The Formation of Georg Lukács’s Reflection Theory in Contemporary Public Art (A Case Study of the “Ice Watch” Installation)

If we consider the artistic approach of the latter half of the twentieth century as characterized by the vibrant struggles of people of color and feminists against racial and gender discrimination, advocating for equality and social justice, the artistic approach of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries can be understood as an intricate interplay of political and social issues with environmental challenges and climate change within societies. This approach seeks to comprehend social realities by aligning public opinion to foster social awareness. Georg Lukács, in his Marxist aesthetics, previously demonstrated the linkage between art and social reality, illustrating that art can effectively engage with social events and that artworks should respond to social and political issues. Lukács’s aesthetic theories are grounded in aesthetic forms that reflect social reality and employ a dialectical method in art and literature. In contemporary art, the representation of social reality through public art installations constitutes a form of social intervention. Consequently, the present study’s necessity lies in an interdisciplinary exploration of the reflection of social reality in Lukács’s sociological perspectives, which regard the aesthetic experience of understanding reality as a qualitative experience, and in contemporary public art, analyzed through content analysis.

Given that the foundation of this aesthetic theory in art emphasizes critical reflection, it is posited that contemporary environmentally oriented installation art, within the framework of public art, offers a reconceptualization of committed art. This art form reproduces social and historical realities, providing a platform for audience experience that evolves from Lukács’s reflection theory. Accordingly, this research endeavors to examine, through an interdisciplinary approach and reliance on Lukács’s reflection theory, how public installation art represents social realities related to climate change. It aims to demonstrate how contemporary committed art transcends mere aesthetics to function as a tool for understanding, critiquing, and transforming social conditions. Consistent with Lukács’s views, which consider the relationship between form and content (manifestation and essence) in artistic experience as dialectical, it can be asserted that contemporary public environmental installations, beyond mere aesthetics, can serve as instruments for understanding, critiquing, and altering existing conditions. By converging sensory perception (subjectivity) and social reality (objectivity), these installations address the urgency of social issues related to climate change in audience awareness, demonstrating art’s capacity as a means of understanding social events and as a form of social praxis (conscious action to transform social reality).

This alignment is manifested in art’s role as a reflection of social reality, the dialectical interplay of objective reality through form and content, the aesthetic experience facilitated by direct audience interaction with the artwork, the critical role of art in evoking emotions and critical thinking as a social act, and art’s contribution to social change. Thus, this study of reflection theory and concrete audience experiences in contemporary environmental installations, using content analysis, elucidates Lukács’s reflection theory and articulates social commitment in art. It aligns with the “Ice Watch” installation as an example of contemporary public art that reflects social realities in the environmental crisis, focusing on interaction and collective art production within societal contexts.