Visual art/public art and urban development: A case study of Montreal (1967--1992) (Quebec)

In the course of the twentieth century, art became increasingly dominated by market forces. Private corporations and public administrations, including cities, used art as a development tool. In the post-industrial era, art was assimilated to a cultural industry and those whom we label “black collars” succeeded to the blue collar workers of the industrial era and to the white collar workers of the modern city.; In the late 1960s, public sculpture spread in the urban landscape. In the same period, a new generation of artists was trying to create ecological works of art, forms that are associated with post-modernism in art. But there were few works of art that were linked to nature, when compared with the quantity of sculptures exhibited in the plazas of skyscrapers. Why? To answer this question, this research uses the sociology of art as a methodology, particularly the methodology developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The thesis presents the case of Montréal, and compares it to that of New York City. It includes case studies of Viger Square and of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Garden, two public spaces designed by Montréal artists. We examine the factors that contributed to the predominance of a specific art form, the sculpture in a plaza, and to the rarity of the garden: the characteristics of the genre (garden versus sculpture); the relationships between the main actors; the art market and the manipulation of demand; the various policies associated with art/culture and with urban development; the interests of patrons (be they public or private). All these factors had an influence on the art forms in the city, often labelled “public art” or “art integrated with architecture.” The study reveals that the post-modern economy exhibited works of art that are seldom associated with post-modernism in art. The model of the sculpture in a plaza did not dominate the modernist urban development, but it reflects more a post-modernist morphology.