It is fascinating how the life of public art is determined by the relevance and acceptance of the art by the community itself. The community works to ensure that the public art remains relevant, it keeps the stories alive
First spoken of in 1919, the Second Avenue subway line in New York was finally opened to public this month. The world’s most expensive subway line, it has been the long-awaited redeemer, an urban legend, that we thought would never appear for real. Ordinary stations would have worked well but the city chose to go for the extraordinary, merging daily routine with pleasure, and utility with art.
The Second Avenue line has two miles of track and three stations — rather art hubs may be a better name for the latter. First, the 63rd Street has artist Jean Shin’s archival photographs from the New York Historical Society and New York Transit Museum that show the Second Avenue elevated line being taken down, as a reminder of how cities are constantly changing. Second, artist Sarah Sze’s work for 96th Street is a blue image of blowing paper and other artifacts swirling around the subway passengers through approximately 14,000 square feet of porcelain wall tiles. And the third, 86th Street features 12 large-scale mosaic portraits created by artist Chuck Close.
My favourite on the line, however, is a series named ‘Perfect Strangers’ of 36 life-size portraits that depict New Yorkers and tourists waiting for a train. Created by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, I love it for its diversity, besides it even includes a Sikh businessman!
Public art slows you down. While passing by, you take a moment to notice the colour and the form. You take your mind off the destination and enjoy the journey. It makes you feel or at least think while on the way, instead of travelling numbly. There is plenty of research which shows that public art is good for the economy. But I would not go that far — I have never felt particularly business-savvy after appreciating art. But art soothes my senses and jumpstarts my brain, and in that sense perhaps makes me more productive.
I also enjoy public art because it is democratic — by the people and for the people, free of cost. I cannot say this is the case for the Second Avenue line — at a budget of $4.6 billion, this short subway line brings art to your step at a staggering cost to the taxpayer. To put this price into perspective, Paris recently announced a $25-billion plan to build 68 stations and over 190 kilometres of track by 2030. The artwork itself on the Second Avenue line might not have been expensive, but the medium it is mounted on certainly is. Whereas the beauty of public art lies in the majesticity of scale as well as the simplicity or even frugality of medium.
last week at a dinner celebrating Indian and French art collaborations hosted in New Delhi by the French Ambassador to India, I asked Hanif Kureishi — who was my neighbour on the dining table and who chose to stand by the table and eat from his plate — if he too was an artistIJ He told me he is a temporary artist. I tried but could not extract an explanation from him about his temporality and nor did he sit at the table while we spoke all through dinner. looking down at me, he instead explained that he painted public spaces, covering them with art.
Brightening up the space, the few spots where public art is on display in Delhi makes up for the lamentable lack of any authentic style in contemporary architecture in a city once known for its architectural aesthetics.
My fiancé Chirag’s new business in Meharchand Market overlooks a gigantic art piece on an old wall of a lodhi Colony residential building, and has the Harijan colony slum in the backyard — it could indeed be an apt metaphor of progress in India. Vibrant concentric rhombuses in hot pink, blue, and black cover three floors of an entire block and was part of a public art project by Hanif’s St+art Foundation that worked on several other buildings in the area, Hanif told me.
While the slum in the backyard is heartbreaking, the art in front makes for a fabulous view from Chirag’s first-floor property. The art on the rest of the buildings of lodhi Colony matches in spirit with the wonderful creative objects sold at the retail shops lacing the short strip of the Meharchand Market — producing an endless free flow of imagination both inside and outside the shops. The area around the painted walls has been kept especially clean by the community, while the Harijan Colony at the back remains dilapidated.
last year the lalit Kala Akademi had also collaborated with the New Delhi Municipal Council for a unique public art project for Delhi. Nine sculptors from across the country were chosen for a residency programme to create a black stone sculpture each to be permanently displayed at major locations in Connaught Place, Nehru Park, and lodhi Garden areas of Delhi. The stone was brought from Rajasthan and the designs ranged from a large pair of reading glasses to human portraits. The nine sculptures today are littered with food wrappers, waste, and other garbage.
While the beauty of art in public is that it merges with people’s lives, but in this case, art has been overpowered. We cannot be too surprised about it either. Delhi — an enormous dusty over-populated metropolis — can easily swallow up any puny efforts related to the gentler sensibilities of manners, aesthetics, or grace in civic life. But it does make us wonder how is it that the state of the public sculptures is already so grim while the art in lodhi Colony is preservedIJ
The answer to that might take us back to the democratic aspect of public art. Art is selfish and so we can forget about first convening upon a consensus within the community over what art must be created in the area. However, when public art is designed to be in synchrony with the spirit of the locality, then the result is magical — not just in form but also in the role that the art form takes in public life. It is fascinating how the life of public art is determined by the relevance and acceptance of the art by the community itself. The community works to ensure that the public art remains relevant; it keeps the stories about these art works alive.
We have yet to see the fate of the impressive art on the Second Avenue subway line, but we already know the history of the Wall Street Charging Bull also in New York city. The Wall Street Charging Bull sculpture by artist Arturo Di Modica and casted by the Bedi Makky Art Foundry was installed following the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of the strength and power of the American people. The idea and form of the sculpture was the artist’s — not the stock market’s — yet the sculpture remains clean, very much cherished, and protected by the local community. Because it gives the people a common identity in a tangible visible format and therefore a collective role in protecting it, and indeed enjoying it.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd. She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum. miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com