The Sociological Research Of Public Art

The public art discussed in this essay is a dynamic concept, which covers many domains, stages, and suggests various connotations. Actually, it may not only refer to the works of art in the public places, which aim to beautify the environment, but also to the works created or artistic activities organized by various parties such as artists, the general public, consigner, independent planner, designer, architect, environmental psychologist, cultural geologist, public relation expert, sociologist, photographer, text planner, electric engineer, builder and sponsor. Therefore, the public art in this essay is not simply a type of artistic forms, but also an inclusive modern artistic form, which represents the modern values of democracy, public involvement and share, and employs various artistic forms such as architect, sculpture, fresco, photography, landscaping, waterscape, gardening and performance art with the guarantee of given institution and procedures. In addition, the public art is also a presentation of the civic culture and democracy in modern society.From the viewpoint of sociology, the author of this essay attempts to focuses on some major issues about public art.First, the public art is an artistic form developed in such special fields as cities, which suggests the close tie between the public art and the city. As the social background of public art, cities have their own distinct social structure, cultural background and forms of development. The public art produced in the city is inevitably different from what are produced in other social fields. In short, the public art produced in the city is product of the city. It belongs to the city. Therefore, it is necessary to understand and analyze the urban development, its social and cultural structure.Secondly, the urban public artistic activity shares the internal and external logic. The internal logic here refers to the elements of public artistic world and their inter-relations. The internal elements include the identity and social role of artist, the independence and public nature of the art. The external elements include the role of capital, the interpretation of artwork in public media, the role of planner and critic and so on. All these factors are so important that they will exert great impact on public artistic activity. In this essay, I hold that public art is an artistic activity involving the joint efforts and cooperation of various participants, and that all the participants should observe the artistic laws and the social logic of public art at once.Thirdly, as social public sphere, the world of public art is closely related to the civic society, which indicates the close relationship between public art and contemporary society. Specifically, they are the relationship between the artist's freedom in artistic creation and the social responsibility of public intellectual, the aesthetic ability and educational equality, the institutional guarantee for public art and the improvement of social system, the choice of subject of public art and the say in public places, the citizen's need for art and the awareness of social equality, the ecological aspect of public art in the social public environment. It is these relations that show the unique significance, role and value of public art in the social democratization, and distinguish public art from other artistic forms.Fourthly, some external factors also contribute to the development of public art. These factors include the historical choice in the transformation of artistic forms and styles, the reassessment of the value of art as a result of the changing aesthetic taste in modern society, the general public's awareness of democracy and right to create public art, the drive and support of market economy to the development of public art. In this essay, proper theories have been employed to analyze specific problems, because no single theory can deal with all the subjects. Actually, every theory has its uniqueness.It is made clear in this essay that public art is more than an artistic form, so it is impossible to explore the public art purely from the viewpoint of art. That is why in this essay the theories and methods of sociology and other related disciplines have been adopted to explore the status quo, law, mechanism and social influence of public art in contemporary society from different aspects and perspectives.