Art in the City, the City in Art

This Book examines an interplay between discourses on the city that stress the need for rational-functional order and art’s imaginative deviations from the topdown structures of urban life. Moving between theory and praxis, the book situates the city as both a concept and physical construct through which lives and possibilities are shaped or defined. In response, certain modalities of art create spontaneous, non-rational and playful interludes that risk escape from the urban apparatus and a hyper-valorisation of rational order. A three-part framework is used to discuss this push-pull dynamic and to assess the strategies of shock, performative embodiment and intervention that emerged in post-war art movements and in contemporary performance and participatory art practices. The book examines how the disturbances introduced by artists throw the city construct into sharp relief, making it visible and activating momentary encounters where new modes of expression can emerge. This Book offers a new approach to interdisciplinary studies of art and urbanity. The book aims to delineate how the city—as concept and construct—is made visible through artistic practice and in turn challenged or interrogated. Students, researchers and professionals with an interest in the interaction between art and urban studies will discover a new perspective on how urban conditions and issues have been addressed through artistic practice. The book contributes to an evolving discourse in the urban humanities through an exposition of the city’s default construct that is made visible or reimagined through visual art in public spaces. Elisha Masemann is an independent researcher and educator and holds a PhD in art history from the University of Auckland (2018). Masemann has lectured in the medical humanities at the University of Auckland and has received research awards in New Zealand and Germany, including the Kate Edger Charitable Trust Postdoctoral Research Award and a Women in Research (WiRe) Postdoctoral Fellowship at Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster. With Cameron Cartiere (Emily Carr University of Art + Design) and Leon Tan (Unitec), Masemann coauthored ‘Mapping art in the public realm 2008-2018’ in The Routledge companion to art in the public realm (2021).