Beth Ashford – Task 7

Richard Serra’s ideals on public art range from discussing the ideas of site specific work to how government controlled art should not be formed based purely on the idea of a piece of art being made for public consumption. Looking into the idea of church’s, specifically frescoes on the walls and ceilings, Serra discusses how the artwork distorts and detracts from the architecture of the building and removes the ideology of a ceiling being a ceiling; Referencing this to his own work the artist prefers to create a piece of art that compliments the architecture around it (making it site specific) without detracting from the surroundings.
In comparison Leo Steinberg looked closer at the idea of how the artwork changed over periods of time along with how a simplistic painting ended up being not the only way to position art, instead people such as Warhol and Lichtenstein produced printed works available to the masses. This different presentation of work also relates back to Richard Serra’s idea of public art as it is a way for a large variety of people to be exposed to different creations without interrupting the spaces surrounding them, this changes the relationship between the imagery and how the viewer interacts with it in different settings.

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