ONE PLACE AFTER ANOTHER - Monoskop

61 Ibid.
62 Others not necessarily aligned with new genre public art have also registered a sense of disappointment
at Serra’s work not being “radical” enough. See Finklepearl, ed., Dialogues in
Public Art, 35. See also James Meyer’s critique of Tilted Arc’s “negative” monumentality in
“The Functional Site,” Documents 7 (Fall 1994): 20–29.
63 The phrase is borrowed from Stuart Hall’s critique of the cultural politics of Margaret
Thatcher’s England in “Popular-Democratic vs Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways of ‘Taking
Democracy Seriously,’” in The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left
(London: Verso, 1988), 123–149. Rosalyn Deutsch explains the concept succinctly as “the
mobilization of democratic discourses to sanction, indeed to pioneer, shifts toward state totalitarianism.”
Deutsche, Evictions, 266.
64 This undertheorized alliance set the stage for the identity politics and political correctness
debates of the early 1990s. In terms of public art, little room was left for bold, ambitious artistic
statements that did not engage social issues or the “community.”
65 This directive expanded in the early 1990s to include “educational activities which invite
community involvement.” See Lacy, ed., Mapping the Terrain, 24. For a sample case of the
shift in attitude toward greater community participation in public art, see Tom Finklepearl’s
assessment of the 1999 community cultural plan of Portland, Maine, in his Dialogues in Public
Art, 43–44.
66 Finklepearl, ed., Dialogues in Public Art, 81.
67 Ibid., 81–82. Art historian Erika Doss has pointed out that “throughout the 1980s, the NEA
[and state arts agencies] avoided funding public art projects that were specifically commemorative
or representational,” preferring modern abstract art of artists such as Stephen
Antonakos, Robert Irwin, Richard Fleischner, Tony Smith, Mark di Suvero, Mary Miss, Athena
Tacha, and Richard Serra. She argues that the aesthetic vocabulary of abstraction, which is
not shared by the general audience (who seem to prefer easily understandable symbolism),
is one main source of the many public art controversies of the 1980s. It is important to note
that the NEA corrected itself in the late 1980s, however, with the following addition to their
guidelines: “The [NEA] must not, under any circumstances, impose a single aesthetic standard
or attempt to direct artistic content.” Doss claims that with such a revised vision, the
NEA increased funding for representational art, such as public murals, in the 1990s. See
Doss, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs, 51, fn. 24.
187
NOTES TO PAGES 80 – 84