STUMBLING-BLOCK OR DECORATION

Must public art please the daily users of the context in which it is installed, or must it satisfy the demands of a specifically sensitized art public? The difficulty of reconciling the two requirements is illustrated by the fate of a few public installations by a highly regarded figure in the world of avant-garde art: the American sculptor Richard Serra whose works conspicuously refer to their surroundings. The history of Tilted Arc, commissioned for the Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, is paradigmatic. In 1979 the United States General Services Administration’s Art-in-Architecture Program commissioned a sculpture, stipulating that it be site-specific and permanent. The result was a curved, tilted plate of steel, 3.66 metres high and 37.51 metres long. Serra: ‘Site specific works are determined by the topography of the site, whether it is urban, landscape or an architectural enclosure. My works become part of and are built into the structure of the site and often restructure, both conceptually and perceptually, the organization of the site….The historical concept of placing sculpture in a pedestal was to establish a separation between the sculpture and the viewer. I am interested in a behavioural space in which the viewer interacts with the sculpture in its context. ….Space becomes the sum of successive perceptions of the place. The viewer becomes the subject’. Ten years later the sculpture was removed in response to protests from people who used the Plaza every day. Serra’s efforts to prevent its removal by legal means had been unsuccessful. His invocation of the right of free speech fell on stony ground, for under American law this right does not apply to a work of art unless it conveys a distinct political message: ‘Artistic expression is seen as primarily derivative in nature and therefore marginal in value. This legal position reflects the status of the arts in American society, where are often tends to be perceived as mere entertainment and most Americans’ contact with ‘culture’ is film or television’. Even in professional circles opinion differs as to the value of contemporary artistic expression, but when a legal system permits an artwork’s value to be measured by the yardstick of the vacillating taste of television audiences, that work is given no chance of standing the test of time. To be sure, television audiences are in the vast majority and in accordance with democratic principles their taste should prevail. But that taste is also the lowest common denominator and as such it has a levelling effect. It is unable to appreciate the value of exceptional artistic expression – on which, after all, our concept of high culture is based. All avant gardes encountered initial opposition, and yet today they are accepted as our cultural heritage. Only the test of time can establish a lasting value- judgment.

The fate of Tilted Arc serves to exemplify modern art’s inability to unite the public and private spheres as it used to. Artist and patron must be prepared to conduct protracted negotiations and to encounter reactions ranging from indifference to physical aggression. Quite a lot of public art skirts the issue by catering to indifference. Blandly reticent, it complies with the architect’s desire for inoffensive decoration. To art-lovers, though, it is an eyesore.