ABSTRACT
Little is known about public-art perception and engagement in terms of the publics, those for whom public art is fundamentally intended (cf. Hall 2003, Zebracki et al. 2010). These publics can be virtually anyone: residents, passers-by, workers, visitors and we academics, who may empirically reflect on public art in situ or articulate it in the public sphere. Whilst taking multidisciplinary bodies of literature on public art into account, this study provides insight into what I term the art engager: the human subject, as part of public art’s publics; a subject who is, either consciously or unconsciously, in a constant, iterative interplay with the object of art, with space (which is multi-scalar), with himself or herself (performative by nature) and with time. From a human geographical perspective, this chapter analyses publics’ bodily, socio-material as well as mental engagements with public art, based on a detailed empirical study of Paul McCarthy’s Santa Claus. In 2002 the Dutch city of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands and host to one of the largest ports in the world, introduced to its publics this controversial sculpture, which in popular speech is called the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ (Figure 11.1). After a long sociopolitical tug of war over its location within the city, the artwork entered Eendrachtsplein, a city-centre public space, in 2008. This site is located at the eventful crossroads of the contemplated consumer and cultural axes of the city of Rotterdam. This precise location, or rather confrontation, has a powerful meaning in that the artist’s rationale is to pass ironic criticism on consumer society by this work of art (cf. Sculpture International Rotterdam 2006).
