The paradox of public art: Democratic space, the avant-garde, and Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc"

Abstract

This essay interprets the controversy over Richard Serra's monumental sculpture, Tilted Arc, which was designed for a public plaza in downtown Manhattan in 1979 and then torn down ve years later after intense public outcry. Levine reads this controversy as characteristic of contemporary debates over the arts, which continue the tradition of the nineteenth century avant-garde, pitting art against a wider public, and insisting that art must deliberately resist mainstream tastes and values in favor of marginality and innovation. This de nition of art has posed a lasting dilemma for democratic societies: how, after all, should a democracy deal with art that represents an intentional rejection of the majority? The problem becomes even more intractable when it comes to avant-garde art commissioned for public spaces, where the art object can challenge public tastes and movements in a way that is inescapable for those who must live and work in the space. Disturbed by the imposition of a massive and incomprehensible art object in a public plaza, Serra's opponents argued that Tilted Arc frustrated a whole range of socially bene cial activities, labor and leisure alike. And they claimed that Serra's supporters were dangerously anti-democratic. But despite the avant-garde's challenge to majority tastes, this essay makes the case that it remains a democratic value to continue to sponsor avant-garde art in public spaces.For the past hundred years, democratic governments have had to grapple with a range of thorny public policy questions that emerge from the arts. Setting aside more general problems of free speech, injurious in uence, and copyright restriction-issues which pertain to many kinds of speech-I want to suggest that policy-makers have had to confront some speci cally artistic questions that have arisen in the wake of the modernist avant-garde. The avant-garde was a set of late nineteenth and early twentieth century artistic movements that were proud of their rejection of both of cially sanctioned academic art and mass culture, assigning the highest moral and aesthetic value to the art that satis ed the smallest audience. They claimed authenticity only for the art that challenged familiar and conventional tastes. "Public art" became something of an

Altered viewscapes: Raising awareness through creative practice in the urban cultural heritage of Istanbul

“…For instance, the public sculpture Cloud Gate (2006) by Anish Kapoor that reflects the city's skyline at Millennium Park, Chicago was compared to Richard Serra's work Tilted Arc that occupied and divided space by drastically blocking the view in the Federal Plaza in New York City between 1981 and 1989. While the high polished stainless steel of Cloud Gate cherished the surrounding urban environment and attracted people to itself (Tuchman 2006), Serra's controversial arc did the opposite, with its non-reflective, dark surface creating an edgy feeling hinting at danger and discomfort (Levine 2002).…”

Seeking common ground: three perspectives on public space

“…In contrast, those who view urban design as a problem-solving process more directly reflect the Lynch-Jacobs-Whyte attitude that social problems (and solutions) can be found in spatial form. The related attitudes of 'urban design as art' and 'urban design through community participation' represent different ways that designers may adopt a politicised perspective on public space, as illustrated by Breitbart and Worden (1994) and Levine (2002) (see Section 5).…”

“…Breitbart and Worden (1994) describe how the disruption of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in Boston by the relocation of the orange line subway was softened by involving residents in the redesign of, and selection of public art for, new stations. Similarly, Levine (2002) documents how the installation of Richard Serra's controversial Tilted Arc sculpture prompted citizens in New York City to organise both for and against the artwork, raising questions about who should decide what public space should look like. Billboards, among the most public of visual spaces, also present an opportunity for expression and participation, albeit transgressional and illegal when billboard correctors strategically modify advertising messages to make political claims (Drescher, 2000).…”

The birth of public space privatization: How entrepreneurialism, convivial urbanism and stakeholder interactions made the Martim Moniz square, in Lisbon, ‘privatization-ready’

“…Empirically thorough approaches to processes and actors of public space production are neither new nor incompatible with normative and critical standpoints (e.g. Levine, 2002;Mitchell, 2003). There are numerous studies on the spatial and political logics of public space policies and their implementation, including an identification of the different normative views at play (Betin, 2001;Dessouroux, 2006;Fleury, 2007;Jacob and Hellström, 2010); on the impacts of participatory techniques (Söderström et al, 2001;Vareilles, 2006); on the gradual definition of public space projects and regulation practices, including investigations of the locus of decision (Calderon and Chelleri, 2013;Ehrenfeucht and Loukaitou-Sideris, 2007;Smithsimon, 2008); on the circulation of policies and design and management models (Didier et al, 2013;Söderström and Geertman, 2013;Ward, 2006)… These works have demonstrated how actual production processes are defined by contingent, and therefore unique, interactions between autonomous actors and a set of political, technical and organizational constraints operating at different scales.…”