Last week, I went to the Knight library and saw the original works of Runquist Murals. Before I saw the real murals, I took a look of the online version from their website. I have to say that the real works are much bigger than I thought, and they are very grand. There are two parts of murals including in the whole work, which are “Development of the Arts” and “Development of the Sciences”. Each of them has eight Panels divided by a big tree, and each panel represents a period of time in human history. Like the summary form the website, in the development of the arts part, “mother earth provides the materials for the arts exemplified here by gems and precious stones, and inspiration in its infinite forms and growth represented by flower”, and in the development of sciences part, “figure at base of tree represents humanity rising to erect posture of thinking being”. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t look at them very carefully if I don’t know their history and stories. But after looked through the history of our university and knew that these Runquist Murals have close relationship with UO, I felt it was interesting to look at them. They make me think of the definition of art, which I discussed in unit three. Most people might agree that the definition of art is so hard to make since there is no clearly limit for a work to be called art. In Dissanayake’s article “what is art for?”, she said that art is a kind of behavior when people try to make something special (Dissanayake, 10). Take the Runquist Murals as example, they mean nothing but two big trimmings to me until I know the stories of them. I have connection with them because I am a student of UO. In other words, I changed my view of them because I feel them special.
Form another perspective, they are a kind of public art. Similar with art in general, public art, which I think is a subcategory of art, is also very hard to define. In this week’s reading, Doss mentioned that public art is “artwork in the public realm, regardless of whether it is situated on public or private property, or whether it is acquired through public or private funding” (Doss, 2). I think the main purpose of public art or the reason that they are exist is that they can bring something good to people. Whether their beauty make people feel relax or their exaggeration stimulate people’s creative inspiration, they have value. However, there are too many different kinds of public art in resent society, I would discuss some of them in my own categories.
I call some of public art trimmings if they express normal ideas. Here when I say normal idea, I mean the idea that most people will get immediately when they look at that public art. For example a great man sculpture.
https://library.uoregon.edu/guides/architecture/oregon/xpioneer.html
I would say landmark buildings are a kind of public art. They have huge impact on both nation’s citizen and human history as a whole, and they are valuable wealth we can keep for later generations.
http://www.topchinatravel.com/beijing/famous-landmarks-in-beijing.htm
Some of public art are very abstract, and many people do not know the meaning of them. Different people will have different perspective for this kind of art. To me, I call them “want to take a picture” public art.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vancouver-public_art.jpg
I am not very sure if I should include this next kind of work into public art because they are not original from artists, and instead they are some creative thing added onto daily life objects. The reason I lastly include those is that I reconsidered the definition of public art, which I think should be something meaningful to people. This kind of “remixed” object brings joy to me, so I would consider them as art.
http://sofunjean.pixnet.net/blog/post/29865038-%E9%8B%BC%E7%90%B4%E6%A8%93%E6%A2%AF
http://www.thenerdfilter.com/2013/08/11/found-on-the-internerd-nintendo-graffiti/
Like Doss said in his article, the value of a piece of art work does not depend upon how long it took to finish or how much its material cost. I believe the center of the idea is human, and anything that can bring positive effects or memories to people is worth to be called art.
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