It's out there: the art we love and hate

Tempers are already fraying over the plan to build a giant steel angel in Gateshead. It's the same the whole world over, says Jonathan Glancey. From Soviet mother figures to Jesus of Rio, there's nothing we like more than public art to get in a stew about - that's what it's there for

What have the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Jesus of Rio and Anthony Gormley got in common? Size, that's what. Well, size and Art. The Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and Jesus of Rio are three of the biggest works of public art the world has to show. Anthony Gormley, the British sculptor and winner of the Turner Prize, is about to enter this international Big Art Club by casting a vast angel that will spread its voluminous metal wings beside the furiously fast carriageways of the A1 at Gateshead.

Naturally, there are those who think Gormley's idea gormless. Waste of money. Stalinist stuff from Arts Council commissars. Better things to spend it on. Who's going to see it anyway? Motorists should have their eyes on the blasted road, not on some arty-farty angel! Bark. Bark. Bark.

In all likelihood, Gormley's angel will become popular and, if not loved, a much-sought-out marker on the long grind up and down the A1. Children, aesthetes, fast-lane reps and even the boys in the blue-flashing "jam sandwiches" will look out for it and otherwise use its other-worldly presence as a point of reference. Doubtless, those seeking thrills will try to shin up the angel's torso and bungee-jump from its wingtips. Doubtless, too, its mighty feet will be sprayed with graffiti, both mindless and heartfelt. I like it already and all I have seen is a photomontage in this week's newspapers.

Like all vast works of public art, the Gormley angel is bound to be controversial. The leading critics of the day, as well as a livid public, decided to hate the Eiffel Tower when it opened in 1889 as the sculptural highpoint of the great Paris international exhibition of that year. They caved in soon enough and the wonderful and all but useless tower has long been a symbol of Paris, of France and of our love of outsized monuments, even though we feel we ought to rail against them on grounds of money and taste.

Those lucky enough to have seen Rio spreading from beneath Christ's welcoming arms or the devastating Victory monument on the edge of Kiev will know, instinctively, that great public art has the power to move us in ways that we do not always like to admit to. A 190ft titanium statue representing the Soviet Motherland (but known locally as "Zheleznaya" or "steel wench") may seem like kitsch on an unnecessarily heroic scale; yet the energetic form of this gigantic metal maiden reminds citizens and visitors alike both of the 200,000 Kievites who died defending the Ukrainian capital during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 and of the confusing twists and turns of political history that have since turned a failed "workers' paradise" into a free-falling free market.

Such sculptures are soul-stirring, even if something in us warns us that by their very scale and ambition they are somehow dangerous and almost certainly bad art.

But, again, who has watched the sun rise over the Great Pyramid of Cheops and not been moved? I have nothing but contempt for General Franco, but what confusing thoughts a naturally rebellious Catholic experiences when faced with the cloud-piercing Cross that the spiteful dictator had erected with slave labour at the cold heart of his Valley of the Fallen, outside Madrid. And what are Albanians to make, today, of the hideous statue of the Motherland that looms over Tirana? In the long days of Enver Hoxha's dictatorship, before it ended in 1987, the one and only place Albanians could gather freely in any number was at the voluminous hem of Mother Albania's skirts. This Balkan matriarch is both loved and despised, at once a symbol of tyranny and of freedom.

Close up, many great works of public art do not stand up to expert criticism. The Statue of Liberty is justly popular, but quite potty as a work of art. The crossed scimitars clenched in Saddam Hussein's own vastly magnified hands that welcome (is that the right word?) visitors to Baghdad are unforgettable, but verge on the extreme edge of unlovable kitsch.

I think we like to love and hate monumental public sculpture. Without it, the world of scholarly art critic, pub-bore ("I don't know a lot about art...") and the rest of us would be a less interesting place. Public art on this scale stirs up latent emotions, causes reaction, nourishes the pages of travel brochures and guide-books. More than even their great temples and cathedrals, we remember world cities, and even whole regions, by their monuments, from the faces of US presidents carved into Mount Rushmore in North Dakota to strikingly designed electricity pylons striding across boundless landscapes. Public art matters.

The reason that pub bores get so hot under the collar about the idea of spending on public art a minuscule proportion of the money we spend building arterial roads is that, while they can understand tarmac and cat's-eyes, art is still something of a threat, the stuff of shamans, incomprehensible waffle on smart talk shows and indecipherable writing in low-circulation magazines.

What they should get hot under the collar about is not public art itself, but the poor quality and low ambition of so much of the stuff that has littered public spaces over the past 20 years. All too often public art is no more than a form of chintzy, cheery wallpaper pasted over the cracks in the design of ugly city centres, a half-embarrassed attempt at redeeming the irredeemable banality of superstores, office complexes and shopping centres. This is the sort of art that Sir Norman Foster once memorably likened to "lipstick on the face of the gorilla". Or what others have, a little unkindly, called the "token Henry Moore syndrome".

The money spent on this urban wallpaper would be better spent on making beautiful the infrastructure of our towns and cities. Better a fleet of handsome city buses - rolling sculpture - thoughtfully designed and beautifully maintained than a bronze boy hanging on to the tail of a bronze dolphin in a fountain decorated with discarded soft-drink cans.

There are several bodies, most notably those such as the Public Arts Commissions Agency and the Public Arts Development Trust, working intelligently and energetically to bring new art into popular focus in Britain's streets and squares. They have a long way to go. Too much public art remains little more than a toy, a prettification of impossibly ugly places carried out in "the chairman's wife chose the boardroom curtains" sort of way.

What people will respond to, and dramatically so, from the bore to the open-minded, is sculpture on a scale that makes an impact, causes us to think and, hopefully, delights or moves us too.

We are often too apologetic, over-reticent in Britain, and make much weedy public art as a result. Anthony Gormley has got the right idea: demonic or delightful, his Angel of the A1 should be more welcome to tomorrow's motorists than any number of Happy Eaters, Little Chefs and artful signs to edge-of-town superstores.