Taking Art Public

...He prefers the denotative, realistic statue that is now situated at the edge of the monument...

...It is easy to quarrel with the editors' particular choices, or to wish that every essay had reached the incisive level achieved by the best, but as a pioneering effort The Public Face of Architecture is an interesting and worthwhile contribution both to social thought and to art criticism...

...One writer, hostile to abstract art, attacks the Vietnam War Memorial because it lacks a "graspable message...

...parks and other open spaces...

...Connotative work does not speak to him...

...Writers & Writing TAKING ART PUBLIC BY BARRY GEWEN A trip to a museum these days, when it's possible to mistake a high-priced and much-acclaimed sculpture for something the maintenance crew forgot to remove, can be a bewildering experience...

...It uproots and tyrannizes...

...courthouse design, says that "the denial of tradition has...

...Although laissezfaire enthusiasts may squirm, this is an essentially neutral perspective: Traditional conservatives no less than Galbraithian liberals can adopt and champion it...

...For this reason, there has been no more fascinating or profound an esthetic controversy in recent years than the argument that raged around Richard Serra's Tilted Arc, installed in New York City's Federal Plaza against the protests of office workers who were being forced to look at it every day...

...Anarchy prevails...

...Not surprisingly, the overall thrust, or bias, of the collection is toward civic awareness and responsibility...

...It is good to be reminded that there are simpletons on every side of the issue...

...Rugged individualism, the romantic cult of the narcissistic artist, reigns supreme in the profession...

...Little wonder, then, that the next generation is learning to behave like a bunch of unhousebroken puppies...

...Tilted Arc, they say in a later comment, is "just one example of the growing public dissatisfaction with the art being placed in parks and squares by contemporary artists, and paid for with public funds...

...public art and sculpture...

...The role of the architect and public artist, therefore, must be to enhance our growth, not to seek out opportunities for the barbaric yawp of a Personal Statement...

...A number of other contributors share Safdie's sympathy for evolution, stressing the importance of history and tradition...

...A bit of democracy may be an effective counterbalance to the master-builder complex so prevalent today...

...But art—even the messy, chaotic modern kind—has a way of spilling out of doors in the form of architecture, public sculpture and monuments, and there the rules of bemused, relativistic tolerance do not apply...

...Yet a street is, as Jane Jacobs points out, a delicate ecological system, a web of interactions among people that develops slowly, organically...

...a sense that one treats one's fellow beings as equals...

...art's lack of public posture is its strength...

...One author observes that the Italian piazza, which ranks with the most successful of public spaces, "was not conceived on the drafting board, but instead developed gradually in natura...

...Yes and no...

...No one who takes the time to browse through its pages will fail to be stimulated or provoked...

...We were choking on natura...

...Within the confines of the exhibition hall, everybody agrees to suspend disbelief and nobody gets very excited, no matter how silly or pretentious the work seems to be...

...Beneath a dispute ostensibly pitting the sculptor's rights against the Plazausers' tastes lurked the most basic types of questions, the sort children ask and adults have a hard time answering, issues of value, content, authority, the nature and function of art in a democracy, even the definition of art itself...

...I n the "real world" a piece stands naked...

...It must somehow justify itself in language that can be understood by the uninitiated...

...The essay that clearly sets forth the principle is Moshe Safdie's minimanifesto, "Collective Significance...

...Another writer, analyzing the changes in U.S...

...The Evolved attitude relies on adaptation, linking the simplest dwelling to the most grandiose edifice...

...There is a fundamental humility to this tradition...

...Social history quickly displaced esthetics, until the more gaga preservationists were following their logic to the point of attempting to maintain 19th-century tenements as a reminder of how ordinary people used to live...

...Consistent with the Evolved attitude, Safdie calls for an architecture that serves people's needs "as the most elementary and uncompromisable ingredient," and in the light of the urban wastelands spattered across the American landscape, testaments to corporate and individual megalomania, it is impossible to disagree with him...

...The book grew out of a belief that architects and artists are failing to consider the social component of their work...

...In his discussion of Paris, as humane a city as any in the world, Glazer notes how a tie to the past helps define standards and preserve the French capital against the excesses of builders and politicians: "The tradition itself, upheld by architects, planners, the public and bureaucrats, would reassert itself if choices strayed too far...

...Thus it is now accepted that Pompidou, with freeways and skyscrapers inside Paris, was imposing solutions and designs that contradicted 300 years of development...

...led to a lack of serious guidelines...

...The Composed attitude sacrifices livability to some preconceived and formal objective...

...The Right-wing Scruton preaches good manners, insisting that architecture, as the most political of the arts, must possess civility...

...Something is clearly amiss," the two editors state in their Introduction...

...Safdie identifies two architectural traditions...

...I? place of the past, several of the contributors look to community taste for direction, declaring, in effect, that if architecture and public art are to be made for the people, then the people should have a say in how it is made...

...There is at the present time an astonishing absence of clear reflection among architects and critics about just what the public space is, and how architectural objects are meant to fill it...

...The remaining four sections focus on narrower topics: architecture...

...Virtually everyone praises the street as the consummate public arena, "theplace," in the words of one contributor, "wherewe exhibit our permanent identity as members of the community...

...art makes no claims for being anything of value to the larger society...

...Call this the Roman Hruska School of Criticism, after the Nebraska Senator who advocated elevating a lackluster judge to the Supreme Court because mediocrities also had the right to be represented...

...In another misguided piece, "The Malignant Object: Thoughts on Public Sculpture," two philosophy professors contend that the government should not be promoting public art...

...I make no special attempt to relate architecture to other things," declares one of America's most celebrated architects...

...From the tenor of his argument, it sounds like he would have been happier still with a billboard...

...Gutman writes: "Oftentimes 1 find students, forexample, whodo not realizethat the general public does not grasp the intention behind the semiotic content of their designs, a content which the student assumes is self-evident.' Glazer and Lilla conceive of The Public Face of Architecture as a step in the process of civic re-education...

...Often it cannot...

...Evolution has to evolve out of something, and 300 years ago, all that existed in most of this country was trees and desert...

...But while arrogant elitism is the prevailing sin on the artists' side of the cultural fault-line, know-nothing populism is the dominant vice on the public's, and The Public Face of Architecture is not entirely free of it...

...Written by Robert Gutman, an architecture and sociology professor at Princeton and Rutgers, it explains that for the past 15 years the professional schools have concentrated primarily on teaching building design, generally ignoring context and public need...

...The Public Face of Architecture: Civic Culture and Public Spaces (Free Press, 512 pp., $35), edited by Nathan Glazer and Mark Lilla, is a collection of essays that brings to the surface many of the questions submerged in the Serra brouhaha...

...The subjects range from the Capitol Building to subway graffiti, from the design of Paris to the design of shopping malls...

...The art audience, sophisticated enough to be familiar with Modernism's persistent battles against the Philistines throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, has learned to avoid raising a fuss about objects that make no apparent sense...

...Thepiece entitled "Landmarks Preservation in New York" indicates what went wrong in a case where Americans tried to appeal to their own enfeebled past...

...The Leftish Sennett laments the spread of privatization and the emphasis on the self that have resulted in our dehumanized metropolitan centers...

...The point where modern art meets the populace at large is one of the great fault-lines of contemporary culture...

...With so much at stake, one is tempted to paraphrase Old Leftists discussing I he 1921 Kronstadt Revolt: Teli me where you stand on Tilled Arc, and 1 will loll you who you arc...

...One of the volume's articles, "Educating Architects," illustrates the reasons for Glazer and Lilla's concern...

...These vary in quality, but one stands out as a paradigm of the opposite estheticist position: "What is at stake is the individual's attempt to assert the value of personal sensibility against the corporate and communal sensibility of the society...

...An opening section, "Principles of Public Space," contains broadly philosophical pieces by "classic" authors like Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt, as well as by such younger intellectuals as Richard Sennett and Roger Scruton...

...This is fine for the French, who can look back to palaces and cathedrals, to medieval towns and villages, but it doesn't help Americans groping for guidance...

...Anything goes...

...Philistines are people too," they say, "and, whether or not one shares their tastes, the moral point of view requires that their interests be considered...

...A series of brief responses follows "The Malignant Object...

...and city planning...

...Manned at the dearth of studies relating art to environment, they have tried to provide a kind of primer that can instruct professionals and laymen alike...