Art on Architecture: Braunschweig employment office
No doubt the artist is the child of his time, but unhappy for him if he is its disciple or even its favourite.
(Friedrich Schiller)
A ‘committee of experts’ selected a work by the - no doubt - excellent sculptor Franz Bernhard. This work certainly has its own intrinsic quality, but its impact is blunted in this location by the surrounding buildings (form, proportion, material). There is no interaction between architecture and art.
If one regards art as an interpretation of spatial situations which may be under a time constraint and not as a static element, then the 'Art on Architecture' idea has had its day. It will be seen to have been no more than a short-term, image-building and possibly – as a result of a public welfare mentality (social fig-leaf) and because of the preferential financial treatment given to mediocre artists – a degenerate cultural compensation strategy.
One cannot make amends for architectural restrictions by just adding a few art works.