Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art

Afterimage, Summer, 1996 by Margaret Wagner

In the '60s, counter-cultural, activist Happenings brought artwork outside the galleries and museums to challenge the perceived elitism of the art market. Later, with the development of the Civil Rights and Women's Movements, and the burgeoning "underground" culture artists and activists became closely aligned. The merger of aesthetics and activism could be seen in artworks by Fred Lonider, Suzanne Lacy, Chris Burden, Allan Kaprow and Yolanda Lopez, among others. Using guerrilla video tactics and engaging in media "break-ins," artists such as Lacy and Burden brought video into the public-art arena. Lonider and other Marxist artists worked with text and image, attacking unfair labor practices and criticizing capitalism. By installing the work in alternative sites, such as union halls and community centers, the audience for the artwork drastically changed. In a similar manner, Lopez viewed the street as her gallery. Through posters and leaflets, Lopez brought art and activism directly to neighborhood audiences. Much of this work, however, was not recognized or accepted as "public art" by arts organizations, government funding agencies or the general public. But because of its collaborative and activist nature, these activities did prepare the way for what Lacy terms "new genre public art."

Challenging traditional stereotypes of intrusive, large-scale sculpture, new forms of public art seek to open up communication and exchange between artists and audiences. Two new Bay Press anthologies, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art and Culture in Action, work in tandem. Each provide artists working in a variety of media with a theoretical basis for practice.

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, edited by Lacy, fuels the emerging critical discourse in public art and begins to define a new style of art production. The text includes 12 essays by important artists, curators and critics, as well as a compendium of the work of over 90 artists. Many of the essays included in this text speak out strongly against Modernist claims of authorship and individuality. Historical notions of a passive audience viewing large-scale sculpture in plazas, what Lucy Lippard refers to as "plunk art," are challenged by new genre public art. By interacting with the audience in participatory events that intend to build community, many have questioned whether the result is actually art or social work. One well-known subject in this debate is Jim Hubbard, a self-labeled "advocacy journalist" and "issue artist," who in 1989 founded the Shooting Back project that offers photography workshops and exhibition opportunities for at-risk children. Mapping the Terrain seeks to firmly place this type of activity in an art context and calls for a re-evaluation of existing definitions of art. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are the essays by Suzi Gablick, Patricia Phillips, Lippard and Jeff Kelley.

Kaprow and Lacy both offer documentation of past public works that they believe can serve as models for new genre public arts. Through a re-examination of Hubbard's experimental work "Project Other Ways," done in conjunction with Herbert Kohl, Kaprow probes the relationship between education and art. This project from the late '60s provided some public-school students with an opportunity to explore their own creative potential by engaging in literacy-building activities such as rewriting the early Dick and Jane readers to directly address their specific communities. Project One Ways served a dual purpose: it worked to increase literacy and it blurred the distinctions between the arts and education. However, as Kaprow points out, the arts community and the education community could not at the time embrace this project. By carefully evaluating the project's successes and failures, Kaprow shows how both the art world and educational communities could be radically restructured.

Mary Jane Jacob, who is also editor of Culture in Action (as well as Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art curator), analyzes public art's position within the arts system, and constructs alternative roles for curators, administrators and audience members. Revealing problems within the current system - i.e. principles of museum connoisseurship, aesthetic merit and validation; systems of division and classification - Jacob also alludes to the perpetuation of monolithic definitions of art and audience. The label "regional artist" is too readily applied to those working with specific groups or communities, and acts as an inhibitor of critical response or acknowledgment. These ingrained practices of distinguishing high art from low art, fine art from craft, and public art from collectible art, demonstrate that hierarchical structures are still present in both the art world and contemporary culture. It is these structures that future "public artists" will have to work around or overcome.

Throughout all 12 essays in Mapping the Terrain, one theme is consistent: collaboration between artists, curators, communities and critics must be achieved before new genre public art can realize its full potential. In his essay on multicultural art practices, Guillermo Gomez-Pena ends with a polite request for participation. Judith Baca, arguing passionately for specific regional- and culturally based art processes to emerge, emphasizes the multiplicity of publics within our society. She details how a number of well-funded Los Angeles-based projects displaced ethnic communities, or appropriated their symbols, instead of empowering these communities (which is what the projects claimed to do). These and other essays in the book ask us to question the term "public" in relation to much work defined as public art, for it is only through collaboration and the acceptance of a multiplicity of publics that the word "public" can be reclaimed by the arts.