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Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

author:The Paper

The East Building of the Shanghai Museum is expected to be completed and opened around the end of 2023. A few days ago, the Shanghai Bodong Museum issued the "Public Art Collection Order" to collect public art works and creative proposals around the world in the form of a competition.

The interpretation of urban aesthetics is rooted in the context of urban historical memory, and the museum is a container of history and civilization, as well as the "entrance" of the history and civilization of a city and even a country. The public art of the Shanghai Museum undoubtedly needs to seek the root of culture and adhere to the "locality"; It is necessary to have a forward-looking perspective based on the present and enlightening the future.

Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

Exterior façade of the Shangbo East Building (rendering)

Today, when we talk about cities, art is undoubtedly an indispensable and important part. As urban people, we are also interpreting our own urban narrative. Clearly, how do the keywords art, museum, and city connect? What are the characteristics of art intervention in cities today? Commissioning is a question worth exploring.

From a historical and sociological point of view, the city is nothing more than an organic complex. Kevin Lynch said that "the city can be seen as a story, a picture of the crowd, a space where the whole is scattered and coexisting", so it is not only a concentration of human material wealth, but also a place of innovation in human spiritual culture. In other words, cities are large containers of human culture. In this huge cultural container, art is not a kind of attachment to the city, but a vitamin in the life of the city. Art is also a spiritual asset that coexists with the city. The word museum has been traced back to the Greek word mouseion, which originally refers to a temple dedicated to the nine goddesses of arts and science. Before 500 BC to 450 BC, these Greek city-state temples were usually built in places where members of literary societies held competitions. Art has been part of the city's culture since ancient times. American city critic Jane. Jacobs said in "The Death and Life of the Great American City", "Urban layout and other areas of urban life, we need art, we need art to use art to make us understand life, see the meaning of life, and explain the relationship between the life of each city resident itself and the surrounding life." (Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of America's Great Cities, Translin Press, 2005, p. 416)

It is true that whether we are in or going to a city and its museums and galleries, art always organically presents the historical fabric and aesthetic imagery of the city, just as you encounter the ubiquitous "girl with pearl earrings" not only in Delft's museums but also in the streets there. Art, like museum treasures, reflects the splendor of the city. In particular, the development of modern and contemporary public art has given a deeper connotation to the city and the marriage of museums and art. In the 60s of last century, artists represented by Picasso "broke the museum wall" and walked out of the elite cultural circle to open the development of public art, and the relationship between art and the public became closer. The principle and goal of urban public art is to embody the aesthetic orientation of beauty and commonality.

In fact, museum buildings, as public buildings, are themselves the embodiment of public art. It is precisely based on the functional and artistic nature of architecture as a space for human life activities, and the fact that architecture is always endowed with the ideological value of social humanities in a specific historical period, so public buildings and urban design have important characteristics of public art. Bilbao in Spain, a small city that almost no one knows. Because Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum there, it became famous for a while and became the most competitive tourist destination in Spain. At the same time, this "giant sculpture" that organically combines the vitality of architecture with modern industrial materials has become a representative case of public art changing the city.

Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

I.M. Pei's pyramid for the Louvre in Paris.

The interpretation of urban aesthetics is also rooted in the context of urban historical memory, and the museum is a container of history and civilization, as well as the "entrance" of the history and civilization of a city and even a country. Therefore, the "opening method" of entering the museum is also particularly important. For example, the "entrance" of the Louvre in Paris is a unique way to open. With a set of glass pyramids, I.M. Pei made the entrance to this Napoleonic courtyard the most famous public art (work), as famous as the rich collection of the Louvre. In front of the Pompidou Cultural Centre in the same city, there are always many tourists and spectators resting comfortably on the slopes, and this design idea comes from the slopes of Piazza Sienna, the hometown of architect Piano. Indeed, the entrance to the museum is already a much-anticipated public space. Of course, the exhibition of the museum and the shared spaces inside the building, such as corridors and atrium lobbies, are different from the traditional "white box", but have an open structure, providing a free stage for the intervention of public art.

The essential semantics of public art lie in the construction of a spiritual carrier and medium with a more open, pluralistic and interactive value orientation; This is in line with the shaping of urban cultural soft power in the current context. The museum is an important carrier of urban cultural soft power, a symbolic language of the city's historical context and reality, and contains rich metaphors and symbols. On the one hand, as a huge container of historical and cultural heritage, the museum carries the research value of the most subtle objects; At the same time, it has the social function of public education and cultural dissemination. Therefore, the intervention of urban public art is far from being limited to the beauty of the museum building, but a part of the museum culture, a structural existence, a spiritual attachment, and has become the spiritual key of the museum culture to interpret history and dialogue with the future.

Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

Renderings of the East Pavilion of Shangbo

Because of this, the public art of the new museum in Shanghai Bo must have a high cultural position and spiritual fulcrum. First, relying on the broad vision of Shanghai's international metropolis construction, we should stand firmly on the ideological position of people's city and people's construction. Everything is people-oriented, people-oriented. Therefore, combining the connotation and interpretation of urban cultural development in the new era with public semantics, the publicity of public art is mainly manifested as having the social characteristics of mass and participation, which is the way and value to realize the humanistic care of public art. American scholar Hills said, "Citizen recognition is both an attitude and a pattern of behavior. (Edward Hills, The Virtues of Civil Society in Deng Zhenglai and Jeffrey. Alexander edited State and Civil Society, Century Publishing Group, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2006, p. 58. No matter the collection and selection of their public art works, from the collection and selection of proposals to the finalization of the works and the second creation (viewing and experience) of the works, they must be "brainstormed", highlighting the wisdom of the people, and then reflecting the "temperature" and modest urban temperament of Shanghai, an international metropolis with a population of 25 million.

Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

Shanghai Museum East Central Opening Hall (rendering)

Second, we should seek the root nature of culture, discuss the source along the waves, ruminate and relay the spiritual aid of Jiangnan culture, Shanghai school culture and red culture, which is to adhere to the principle of "site specific art". The locality of art is to establish a link between historical memory and actual circumstances, forming a context of context. The physical geography, current situation and history of the locality, as well as all geo-relevant information, are collected and shared as "open source". As an important embodiment of the soft power of urban culture, museums and their public art expression focus on the local presentation of urban context and texture, which is a matter of course. The creation of public art (project) in the Shanghai Bo New Museum should reflect the spirit of Chinese aesthetics, which is to express the principle of locality.

Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

Yuan Li Sheng Farewell Scroll of Fenshan Collection of Shanghai Museum (Exterior space at the entrance of Shanghai School Museum of Calligraphy and Painting, it is proposed to use "Farewell Map of Fenshan Mountain" as the design theme)

Third, we must have a forward-looking perspective based on the present and enlighten the future. When we say that the future has come, it is precisely to reveal that we are in an unprecedented digital context of connecting the future, and the public art creation of Shanghai Bo New Museum must reflect and match the characteristics of this new technological era to some extent, and at the same time, it is also opposed to the digital trend of more and more widely used in museum content construction and mechanism management. More and more contemporary art creations (works and projects) reflect the characteristics of "immersive" and "interactive" experiences, which have become an important catalyst for mass culture communication in the digital age, and are also an effective means to expand the audience of museums widestly.

Shanghai Bo East Hall Global Call for Public Art: Urban Aesthetics and Cultural Roots

Night view of the north façade of the Shangbo East Building (rendering)

Some researchers said: "As a cultural promoter of a city, the museum not only carries the material records of history and humanities, but also a poetic space, a story space where a person and a thing meet, and a personalized aesthetic education space." "The creation of urban life aesthetics is not metaphysical speculation, but the integration of art and daily life; The art of life and art life is no longer a slogan, but a concept identification and action strategy. Shanghai is a city of goodness and aesthetics, and public art is nothing less than planting the ideal wings of art angels for this city with rich cultural heritage and its museum, we hope to do so.

Note: The author Xu Mingsong is an art critic, adjunct professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, and vice president of the Shanghai Art Photography Association.

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