Whose art is it anyway?

Q1) Re: Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc. During and after the proceedings to remove his sculpture, Tilted Arc, Serra has been very clear about his attitudes towards what public sculpture should and should not be. While I agree with him that “works which are built within the contextual frame of governmental, corporate, educational, and religious institutions run the risk of being read as tokens of those institutions” (314), I would like to take issue with the fact that he is “not interested in art as affirmation” (314). His stance is critical. As Kwon notes, “’Serra envisions not a relationship of smooth continuity between the art work and its site but an antagonistic one in which the art work performs a proactive interrogation – ‘manifest[s] a judgment’ (presumably negative) – about the site’s sociopolitical conditions” (314). Not only was his sculpture specifically meant to be interruptive, we can imagine that Janet Kardon had Tilted Arc in mind when she wrote of the “negative reception that has become a kind of certificate of merit among modern artists” (310). The question, then, is why must art be negative and critical in order for it to be valid? This critical stance is familiar from the modernists, situationists, postmodernists, etc., and is accepted as an appropriate mode for art…but doesn’t it – at least in the case of public art – make the sculptor herself into a perpetrator against the “public?”

Q2) Re: John Ahearn’s South Bronx Sculpture Park. John Ahearn’s sculpture park seems, on the surface, to be the perfect antidote to the problem Serra encountered with his sculpture. But his three figures were abhorred by members of the “community” and he voluntarily removed these figures. There are a lot of questions that can be asked here, but the most interesting one, I think, is: should public art be democratized? Serra clearly didn’t care that his sculpture had a lot of detractors; he stood by his work. Ahearn, on the other hand, submitted to the hostile neighbors. And this was after he was selected to do the sculpture by a group which included the community and which was supposed to involve the community. But if Serra is an example of an elitist who cares little for the people who encounter his sculpture in the course of their daily lives, Ahearn is guilty of the opposite; of giving his audience too much say over his work. 2 examples. 1. In Philadelphia, a developer wrangled with a hostile neighborhood group for 5 years over the proposed construction of a new Whole Foods market. Despite its many detractors, the store was ultimately built and is now, 10 years later, an uncontested bright spot in the neighborhood, popular with everyone, including its original detractors. The neighbors were, in this case, “wrong.’ 2. San Francisco, this week. A Valencia Street community organization, led by local Burning Man man Chicken John, successfully blocked the addition of an American Apparel store. The group, aiming to prevent Valencia Street from commercialization, has in effect shot itself, and the community, in foot. Instead of having a socially responsible store, many positions to be filled (and who doesn’t need a job these days?), and fair wages and benefits, the 900 block of Valencia is now left with just another run down vacant storefront, succumbing to urban decay. Hooray, chicken.