounds for transferring the corresponding meanings in the nomination, which is operated by the science of art criticism. P. V. Voynitsky suggests that the concept of public sculpture focuses on the "social function of art objects in an urban environment" and notes that the appropriate approach reflects the current state of international terminology critics and practitioners ^{[8, p. 376]}.

Agreeing, in general, with the cited author, especially with regard to the international, English-language terminological custom, I would like to note that there is a huge gap between a special research term, stable jargon and a scientific concept in this particular case. In particular, the concept of "social sculpture", more clearly framed in the works of the German artist and eco-activist J. J. Beuys in the 1960s and beyond. It should be noted here that the concepts of "social" and "public" in the sculpture type nomination do not have specific differences, we are talking about complete synonyms.

The concept of social sculpture by J. Beuys and his followers emphasize not just the social purpose of the sculpture placed in a public space, but consider it as a tool for transforming society itself, positively influencing it. In this concept, social sculptures are considered as works of art that satisfy the needs of society and the environment.

The central figure in the world of social sculptures remains the artist, who not only creates sculpture, but also influences the structure of society. An important aspect of social sculpture is plebiscites, which are used to select and place public sculptures in public space, and are supported by various initiatives such as crowdfunding. Thus, artists must recognize that their work is an important part of society ^{[9, 10]}.

The corresponding concept is very remarkable, including in the context, if not directly influencing the development of art, then in the extensive fixation of those ideas and trends that prevailed in European and world art of the second half of the twentieth century. The provisions of the concept of social sculpture are an important source for current scientific developments and art criticism in general, but they can hardly be directly translated into modern scientific discourse, especially for the nomination of established and obviously broader phenomena, both social and artistic.

The idealism of the concept of social sculpture in the form in which it entered the history of social and art criticism ideas lies mainly in the fact that the service to society and the self-restraint of the artist will be interpreted contextually, and differ depending on the type of society, space and time, as well as situational circumstances. Boyce's ideas could serve as an important guideline in coordinating public interests, but in reality, the management of public spaces is faced with the most complex intricacies of conflicting interests of stakeholders and attempts to pressure city authorities ^{[11, 12]}. At the same time, many cases of installation of that decorative and monumental sculpture in public spaces, which today we call social, or public sculpture, pursued specific goals that differ from the pathos of the ideas of the concept of social sculpture by J. Boyce and his associates.

Freedom of creativity, on the one hand, is represented quite widely (and under the auspices of the inadmissibility of its restriction, numerous extremely questionable objects from an artistic and aesthetic point of view penetrate into urban spaces). On the other hand, trends in modern public sculpture, primarily in the West, are largely influenced by contextual narratives of public inquiry, including the falsely understood values of inclusivity, paradoxically adjacent to the culture of mass cancellation.

What one can really agree with is that in recent decades it has been extremely difficult to describe the place of sculpture in public space in the space of the previous classification, in particular, with the division of sculpture into monumental, decorative-monumental, decorative and easel. In particular, street art objects occupy their place in the complex of elements of the artistic and associative landscape of public spaces, some of them pass not only into the category of socially approved, but also protected in the long term (although this may often require the transfer of objects to another location).

Consequently, cautious approaches to determining the extent of the influence of social value and ties with society on the concept of public sculpture seem justified. For effective application in science, the term "social sculpture" should contextually define the range of objects that art criticism actually studies, while interdisciplinary connections should not dominate to such an essential extent that a correct interpretation of the terms would require the indispensable presence of deep knowledge in non-core science, in particular, in sociology.

In this sense, an approach with the unconditional removal of monumental works from the objects of public sculpture begins to have new features. Although both public and monumental sculpture placed in public space ideologically originate from society, in the first case we are talking about a certain limited part of it, and in the second – from a wider part, for example, monumental monuments are often objects of federal importance, and many new creations are built with the support of the initiative of the population of the entire state.

The timing of the installation of public and monumental sculptures also differs, reflecting, among other things, the different level of social value expressed. Some public sculptures are deliberately installed for a certain short period (3-5 years), and the average life span of street art is usually much shorter, and, remembering Banksy, is often intentionally limited by street authors themselves, who are not restrained and are not restrained creatively.

And even in the context of placing social existence in the public space, monumental and public sculptures play slightly different roles. While public sculpture complements and frames the artistic and associative landscape of a localized territory, monumental sculpture often defines the visual range of the entire city, forming the main material associations. Both the associative and artistic and cultural value of monumental and public sculptures, thus belong to different social groups in terms of discrepancy in volume, although one of them (the microsocium of a certain territory) is part of the other (the macrosocium of the entire city, its guests, and the country as a whole – in relation to historical and cultural monuments - multiple generations).

Together with the term "public sculpture", the concept of urban sculpture is often found in the literature ^[13-15]. Most often we are talking about synonyms, but sometimes there may be an assumption about the preferred choice of one of the terms instead of another, or, conversely, the undesirability of their use. The relevant issues are related, among other things, to the inconsistency of scientific approaches regarding the understanding of the essence of public sculpture itself.

However, having dotted the dots on this issue, we can proceed to clarify the concept of urban sculpture, which, of course, is the most common type of public sculpture, reflecting the trend towards decorative monumental sculpture and small sculptural backgrounds of urban spaces where such sculpture is appropriate and in demand.

Reflecting the specifics of the environment of public placement of public sculpture, its scientific definition should also emphasize the peculiarities of managing the urban social environment of the daily life of the permanent population, connections with the historical landscape and the tourist passport of the city.

As a result, it is possible to propose the following refined definitions of the concepts of public and urban sculpture:

— public sculpture is a set of decorative and monumental sculpture objects created to establish a visual and symbolic presence in public space based on the initiative of the authorities and the wishes of the local society (microsocium locally of the territory), established taking into account aspects of ensuring subsequent dialogue with the viewer and with the environment to meet the aesthetic and functional needs of the majority of members of the microsocium;

— urban sculpture is a kind of social sculpture created and installed in accordance with the requests of the urban microsocium in a publicly accessible urban space, forming the artistic and associative landscape of a modern city, characterized at the same time by the presence of a certain decorative, social value, forming the identity of the inhabitants of the city and the city itself as a tourist center.

Ideas about the aesthetics and functionalism of urban sculpture have developed throughout the evolution of human civilization, while such development has not been linear. In protocultures, objects placed in common spaces had utilitarian properties, being intended mainly for ceremonial actions; in this sense, some ideas about public sculpture in modern times, highlighting a functional, utilitarian purpose as dominant in the senses of public sculpture, close the circle of historical development.

Radical changes take place during antiquity, when public spaces themselves appear in their understanding, which has reached our days, and the task of effective management of them arises. In antiquity, the highest standards of aesthetics of sculpture were set, including those placed in public space, to which Renaissance artists returned, largely complementing and developing the classics of artistic and aesthetic perception.

O. Rodin "removes" sculpture from the pedestal; in the twentieth century, monumental works in their artistic and social value even begin to yield to decorative sculpture. The "reversal" of the sculpture placed in public spaces, "to the person", allows us to talk about the appearance, in fact, of public sculpture (in different countries – in different decades of the twentieth century).

In the era of postmodernism and mass consumption, the social in sculpture placed in public spaces begins to dominate the artistic. Public sculpture is full of narratives and associations, often designed to activate conflict in the viewer's mind.

But the corresponding goals cannot always be achieved, and the leveling of aesthetic requirements for public sculpture, combined with a complex of external phenomena, including those that are poorly amenable to targeted effects, leads to a massive manifestation of the ugly in art – an abundance of urban sculptures of low artistic quality, inappropriate in context and location, as well as the phenomenon of visual noise, or garbage, when a massive accumulation of illiterate sculptures, and sometimes quite decent-looking, blurs and destroys the normal visual appearance of modern territories, causes discomfort to the viewer. Again, it is important to take into account that the citizens – the main viewers – will interact with objects that do not suit their gaze for a long time, and such unacceptable interaction will become routine.

It turns out that the breadth of artistic creativity (sometimes understood in the context of the lack of self-restraint and social restrictions of the author's work), together with defects in decision-making about the management of public spaces, lead to numerous problems that level the place of public sculpture in the life of a modern city and citizens. As a result, there is a need, among other things, to develop methodological guidelines, scientific guidelines for directing creative activity in a productive and approved direction, making correct decisions in the field of ordering, financing and regarding a specific place for the installation of public sculpture, in particular, in public spaces of modern Russian megacities.

 It is these circumstances, as follows from the materials of the conceptual analysis carried out above, that determine the scope and orientation of the social in the analyzed type of modern sculpture.

For scientific support of solving problems of the appropriate kind, it is proposed to propose an author's adaptation of the concept of the artistic and associative landscape of a modern city, which is designed to harmoniously include public sculpture (see Figure 1). Some fundamental ideas about the place of sculpture in the artistic and associative urban landscape are presented in the works ^{[16, 17]}.

The main ideas reflected in the scheme presented in Figure 1 are as follows: that an urban artistic-associative landscape is a complex concept that describes a group of artistic objects created to improve the urban environment and interact with the environment.

The urban artistic and associative landscape has decorative and functional value, and also contributes to the formation of the identity of the city and its inhabitants, including in the perception of the guests of the city.

The corresponding theoretical and methodological development can also be used to evaluate the existing urban sculpture, including when making a decision on dismantling or transfer.

Figure 1 – Public sculpture in the contours of the artistic and associative landscape of a modern city

Source: Developed by the author

Thus, public, including urban, sculpture occupies an important place in modern art and social activity, forming a complex phenomenon that is subject to detailed and comprehensive study. It should be noted the inconsistency in scientific approaches to the definition of the essence of public sculpture, which can be overcome on the basis of the formation of a single terminological apparatus, including on the basis of the approaches proposed in this work.

I would like to emphasize the importance of researching and defining the concepts of public and urban sculpture, as well as the need to develop methodological approaches for managing and evaluating public sculpture in modern cities. In this article, an adaptation of the concept of the artistic and associative landscape of the city is proposed, which makes it possible to harmoniously fit public sculpture into the urban environment. The application of a methodological approach will allow you to manage creative activity in this area and make the right decisions regarding the ordering, financing and placement of public sculpture in public spaces of cities.