ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews key aspects of Henri Lefebvre aesthetic orientations, examines the deployment of visual metaphors in the discourse of planetary urbanisation, and how these unfold into issues of representation and imagination. It shows what art can contribute to our understanding of a critical spatial aesthetic under expansive urbanisation through an analysis of a specific work of art. The chapter explains Lefebvre relationship to art and artists, and his subsequent influence on recent scholarship on urban art and culture. Lefebvre was frequently embedded in evolving artistic worlds. The chapter also explains how aesthetics, but especially visuality, animates the discourse on planetary urbanism in order to consider some of the conceptual and representational challenges that planetary urbanisation poses – be it termed ‘complete urbanization’, ‘generalized urbanization’, or ‘implosion-explosion’. The dilemma accompanying the representation of urban research under planetary urbanisation is a recurring theme in many texts.
