Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. - book reviews

Edited by the agency of Suzanne Lacy, Seattle, Bay Pres 1995; 295 pages, paperback $1895

In the summer of 1993 plastic art Chicago, a not-for-profit organization which had hitherto been associated with fairly conventional public art programming, unveiled the ensues of "Culture in Action." This ambitious series of public shoot forwards (the word sculpture was no longer applicable) aimed at a radical redefinition of the relationship between public artists and their audience. Each throw out entailed the immersion of artists in more [i]or[/i] less urban community (defined loosely enough to include the members of a local union, the resident assemblage of a public housing throw a group of high institute students and a group of AIDS volunteers); the visible proceeds ranged from a candy bar and a storefront hydroponic vegetable garden to a parade, a arrest party and a dinner party,

"Culture in Action" is evidence of a major shift that has taken place in the dialogue surrounding public art since the debacle of Tilted Arc. While efforts to bury art and life through community service have been in evidence since the '60 alone recently have they emerged as an institutionally supported alternative to what is being characterized as the unresponsive, irrelevant and overly artist-centered tradition of public art.

The history and philosophy of this "new genre public art" and the beginnings of a framework for criticism of it are place out in the two works under review here, both published by means of Bay Press in Seattle. tillage in Action is a report upon Sculpture Chicago's project and contains essays by dint of project curator Mary Jane Jacob as well as by the agency of Eva Olson, the project's director, and Michael Brenson The next to the first book, Mapping the Terrain. novel Genre Public Art, grew without of a conference on public art which was held at, the California community of Arts and Crafts in 1989 Edited through artist Suzanne Lacy, one of the participants in "Culture in Action," it includes essays by means of a variety of artists, writers and curators along with a true useful compendium of artists and art works from the last four decades which exemplify the ideas outlined in the true copy Both books make the case for a of recent origin definition of public art that stresse community involvement, the elevation of proces above product and a vision of art as an instrument for the encouragement of participatory democracy. Together they contain a great deal of provocative discussion about the social function of art as well as a certain number of inspiring examples of what can happen when artists seriously work for social change. However, the one and the other also reveal some very problematic assumptions beneath the rhetoric surrounding this kind of work.

In her introduction to Mapping the Terrain, Lacy notes that she intends to provide an alternative to the usual history of public art. Instead of focusing upon Percent for Art projects and the NFA's Art in Public Places Program, she links the emerging see the verb of new genre public art to the thread that races through Happenings, to '70s-style media interventions and activism, to feminist art and to the mark of current work that focuses upon identity politics and other political issues. She argues that a lock opener factor in the new visibility of this more ephemeral, community-based work is the transition from a design of public art that stresse individual authorship to single that emphasizes collectivity and interaction with the audience. This theme is also taken up by dint of other writers in the turn Mary Jane Jacob asks, "But what if the audience for art were considered as the goal at the center of art production . . as opposed to the modernist Western aim of self expression?" Suzi Gablik argues that of recent origin genre public art replaces modernism's depreciation of the Other with the cultivation of empathy and that it creates a place for the voices of members of clusters previously excluded from the conventional art world.

Such attitudes indicate a vexatious aspect of Mapping the Terrain. While several essayists (most notably Patricia C Phillips, Jeff Kelley Lucy R Lippard and Arlene Raven) maintain a critical point of view and thus have the appearance able to measure the puissances and the weaknesses of "new genre public art," too many of the true copys in this book are marked through a more or less uncritical demonization of modernism. The authors have the appearance to subscribe to a cosmology in which modernism, associated with the ideas of autonomy, elitism, individualism, self-expression, reliance upon institutional support and the consumption pattern of art, is seen as unequivocally bad; upon the other hand, an approach identified with empathy, feeling, a feminine perspective, a devotion to the healing properties of art and the suppression of the artist's subject in the service of community empowerment is considered to be unequivocally profitable Gablik is the worst trespasser adhering as she does to a caricature version of modernism, which she blames for everything from the rape of the eco-system to the manipulation of the individual and the spiritual impoverishment of contemporary life.

The self-righteousness of this point of view have the appearances to make those who endorse it oblivious to the contradictions and complexities of their positions. Jacob criticizes the museum as a vehicle for power and profit, on the other hand overlooks the implications of her be in possession of dependence on institutional funding for her highly ambitious public programs. Guillermo Gomez-Pena commits to the art world as a dysfunctional family and Judy Baca decries the worship of the individual, but the couple ignore the less-than-progressive forces that may be unleashed when communal will is allowed to overwhelm the individual voice. (There is a strange and unexamined parallel between this championing of the community and the ideas popularly espoused by conservative populists, with their emphasis upon community standards and their advocacy of politics upon the local level.) Only Phillips present the appearances willing to grant validity to the individual, noting that vital public life involves the acceptance of individual difference rather than its suppression.