Beyond Monuments: when a public place can no longer be freely represented
This story did not begin with a theory. It began with a request.
A client who loved Palm Springs and wanted a poster of a very specific place: Downtown Park.
This detail matters. Because it was not a vague or abstract vision of the city, but a precise location — a real, lived space, anchored in the everyday geography of Palm Springs.
At that moment, Alecse had already created two posters of Palm Springs. But this request pointed to a different intention: not to evoke the city as an idea, but to represent a place as it exists, here and now.
And Downtown Park today is inseparable from a contemporary artwork installed in its public space. An artwork that has become monumental, omnipresent, and deeply embedded in how the place is perceived and remembered.
So much so that imagining the park without it almost feels like a distortion of reality.
But unlike historic monuments, this artwork is not in the public domain.
That is where hesitation appeared. Not artistic hesitation — but legal awareness.
Before starting the poster, Alecse did what any independent artist working seriously would do: he checked. He verified the legal framework surrounding the representation of contemporary artworks in public space, especially in a commercial context.
The conclusion was clear: directly representing the artwork would expose the project to legal risk.
A necessary legal clarification
Contemporary artworks remain protected by copyright, even when installed in public space. The concept of “freedom of panorama” varies from country to country and is often limited or excluded for commercial uses.
In practical terms, an artwork may be visible to everyone, photographed daily, mapped by platforms like Google Maps or Street View — yet still require authorization to be reproduced in a commercial artwork such as a poster.
For readers wishing to explore this topic further, we recommend starting with the concept of freedom of panorama as explained by cultural and legal institutions, such as WIPO or national copyright offices.
Faced with this reality, Alecse searched for a solution that would respect both the client’s request and the legal framework.
The idea of the contour emerged as a way forward.
Not as a trick, but as a deliberate artistic choice: a simplified outline, then altered further to move away from the original form — enough to remain legally safe, yet present enough to acknowledge what occupies the space.
This choice made the image possible. But it also opened a deeper conversation.
When a landmark takes over a place
Because here lies the paradox.
The artwork is now part of the place. It shapes the park’s identity, its visual balance, its perspective. Remove it entirely, and something essential seems missing.
Yet keeping it fully represented is legally problematic.
What happens, then, when a private artwork becomes so dominant that it effectively confiscates the visual representation of a public space?
The park remains public. The ground, the trees, the sky, the paths belong to everyone. But the right to depict the place as it truly appears becomes constrained.
At what scale does an artwork stop being an element within a place and start redefining the place itself? From what distance does this dominance apply? And for whom?
A cultural question, not just a legal one
This tension goes beyond law.
Throughout art history, artists have always represented the world as they saw it — including the works of others. Painters copied masters, reinterpreted sculptures, paid tribute, offered variations, dialogues, responses.
Art has always grown through reinterpretation, through layers of gazes rather than exclusive ownership of a single image.
Today, cities themselves are continuously represented by platforms like Google Maps, Apple Maps, satellite imagery, street photography. Places are documented, indexed, archived, and visualized at massive scale.
And yet, when an artist seeks to represent that same reality through an artistic lens, restrictions suddenly appear.
Beyond Monuments as a case study
Palm Springs, Beyond Monuments does not deny the existence or importance of the artwork installed in Downtown Park.
It simply chooses to tell the story of the place without letting a single object monopolize the narrative.
The contour is not an erasure. It is an opening — an invitation to reflect on how public space is shaped, occupied, and sometimes visually privatized.
It reminds us that the city exists beyond its symbols. That a place is more than the sum of its icons.
An open question
As contemporary artworks increasingly enter public space, this paradox will only become more common.
Perhaps the legal framework will need to evolve. Perhaps cities will need to ask themselves how much of their image they are willing to delegate to singular signatures.
Because in the end, one simple question remains:
When a private artwork becomes inseparable from a public place, who owns the image of that place?
For readers who wish to explore the legal background of this issue in more detail, the concept of freedom of panorama is clearly explained here: Freedom of panorama on [Wikipedia](chatgpt://generic-entity?number=0) .
