Public Art is the newest title in The Eye on Art series. Public Art discusses art in nontraditional settings, including under freeway overpasses and in subway tunnels, in fields, bodies of waters, and volcanic craters. Public Art features urban murals (both those painted by professional artists and those painted by students and other ordinary citizens), memorial landscaping, green space decor, kitschy pop art, and art of social protest.
The book is divided into chapters that discuss ‘Art for Everyone’, ‘Evolving Ideas of Public Art’, ‘Public Art in the City’, ‘A New Way of Remembering the Past’, ‘Destination Public Art’, and ‘Public Art with a Social Message’. Photos depict the earliest American public art (an 1832 statue of George Washington), the monumental sculpture of Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, and outdoor monuments such as The Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, and The Holocaust memorial. The most recent major monument, the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, includes reelecting ponds and fountains, as does the newest monument in Washington, D.C., the World War II Memorial.
Natural art, which is built into the land, is featured in photos of the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, UT, and the Roden (volcanic) Crater in the Painted Desert near Flagstaff, AZ.
Examples of Environmental art are presented, including the living Natural History, made of woven saplings, in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.
Temporary installations of public art are also featured, such as the flags that made up The Gates in New York City’s Central Park, and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a collection of quilts that, when displayed together, take up the entire National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The cover photo features the iconic pop art Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo, TX, is a shrine to the American automobile and consists of ten vintage Cadillacs (circa1949 -1963) in chronological order by model year. Each Cadillac is buried in a field nose down with the fins sticking straight up into the air. Over the years the cars have been painted over and over with graffiti.
This fascinating book includes notes, a glossary, referrals to obtain more information via books and websites, an index, and photo credits.