‘But what’s so public about public art? Is it “public” simply because it’s stuck in public places? And who asks for it? In a recent interview with Manner of Man Magazine, Alexander Stoddart, Sculptor in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen in Scotland, hits the nail on the head.’
Click through for some good quotes. Why is public art often so bad? What happens when art gets attached with money, and yes, also money through grants?
‘But step back a moment. Would ending federal, i.e., taxpayer, i.e., your, money on entities like the NEA, the NEH, and the CPB be a bad thing?’
Here are two good reasons in favor of ending Federal funding:
You will likely aid in making better art. Universities, museums and institutions don’t necessarily get along with the creative genius, nor in making something new. In fact, such institutions can stifle creativity by rewarding and amplifying current tastes and entrenching public sentiment into reefs, creating additional hurdles for talent to get where it’s going. State money, furthermore, is not a necessary condition of good art. In fact, it may be a necessary condition of bad art [addition: we can probably say that bad art is everywhere, but there’s rarely great art coming out of Federally funded programs].
Incentives matter: The self-interested, ideologically driven and less-talented will have incentives to control the Federal bureaucracy and politicize the arts. They’re out there, and if you reward them with cash and status, you’ll get more of them (bad artists, ideologues, politicians and bureaucrats in an unholy cycle of Badness).
No one can speak for all the public, not even the artistic genius. Art-curators, docents, specialists and critics can do good [for art], but sometimes they can do bad. Individual talent, tradition, hard-work, groups of people, ideas, money and opportunities all matter, but how much exactly, is anyone’s guess.
Richard Serra was commissioned to put a piece in Federal Plaza, paid for the public, and some people didn’t like it.
It was removed. Serra felt railroaded. There was a lot of press and drama.
Pretty relevant, I’d say:
Also, this Vincent Gallo interview is funny as hell:
He takes the critics on while wearing an awesome USA track-suit:
‘But step back a moment. Would ending federal, i.e., taxpayer, i.e., your, money on entities like the NEA, the NEH, and the CPB be a bad thing?’
Here are two good reasons in favor of ending Federal funding:
You will likely aid in making better art. Universities, museums and institutions don’t necessarily get along with the creative genius, nor in making something new. In fact, such institutions can stifle creativity by rewarding and amplifying current tastes and entrenching public sentiment into reefs, creating additional hurdles for talent to get where it’s going. State money, furthermore, is not a necessary condition of good art. In fact, it may be a necessary condition of bad art [addition: we can probably say that bad art is everywhere, but there’s rarely great art coming out of Federally funded programs].
Incentives matter: The self-interested, ideologically driven and less-talented will have incentives to control the Federal bureaucracy and politicize the arts. They’re out there, and if you reward them with cash and status, you’ll get more of them (bad artists, ideologues, politicians and bureaucrats in an unholy cycle of Badness).
No one can speak for all the public, not even the artistic genius. Art-curators, docents, specialists and critics can do good [for art], but sometimes they can do bad. Individual talent, tradition, hard-work, groups of people, ideas, money and opportunities all matter, but how much exactly, is anyone’s guess.
Richard Serra was commissioned to put a piece in Federal Plaza, paid for the public, and some people didn’t like it.
It was removed. Serra felt railroaded. There was a lot of press and drama.
Pretty relevant, I’d say:
Also, this Vincent Gallo interview is funny as hell:
He takes the critics on while wearing an awesome USA track-suit:
‘Across a green from the chapel stands Klauder’s Cathedral of Learning (1937), a 535-foot-tall skyscraper, its receding, asymmetrical, and generously detailed masses also limestone-clad. In astutely fusing Gothic and art deco elements, it seemingly answers Cram’s call in his memoirs for “tradition plus modernism.”’
Cliff from ‘Cheers‘ gives a 10:00 tour of the Cathedral of Learning. It’s like a gothic skyscraper:
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As previously posted:
For what it’s worth, I recall a deeply Catholic lament and longing in the Spanish character, which can be combined with a kind of clear-eyed realism and stoicism, but not always. The faith runs deep in St Teresa and her passions, and despite Miguel de Unamuno’s rationalist influences, I remember a general preference for wisdom in the Tragic Sense Of Life.
Something clicked regarding Spain when I finally visited the Escorial outside of Madrid after many months of being in that city. It’s a grand castle of course, but it also struck me as rather plain, barracks-like at times. Very austere. It was explained that the Escorial was both a royal palace and a monastery:
‘Philip’s instructions to Herrera stipulated “simplicity of form, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation,” qualities clearly illustrated by the long sweep of these facades.’
‘El Escorial was built to honor St. Lawrence, who was burned on a grill. In order to remind the citizens of his martyrdom and sacrifice, the entire building is a grill. Yes, it is shaped like a grill. There are paintings of St. Lawrence on a grill, grills are carved into the doorways, the weather vain is in the shape of a grill, the backs of chairs are supposed to be grills, the list literally could go on forever.’
Panero offers some course-correcting criticism for New York’s public museums, which may be depending too much upon ticket revenue, operating more like businesses.
You can get it in if you pay a penny, but they can pressure you to pay the full $25, mainly to get the higher amount from foreign tourists.
‘Thomas P. Campbell, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has issued an “important message” responding to the criticism I and others have raised over the ticketing policies at his and other public-private institutions in New York City. The Director’s affable but ultimately defensive message tells me the Met has heard the criticism but hasn’t listened to it.’
Don’t forget the little people, and your core mission:
‘But big business can be bad business at a non-profit designed to serve the public good. The ever-increasing demands of what I call the museum-industrial complex was the topic of my essay in The New Criterion a year ago, titled “What’s a Museum?”
So, we’ve got the ‘educational-industrial complex’, the ‘military-industrial complex’, and now the ‘museum-industrial complex’.
We’ve got a lot of complexes.
This blog remains skeptical of people interested in broad definitions of the public good which often line up with their own interests, especially upon the ‘greatness’ model: ‘A great nation deserves great art.’
Such folks can eventually become entrenched on the public dime, having self-selected into a group of cultural gatekeepers, resistant to any change. They never manage to serve all the public, just usually the public as they’d like it to be, despite the good they can do.
I’ve had to think a fair amount about art lately (life could be worse), so I thought I’d post this despite the current national frenzy for the importance of (A)rt.
“…a widely honored artist known for melding Chicano themes and Western history in exuberant sculpture.”
and on this sculpture:
“The eyes are light-emitting diodes, which burn red like taillights. They are an homage to Mr. Jimenez’s father, who ran a neon-sign studio in El Paso, Texas... “
That could work. Are we getting close to kitsch art and possibly Chupacabra territory here? Do the skill and artistry transcend that?
It seems powerful, serious and proud…a little scary even…a mythic figure. Is it possible Jimenez was poking fun at the serious belief people have in such figures and myths? Maybe not.
Sad fact: “He was killed on June 13, 2006, in his studio when a large piece, a mustang intended for Denver International Airport, fell on him severing an artery in his leg.”
‘But what’s so public about public art? Is it “public” simply because it’s stuck in public places? And who asks for it? In a recent interview with Manner of Man Magazine, Alexander Stoddart, Sculptor in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen in Scotland, hits the nail on the head.’
Click through for some good quotes. Why is public art often so bad? What happens when art gets attached with money, and yes, also money through grants?
Originally, I had posted a piece on LACMA’s Levitated Mass, by the rather reclusive land artist, Michael Heizer. The installation is a 340-ton rock (‘megalith’) in front of the museum, suspended over a carved slot which is deepest below the rock, and which the public can pass under as they notice the many supposedly metaphysical contrasts it inspires (the tension between weight and lightness, nature and culture, solid and line etc). See the video above.
Presumably, your mind can think these thoughts, or it can think other thoughts. You can be in your own individualized space during this process, or you can consciously be in the space of others as people mill around in front of the museum, gathered around a large, suspended rock.
What did Heizer intend? What did he achieve technically? What role does the Levitated Mass have to play in the public life of Angelinos? Was LACMA’s presentation for commerce or contemplation?
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As Robert Hughes and others have noted, modern art has been trying to compete with radio, T.V. the movies, pop culture and often technology for its role as explainer and interpreter to the people, as central to their lives and to public life in order to pass on the core values of society. Yet, the artist has been an isolated figure, just outside of society, for much of the past few hundred years of Western Art. A process of individualization has occurred.
Does art have a role to play in morally improving you?
From LACMA’s site:
‘Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.’
That’s a rather bold claim. It might be better to say that it’s one modern, individualized Western artist’s take on prehistoric stone structures, and other prehistoric projects from a primarily technical point of view, like Stonehenge or the Nazca lines in Peru.
Those old prehistoric structures that inspire him likely came with all sorts of ritualistic purpose, local gods, spiritual and transcendental claims, and potential human sacrifice and other barbarisms. See Werner Herzog’s “Cave Of Forgotten Dreams” for a similar meditation.
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As for Heizer, he’s been working since 1972 on a sculpture in the Eastern Nevada desert, which was originally called ‘Complex One.’ It’s morphed into his life’s work, called City. It’s very large. It can’t be moved. You can’t reproduce it. It represents a break from traditional sculpture. It can’t be put in a museum and it’s not clear that it has a function. See more on Hughes take on it from his series, “Shock Of The New” which includes some aerial shots (from 00:45 to 5:30):
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I have to confess that seeing that structure upon the wide open emptiness of Eastern Nevada is comforting for the familiarity it brings. It’s a little bit of order upon the unknown, and the design, or lack thereof (about which a man may wonder), within Nature herself. I think this is why a military installation out in the desert can captivate the imagination as it’s been known to in Hollywood and in the public mind (dreaming of aliens and conspiracies).
To expand on that theme, Wallace Stevens might shed some light. He was an American poet on the hinge between romanticism and modernism:
Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
What do you do with an uncivilized, wild land? Import European learning and literature “atop” it? Christian tradition and the Natural Law? Import the triumph of the Western mathematical sciences and technology? Import its movements of the arts and the individual artist?
You can’t help but do this.
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So, is modern art supposed to improve you morally?
What originally drew me to the piece was politics and arguments over the public square, not so much the art itself. There’s been some negative press about the Levitated Mass due to the spectacle of its presentation. They hauled the rock in from its quarry outside L.A. on a specially made (and expensive) vehicle and draped it in protective garb. This probably united people as much as anything else; witnessing the logistics of moving a huge rock such a distance.
With the current California budget crisis and California’s structural political problems, and the ways in which California and all that big dreaming has gone bust of late…does it really need another boondoggle?
What monument or ideas are those folks out in California gathering around anyways?
I think it’s important to highlight the gap between the achievement of the artist and those who would present that artist or his work to the public. There is harm either can do to the other, as it might make the artist’s work just another forgotten public sculpture or diminish his incentives. It might put taxpayers on the hook for something of questionable public value.
Trying to morally improve the public is what can give some people (I often think of NPR, many philanthropists, many a docent) a noble, if not righteous purpose in life. At some point, though, it can become an argument of “shoulds” and “oughts” and what is actually for the good of the public, and which ideals and people lead others in the public square, rather than one of art.
Perhaps you haven’t heard about the Levitated Mass at the Los Angeles County Art Museum:
‘…an artwork by Michael Heizer comprised of a 456-foot-long concrete-lined slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, upon and at the center of which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As visitors walk along the slot, it gradually descends to fifteen feet deep, running underneath the megalith before ascending back up.’
This is L.A., but…still. Our author at the American Interest wonders:
‘It would be interesting to know whose idea was to move the 340-ton rock from a quarry (at a distance of almost a hundred miles) to the Los Angeles County Museum—an operation costing millions, necessitating extra police forces to deal with the traffic problems caused by the slow progress (five miles per hour) of a gigantic truck (“196-wheel transporter”) specially made for this project.’
Wonder no further:
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Well, at least it was paid for by private donations. Even so, a great nation deserves great art. This piece fills a spiritual and cultural void at the heart of the Angelino multicultural experience, creating a communal space (absence) in which the public can find meaning through public Art by incorporating Nature itself (a large rock…prescence) into their rootless, isolated, traffic-weary daily lives. It is a mass for the masses!
While passing under the megalith, it may slowly dawn on some Californians that what seemed like levitation or another mildly interesting new art installation actually has a terrible weight to it, and could potentially crush them to death. This may even inspire fear or resignation (like the California debt burden), or perhaps like the Hajj it will become a pilgrimage destination, even uniting people in a state of passive reverence for something so mildly holy (as only good, secular, public Art projects can do).
There was also a gala opening for the rock as though it were Oscar night. From the American Interest:
“In the final analysis, moving this rock to a museum may be seen as an apt symbol of the cultural/aesthetic relativism that has of late engulfed much of our society. Admiration of the rock also illustrates a rare agreement between elite groups (such as curators and benefactors of museums) and ordinary people about what should be regarded as an object of art. Perhaps most importantly it reflects a growing incapacity of many Americans to distinguish between events which are appropriate occasions for reaffirming social bonds and experiencing exhilaration and those which are meaningless and wasteful spectacles.”
Indeed, but I suppose that’s up to the people of Los Angeles to decide. They may like it. The L.A. Times blog writes more here (comments are worth a read).
See also: Tergvinder’s Stone, a poem by W.S. Merwin. Maybe you could see this coming.
Addition: Apparently not everyone recognizes an attempt at postmodern public art blurb satire when they see it.
I’ve had to think a fair amount about art lately (life could be worse), so I thought I’d post this despite the current national frenzy for the importance of (A)rt.
“…a widely honored artist known for melding Chicano themes and Western history in exuberant sculpture.”
and on this sculpture:
“The eyes are light-emitting diodes, which burn red like taillights. They are an homage to Mr. Jimenez’s father, who ran a neon-sign studio in El Paso, Texas... “
That could work. Are we getting close to kitsch art and possibly Chupacabra territory here?…do the skill and artistry transcend that?
It seems powerful, serious and proud…a little scary even…a mythic figure. Is it possible Jimenez was poking fun at the serious belief people have in such figures and myths…? Maybe not.
Sad fact: “He was killed on June 13, 2006, in his studio when a large piece, a mustang intended for Denver International Airport, fell on him severing an artery in his leg.”
