The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Arts and Architecture A PUBLIC PERSPECTIVE ON PUBLIC ART’S CHARACTERISTICS AND ITS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE URBAN FABRIC: A CASE STUDY IN TAIPEI CITY, TAIWAN A Thesis in Architecture by Po-Ching Wang © 2009 Po-Ching Wang Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Architecture May 2009 The thesis of Po-Ching Wang was reviewed and approved* by the following: James Wines Professor of Architecture Thesis Advisor Peter Aeschbacher Assistant Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture Jodi LaCoe Assistant Professor of Architecture Daniel Willis Professor of Architecture Head of the Department of Architecture *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ii ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to explore the public’s understanding of public art as well as their perceptions regarding this genre’s ability to benefit a city/community in the ways its advocates have claimed. Two research questions are addressed: For the general public, what are the characteristics of public art? Does the public perceive public art as contributing to the community? Taking the related reference and case studies into account, this empirical study proposes two conceptual frameworks and then establishes measurement scales. It gathers data for analysis by means of questionnaires used to interview respondents. Through Principal Components Analysis of the data collected, this research identifies five latent constructs in regard to the social features of public art and titled them Aesthetics, Publicness, Site Specificity, Affordance, and Social Critique.
Furthermore, public art’s contributions are categorized according to seven latent constructs: Social Progress, Therapeutic Environment, Place Attachment, Social/Environmental Education, Environmental Amelioration, Tourist Attraction, and Economic Benefit. Analysis of the data collected from the general public substantiates these constructs. The finding suggest that the residents of Taipei City think that works of public art indeed benefit their living environment. Based on the empirical evidence gathered in Taipei City, this research finds that the public’s own definition of public art can reasonably be summarized thus: Public art is an aesthetic form with a social function that is produced via a democratic process; its form and process of production disclose the relationship between the work itself and public everyday life; and it is this co-evolving relationship that affirms the quality of the work over time.
In addition, it is reasonable to view public art as a gateway to community regeneration. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………. v LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………. 6 Research Purpose and Questions.
7 Need for and Significance of the Study………………………………………. 8 Organization of Thesis Content. 11 The Characteristics of Public Art ………………………………………………… 11 Public Art’s Contributions to City/Community Regeneration………. 44 Rationale for Applying an Empirical Quantitative Approach…………………….
44 Research Design and Operation Process…………………………………………. 45 Public Art Movement in Taiwan and the Study Area.…………………………… 51 Data Collection…………………………………………………………………… 63 Chapter 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION. 64 Measuring the Characteristics of Public Art……………………………………… 66 Measuring the Perceived Contribution of Public Art to Community Development 73 Chapter 5.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION……………………………………………. 83 Perceived Characteristics of Public Art…………………………………………. 85 Perceived Contributions of Public Art to the Community………………………. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS………………….…………………………………………………… 96 Delimitations and Limitations…………………………………………………….
103 Suggestions for Future Research. 123 iv LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1.1 Two public art projects that met with public opprobrium and were moved/modified…………………………………………………………….1 The genres of public art…………………………………………………….2 Artworks displayed and circulated at various parks for the public………….3 Various editions of the Tai-Chi series……………………………………….4 Two editions of George Segal’s Gay Liberation…………………………… 18 Figure 2.5 Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Venice Projections………………………………… 24 Figure 2.6 How Ya Like Me Now?…………………………………………………….7 Artists’ intentions and the works’ meaning to its constituencies…………… 26 Figure 2.8 Rocky at the museum……………………………………………………….9 The earth necklace—SS…………………………………………………… 35 Figure 2.10 Smithson’s Spiral Jetty…………………………………………………….11 The Devils Lake project by Viet Ngo in 1990 in Devils Lake…………….12 Time Landscape of New York City by Alan Sonfist………………………… 38 Figure 2.13 Public art on Hai-An Road………………………………………………….14 Succession of sense of place-dominator…………………………………….15 The Leonhardt Lagoon…………………………………………………….2 The conceptual framework of the characteristics of public art…………….3 The conceptual framework of the contributions of public art to community development/regeneration………………………………………………….4 The study area……………………………………………………………….5 Public artworks by a local Taiwanese artist, Yuyu Yean………………….6 From Agriculture To Industrial Society (1969) by Shui-Long Yan……….7 Infinite of Minimum by Zai-Qian Li……………………………………….8 The Luce Memorial Chapel………………………………………………… 56 Figure 3.9 Large-scale temporal lighting sculptures…………………………………… 59 Figure 3.10 Dome of light by Narcissus Quagliata……………………………………… 60 v Figure 3.11 Emerald Laminata by Lutz Haufschild…………………………………….12 Images of Taipei…………………………………………………………….13 Public art in Taipei City…………………………………………………….1 The scree-plot of Principal Component Analysis for the question items measuring the social features of public art………………………………….2 The mean histogram of the four components of characteristics of public art 72 Figure 4.3 The mean of each perceived characteristic of public art…………………… 73 Figure 4.3 The scree-plot of the Principal Component Analysis of the question items about public art’s contributions to community development/regeneration… 78 Figure 4.4 The mean histogram of seven components of public art’s perceived contributions to community development/regeneration…………………….5 The mean of seven components of public art’s perceived contributions to community development/regeneration…………………………………… 80 Figure 5.1 Two frameworks for presenting the characteristics of public art………….2 Two frameworks for presenting public art’s contributions to community development/regeneration………………………………………………….2 Shi-Dong…………………………………………………………………… 99 Figure 6.4 Taipei 228 monument……………………………………………………… 101 Figure 6. 103 vi LIST OF TABLES Page Table 3.1 The Measurement Structure of the Social Features of Public Art………… 49 Table 3.2 The Structure for Measuring the Contributions of Public Art to Community Development/Regeneration………………………………….1 The Socio-demographic Profile of Respondents………………………….2 The Item-Total Statistics of the Reliability Test Based on the Question Items Measuring the Characteristics of Public Art……………………….3 KMO and Bartlett’s Test of the Question Items about the Characteristics of Public Art……………………………………………………………….4 The Rotated Component Matrix of Principal Component Analysis Based on the Question Items about the Social Features of Public Art…………… 69 Table 4.5 The Total Variance Explained of the Four Factor Components of the Social Features of Public Art……………………………………………… 70 Table 4.6 The Mean and Other Statistics of the Four Factor Components of the Social Features of Public Art……………………………………………… 72 Table 4.7 The Item-Total Statistics of the Reliability Test Based on the Question Items about Public Art’s Contributions to Community Development/Regeneration…………………………………………….8 KMO and Bartlett’s Test of the Items about Public Art’s Contributions to Community Development/Regeneration………………………………….9 The Rotated Component Matrix Based on the Question Items about Public Art’s Contributions to Community Development/Regeneration….10 Total Variance Explained Based on the Seven Factor Components of Public Art’s Contributions to Community Development/Regeneration….11 The Mean and Other Statistics of Seven Factor Components of Public Art’s Contributions to Community Development/Regeneration………….12 Overall Satisfaction with Public Art Projects in Taipei City……………… 82 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation for many individuals who have played important roles in bringing this project to fruition. My gratitude goes first and foremost to my thesis advisor, Professor James Wines, who has guided this project with both great patience and tremendous insight.
My educational journey with him has been truly enriching; he shared with me his perspectives on public art as well as his considerable knowledge of the aesthetics of built environment. I also wish to thank Professor Peter Aeschbacher for his suggestions in regard to my research methods and survey procedures. I am grateful to Professor Jodi La Coe for all her thoughtful recommendations in regard to this research. My work also benefited considerably from some on-target suggestions of Dr.
In particular, I owe special thanks to Dr. I greatly appreciate his knowledge of statistics and research methods, as well as his enthusiasm for my work and his encouragement as I worked to complete it. I am so thankful for my friends in Taiwan who helped me collect data for this research, especially for Hope. Without their enthusiastic assistance in distributing the questionnaires, this research would not have been possible.
Thank you, dear C., for years of love and understanding. I must also acknowledge my editor, Nicola, for her great proofreading skills and expertise in language arts. Last but certainly not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and family. I have owed them so much for so long.
viii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION What does public art mean to the public? Although it is often claimed that public art is created for the public, studies of this genre have paid little attention to the public’s view and reception of this genre. For instance, there is limited empirical knowledge about how the general public defines public art, or whether the public perceives any benefit as accruing from public artworks in their neighborhoods. This limited knowledge about the public’s views and expectations of public art may result, one could argue, has resulted, in considerable negative impact on public art projects and the neighborhood in which they have been built For example, in 1983, Infinite of Minimum (Fig.1) was installed in the public plaza near the Taipei Fine Arts Museum; it was far from being welcomed by the public. Specifically, the public disliked the red color of the artwork, seeing it as a symbol of mainland China if viewed from a certain aspect/angle.
As a result of public pressure, Infinite of Minimum was repainted white. However, the artist, Zai-Qian Li appealed the decision on the grounds that it ran counter to the dignity of art; he won, and Infinite of Minimum was painted red once again. Richard Serra’s Titled Arc was not as lucky as Infinite of Minimum. When the Tilted Arc was placed in New York City’s Federal Plaza in 1981, a huge controversy resulted.
The Cor-Ten steel installation diagonally cut across the public plaza, dividing the plaza in half and thus changing the patterns of people’s movements. People from the neighborhood quickly started to complain that this 120 feet long by 12 feet high weathered and rusted COR-TEN steel sculpture 1 caused too much inconvenience, and they demanded that it be relocated. Serra and others in favor of keeping the artwork at its original site, however, offered an opposing view at the public hearing, stating that History. teaches us that art, to be a valid expression of our culture, requires freedom for the artist to make his statement about the life and times in which the artist lives and works.
would set a dangerous precedent and erode people’s confidence in the government’s [commitment] to commissioning permanent works of art. I don’t think it is the function of art to be pleasing. Art is not democratic—It is not for the people. (Sherrill et al.
Two public art projects that met with public opprobrium and were moved/modified. Right: Tilted Arc by Richard Serra, New York City. Left: Infinite of Minimum by Zai-Qian Li, Taipei City, 1983 (Photo © Xiao-Xiong Zhang). During the testimony, Serra (as cited in Sherrill et al., 1987) further stressed his concept of “site specificity” as it applies to Tilted Arc.
His argument ran thus: 2 I don’t make portable objects. I don’t make works that can be relocated or site- adjusted. The plaza was essentially used only as a place of transit through which people pass from street to building. Therefore, Titled Arc was built for the people who walk across the plaza—for the moving observer.
Tilted Arc was constructed so as to engage the public in a dialogue that would perceptually and conceptually enhance its relation to the entire plaza. The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. The experience of art itself is a social function.
To remove Tilted Arc, therefore, is to destroy it. 148–149) Certainly, artists often have a strong rationale for their work, and as illustrated in his argument quoted above, Serra is no exception. However, despite his insistence on the “site- specific” quality of his work, many of his pieces have, in fact, been relocated and displayed at various museums/sites, such as MoMA. In the case of the Tilted Arc, its presence on the selected site collided with the ordinary lives of the taxpayers who lived in the “site-specific” dwellings and/or held “site-specific” jobs in the vicinity.