Public Art and its relation to urbanplanning challenges: The french experience

• Gaconnet, Pierre ^[1]
  1. [1] "Service de l’aménagement et des transports. Seine-Saint Denis"
• Localización: On the W@terfront, ISSN-e 1139-7365, Nº. 3, 2002 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Waterfronts of art II. Las artes en el desarrollo urbano), págs. 163-170
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • In the last ten years, french towns such as Strasbourg, Montpellier,Nantes and Orléans have successively chosen to have contemporaryartists working on the public spaces along their new tramways.For these often growing conglomerations (as well as more recentlyfor Paris), the tramway as been the latest expression of a urbanproject that could be shared between local authorities and the populationin an « almost consensus », whereas through out the country thelegitimity of the standard urban project is more and more contestedand therefore less regarded by local authorities as a political opportunity.It probably has something to do with the fact that the objectivesof a tramway are equally refering to urban planning stakes as well asto an every day preoccupation of most of the actual inhabitants ofthese conglomerations.This is the context in which, the promotion of Public Art (achoice usually known for being controversial), has finally been madeby local authorities and was not opposed (at least not yet…) the hostilitythat could be expected from inhabitants and users, since the « nationalcontroversy » about Daniel Buren’s work at the Palais Royal tookplace in 1985/86.From that point it seems interesting to bring about a questioningon the nature of the link between Public Art and urban planningthrough out recent history and thereby on its evolution consecutive tothe coming out of new challenges given to town planning.Indeed, this recent « enthousiasm » of local authorities for PublicArt needs to be questioned, and especially on the relation it supposesbetween Public Art and the notion itself of project, as it can be understoodin town planning.In that purpose, the institutionnal foundations of public art inFrance can be related to the successive meanings of the project in theunderstanding of the leading actors in the sector of planning.First of all, it has to be pointed out that through out the historyof Public art in France governement institutions have held the leadingrole. Local authorities really appeared in this sector in the middle ofthe eighties, the initiatives coming from the private sector or associationsare still discreet today.In this part, governement institutions and naturally the Ministerfor Culture had from the very beginning a clear intention of supportingeconomically artistic creation and artists: in 1951, with thecreation of the 1% procedure, and in 1983 with the creation of a specificnational fund and of the FRACs (regional funds for contemporaryart).This intention remains an important issue : nowadays, the keyrole of State institutions like the DRACs (regional directions for culturalactivity) which intervene in almost every public art commissioning, is to bring artists (and fundings…) to every local authority whoinitiates a project. The background objective being one of promotingartistic creation in a relevant way refering to the art network values.The second crucial point is that, the frame in which this supporthas taken place is another sector in which government institutionshave had the leading role : town-planning and construction, itssuccessive approaches and methods and therefore through different «projects » .