黑料不打烊

I grew up near the countryside, and I made my peace with it a long time ago. Granted, I never had the luxury of going anywhere on foot, which made for some monotonous walks around our small, farm-hemmed neighborhood. It could sometimes take fifteen minutes to reach the nearest grocery store. It wasn’t exactly an exciting way to learn about the world. But I was still lucky to have access to good public education, a decent library, and a few local haunts where my mom could set me and my siblings free in the summer – not to mention, we were hovering near the far orbit of the Chicago suburbs. Patchwork roads and flattened fields were all I knew, and as a relatively reclusive child with little tolerance for noise pollution, it never bothered me.

Anish Kapoor, The Bean aka Cloud Gate, 2006 (photo by Petr Kratochvil)

I have since learned that there are advantages to city life. A ten-, fifteen-, even twenty- or thirty-minute walk is much more invigorating than a drive of similar duration. Public services and amenities seem to improve exponentially as more people congregate to fund them (at least in some areas). It may be a challenge to escape anonymity, but it is much easier to build intentional communities based on shared activities (like social dancing, which I’ve observed requires a massive total population to reach critical mass). Cities also place you near a diverse range of people; some of my most engaging and challenging conversations have happened in urban centers.

All this is to say that, despite the ruckus, I’ve come to enjoy cities quite a bit.

But as a tentative convert urbanite (albeit still likely to cap my population limit at around 300,000), I’ve also noticed that people who’ve grown up in cities tend to assume they get a better sense of the world simply as a result of being exposed to so many facets of it. That can be true. There are many things in life that we can only learn from each other, and it’s undoubtedly easier to encounter people of all walks when you live in close proximity. But then, as one example of many, I remember the homeless population: a rare sight in the countryside, but sometimes altogether unseen in the metropolitan areas where they congregate

I understand the social complexities surrounding issues like homelessness, and I believe there is a wide range of reasonable approaches to protect their dignity – the ethical debate isn’t quite what I’m getting at here. Rather, I’ve noticed that repeated exposure to these encounters tends to calcify people’s opinions over time. It’s easy for each person to give one beggar a dollar; it’s impossible for one person to fund an entire city. And so, it seems to me that people become less and less likely to help. With each passing opportunity, their choices form a habitual rut, which eventually morphs into an unspoken social consensus. It initially baffled me, but after only a couple of awkward experiences, I found myself falling more and more in line

What does any of this have to do with art? Well, art has a way of manipulating these encounters – and thus their outcomes. In fact, if you define art broadly enough, there’s no aspect of a city that humans don’t manage. There are obvious examples, like the hostile architecture used to push those suffering from homelessness even further to the fringes. There are beautiful examples, like manicured public parks or plazas, which have facilitated nearly infinite numbers of life’s most valuable moments. There are subtle, perhaps even unconscious examples, like a fountain-edge just wide enough to sit on, which might someday become the favorite painting spot for the next Monet. If my mind in the countryside was allowed to run wild and directionless like a woodland creek, then in the city, I felt it directed along the walls of a deep canyon, following lines carved by those who came before.

Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler, Bavaria, c. 1844-1850

And then there were the monuments. In Europe, I found depictions of kings in regalia, visions of soldiers in triumph, commemorations of local heroes and legends of the distant past. In America, a different vision prevails, from statues of revolutionary figures to abstract metal structures to faces carved in the side of a mountain with dynamite (though admittedly, that one isn’t in a city). The two schools are closing in on each other, but they share a desire that, while not exclusive to urban life, is much more prominent there: to memorialize the story of a place for future generations.

A. Savin, Vaduz Castle (town side), 2022

I have to say, I am a little jealous of those who get to claim such deep ties to their hometown. I suspect it may be why people from the country tend to come across more patriotic – no one is interested in selling custom flags for Smalltown, USA. Traveling around Europe, I could sense citizens' underlying enthusiasm for their communities, even when it surfaced through disgruntled complaints. In Munich, kingly statues evoked a sense of the pride Bavarians take in their rich political and cultural history. In Vaduz, Liechtenstein, I was shocked to stand in the shadow of a functioning castle at nightfall and come to terms with my status as a peasant. In Luxembourg, the national imagery created a pervading energy that stems from pride in military service, a key role in the European Union, and probably also egregious amounts of commerce. In Reykjavik, Iceland, there were constant homages to the country’s Viking roots.

Claus Cito, Ge虉lle Fra, 1923

These memorials are more than decoration; they are part of what creates the cohesive identity that binds the “city” together. Every day, as people walk past them, even as they become a mundane part of the scenery, they continue to serve their purpose in defining their cultural – and individual – identities. When approached with celebration and a bit of humility, it can be a beautiful thing to witness. But it has a shadow side, too.

I hardly need to mention specific examples when I say that these sorts of memorials have often been co-opted for propaganda. From Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to North Korea and totalitarian African states, there are countless instances in which monumental architecture has been used to coerce a narrative rather than commemorate it.

Alexander Stirling Calder, Leifr Eiricsson, 1929-1932

While we in the modern West may look at these blatant attempts at manipulation and wonder how they could ever be convincing, the reality is that monuments of any kind are as much a reflection of their city as they are a driving force of its development. They reflect the stories the city is already primed to tell, channeling that power along the streams their creators intended. There is incredible potential for persuasion in the art that people want to see.

I can’t say which of our modern monuments will, one hundred years from now, have stood the test of time. But I can say that we need to keep a clear perspective on it. Spending time in cities has greatly enriched my appreciation not only for the world but for the natural peace that surrounds me in the countryside, where I still feel most at home. We have monuments of metal and stone to remind us of the history our ancestors have shaped – but if we are unwilling to step outside of our communities from time to time, we may find they’ve narrowed our course more than it was meant to flow.

For more on auctions, exhibitions, and current trends, visit our Magazine Page