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Designing Britain 1945 - 1975
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Art for Social Spaces
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Themes
> Spaces
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SPACES
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Introduction
ASS focuses on work produced for and/or sited in a particular kind of space – ‘social space’. This section invites you to consider the concept of ‘space’ alongside the different physical ‘spaces’ – sites, locations – available to sculpture.
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Social/Public/Private
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Is space neutral?
Even if it is empty, space is never indifferent. Uninhabited space has its own stories and histories.
The houses, rooms, nooks, corners and cupboards examined by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space are vessels for the imagination, locations of the soul, havens for objects
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What psychology lies behind their locks and keys! They bear within themselves a kind of esthetics of hidden things. To pave the way for a phenomenology of what is hidden, one preliminary remark will suffice : an empty drawer is unimaginable. It can only be thought of.
G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, [first pub. 1958], Beacon Press, Boston, 1964, p. xxxiii.
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| The appropriation – or even the identification or acknowledgment – of physical space as a site or location involves a process of socialisation. Underlining the construction of ‘social space’, Lefebvre examined the notion of space as ‘product’, |
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Even in Venice, social space is produced and reproduced in connection with the forces of production (and with the relations of production). And these forces, as they develop, are not taking over a pre-existing, empty or neutral space, or a space determined solely by geography, climate, anthropology, or some other comparable consideration … […] … A social space cannot be adequately accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous history. Nor does the growth of the forces of production give rise in any direct causal fashion to a particular space or particular time. Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into consideration : the action of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology or within the domain of representations. Social space contains a great diversity of objects, both natural and social, including the networks and pathways which facilitate the exchange of material things and information.
H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, [trans. D. Nicholson-Smith, first pub. 1974], Blackwell, Oxford, 1991
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‘Social space’ may be difficult to define but so too is ‘public space’.
‘Public’ art is commissioned, produced and studied – and work is sited in the public domain. But what do we mean by public space? What do we mean by public? Who designates public space? Where is it?
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ASS00233 Transport Pavilion from the Fairway; Festival of Britain, South Bank Exhibition
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  View larger image |
| In the early post-war years new spaces were created for public work, and case studies will explore some of these. Institutions such as the Arts Council, the British Council and local authorities like the London County Council played important roles in facilitating new spaces and generating new audiences for sculpture. |
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| More recently, following the 1980s boom in public art – with the percent for art campaign set up in 1988 with the support of the Arts Council – the idea of success has been viewed sceptically, |
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The received wisdom of public art professionals is that the public may grow to appreciate public artworks over time. It was also considered that the burdgeoning of public art would contribute towards the creation of new audiences for art. No evidence was found to support this view.
Institute of Policy Studies Report, 1995
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| After the war, private companies and the commercial sector played an increasing role in funding arts projects. Companies such as John Moores and Peter Stuyvessant are early examples of commercial involvement in the arts. Corporate sponsorship has increasingly branded projects, exhibitions and artworks. As global capital appropriates the urban environment and cyberspace – the internet and web communications systems - with branding, logos and hoardings, can we still talk about public space – or has can all space become public? |
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Questions for discussion
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What do you understand by ‘social space’?
Can you define public space? What are its boundaries? Who owns it?
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Texts
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G.Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, [first pub. 1958], Beacon Press, Boston, 1964
Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions - Art and Social Politics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996
Mel Gooding, Public: Art : Space, A Decade of Public Art, Merrell Holberton Publishers, Public Art Commissions Agency, London,1998
H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, [trans. D. Nicholson-Smith, first pub. 1974], Blackwell, Oxford, 1991
Sergiusz Michalski, Public Monuments, Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997, Reaktion Books, London, 1998
S. Sadler, The Situationist City, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass./London, 1998
Harriet F Senie, Contemporary Public Sculpture – Tradition, Transformation and Controversy, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1992
Harriet Senie and Sally Webster, (eds.), Critical Issues in Public Art : Content, Context and Controversy, Smithsonian Institute Press, New York, 1992
John A Walker, Art and Outrage, Provocation, Controversy and the Visual Arts, Pluto Press, London,1999
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Next
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| You have now worked through all four Theme sections. You should now select a case study. |
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