By Tessa Nolan
Yoko Ono hung wishes on trees. Jeanne-Claude and Christo covered all the coastlines. But their work had one common thread: it made us think about what we should treasure – and what we are losing.
Last week, I took my five-year-old nephew to see the new Banksy in London. As we walked, I told him it was a new, magical tree that suddenly appeared overnight, displayed by a masked man, and that we had to solve the mystery. He came up with all sorts of theories.
When we arrived, crowds of people were arriving on bicycles and on foot or slowing down as they drove by – people of all ages and backgrounds. Like us, they marveled at the new green splashes on the wall, which from some angles looked like a tree in full bloom. People talked, asked each other about their thoughts, noticed the stencil outline of a person holding a pressure hose next to the tree, or imagined how the artist was able to build it so stealthily.
This artwork will change with the seasons: hidden in summer, as if hiding, only to reveal itself again in winter
The power of the painting lies in its ability to highlight the recently pollinated cherry tree in front of it. Blooming in March, we pay close attention to the tiny buds on the (currently leafless) branches of the cherry tree, which will soon be covered in wild pink blooms. I like how this piece of art will change with the seasons: hidden in summer, as if hiding, only to reveal itself again in winter.
Public art can have a social and political agenda. It makes us think about who and what lives around it, and how drastically this landscape could change. In the period from 1999 to 2001, New York artist Ellen Harvey took to the streets to paint 40 tiny, meticulously detailed landscapes reminiscent of European old masters. Painted on graffiti sites, subway signs, or traffic control boxes, each work was done in an oval shape resembling Claude’s glass, those dark convex mirrors that were popular among tourists in the 18th century, allowing them to reflect and frame beautiful views.