Aesthetics, politics and cities: considerations about the critical dimension of artistic interventions in urban space at the end of twentieth century

Abstract

This paper draws an overview of questions and references about art, politics and urban space in recent times. It begins at the aspects of depolization and aesthericization of cities, with special attention to the exploration of spectacularized culture as tool for marketing and control. It then discusses political dimensions of Art in 20th Century, to proposes some basic forms of critical art operations in urban space developed since the sixties. At the end, the text introduces some particularities of great art events in urban spaces, and the difficulties that routinization of trangression poses to the critical dimension of art in the city.