Nearly 40 years after the first public art symposiums in new cities, this day of study allowed us to revisit this exceptional experience by its scale and its unprecedented approach. The last colloquium on this theme "art renews the city" dating from 1992, when many monumental commissions were in progress or about to be completed, did not allow to make a real evaluation. The study day therefore tried to call all those who participated in this experiment, and to give them the floor, the latter having undoubtedly taken enough distance to testify today.
The program relied largely on a historical framework and questioning, especially on the question of origins with the public commissions of large ensembles and the evolution of the 1%. At the same time, speakers from different backgrounds provided essential multidisciplinary insight. Ethnologists have studied the modes of appropriation of public art by the inhabitants, art historians have tried to restore these achievements in a broader history of creation of the twentieth century.
The contributions and testimonies revolved around the origins and the state of affairs. Aware of their commitment and responsibility for this historical and artistic heritage after the disappearance of the EPA (Public Development Institutions), the communities now assume responsibility for it. It is this pivotal and key moment in history that has been questioned here, triggering by the same attempts at patrimonialization such as in Cergy-Pontoise around the Major Axis or in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, which became a new city of art and history in 2006.
If this day was intended to enrich and preserve memory, it was also open to the present and the future. The legacy of the new cities has been put into perspective in the light of the public order today in order to assess the evolutions and permanence, from the point of view of artists, politicians and inhabitants.
At a time when public procurement seems to be redeploying in cities around major urban development projects, whether it is the arrival of trams, the requalification of neighborhoods or an attempt to dialogue with a prestigious and ancient heritage, it seemed relevant to look back at history by drawing lessons from public art in new cities. Since the early 1970s, the latter have constituted vast experimental grounds for artists whose creations incorporated, probably for the first time on this scale, urban logics. A source of inspiration and constraint, the city became a laboratory for formal research. This vast and narrow field, by putting the works in tension with the urban fabric, has undoubtedly produced a revival of sculpture and beyond, plastic arts.
This day was organized by Loïc Vadelorge (Centre d'histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines, Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) and Julie Corteville (Musée de la ville, Communauté d'agglomération de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), with the collaboration of the History Committee of the Ministry of Culture, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of Ile-de-France and the Delegation to the Visual Arts.
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[Program] (pdf)
[The acts]
The audiovisual recording of this study day is available by appointment at History committee
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