by John David O’Brien
My initial discomfort with “public art” hinged on my understanding of “art,” as I had been trained, as a fundamentally avant-garde practice. “Art” privileged solipsistic and entirely individual efforts and the more controversial the artwork, the more acclaim it garnered in the art world. “Public art,” on the other hand, was a practice that concerned more than an individual and, in fact, needed to be vetted by many—from those attending to safety issues, to those attending to community interests, to those working with the architectural community. I wondered how these fundamentally antithetical approaches could converge. Perhaps because of my confusion, I turned to activities and assumed multiple roles within various spheres of public art, in order to forge a deeper understanding of the relationship between art, public art and their respective arenas.
My most early contact with a large-scale public art project took place when I was a graduate student. The municipal art gallery curator Josine Ianco Starrels advised the committee for public art at the newly restructured Los Angeles central public library to consider my work. As it turned out, my status as a graduate student excluded me from consideration, but I met the seven-person committee that was created to oversee the development of projects and choice of artists. (In addition to the new Tom Bradley Wing architect Norman Pfeiffer, the committee included representatives of the library, the Cultural Affairs Commission, and Community Redevelopment Agency, together with curators from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, plus the director of an alternative art space.) I experienced, indirectly, a type of public art selection process where a group of professionals, without large amounts of feedback from the general public, drew on specialized information to create a list of over 200 artists. This list was eventually culled down to 11 final proposals. In that way, the navigation between the single artists’ individual focus and the overall integration of the artwork into the site was achieved behind the scenes. The restored library and the new wing were presented as a fait accompli to the public when they came as visitors to the library. Needless to say, there was some uproar (particularly about projects such as Thurman Statum's monumentally huge chandeliers), but overall, the integration of these well-known artists into the physical structure of the library was accepted and now, as often happens, is celebrated. Indeed, according to the people who give tours, one of the most controversial parts of public art at the Los Angeles Central Library at the start is now considered one of the most popular features. (Parenthetically, it would be interesting to gauge, at more than one point in time, how acceptable a work in a given environment is, to establish metrics for how public art is perceived by its audiences of multiple generations.)
Since then, I both have worked on others’ public art and have self-created public art in which the procedures did not rely on specialized experts selecting and implementing public art. Now, artists apply directly to the cultural affairs department that brings in diverse jurors, a mix of folks from the art world and people representing the community and professions where the public art may be going.
While, due to the diligence and adaptability of public art managers, many procedures have improved with time, there are still quite a few things that don’t align and maybe can’t align. The following is an accounting of those things that I believe need to be addressed, or at least made more transparent, in terms of the oppositional trajectories at work.
I have been on many public art selection committees and, often, the real work for artists on those committees is the work of translating across completely disparate knowledge banks. That is because an education in visual art, even older or modern art, is rarely part of other professionals’ background or training. Later, it falls to the public art project managers, who have trained in art and/or art history, to navigate between the artists who were selected and the various other committees that will vet the work and decipher how they think the art fits into the given context. To me, it is always fascinating to see what part of the public comes to the meetings after that first jury selection is made. I’ve been on juries where professionals from the field of, for example, law enforcement or firefighting abdicate either to a junior member of their staff who is interested in the arts or to the arts professionals on the jury. This type of handoff works from a practical point of view, but ultimately it means that a part of the community that is supposed to be engaged has already decided, from the onset, to disengage.
After a selection is made, the artist still is asked to meet with the broader community—whether it be with a self-selected group or with a local city counselors’ appointed group or with a mix. Usually, that is when the more severe difficulties can emerge. The artists, who have been trained (by-and-large) to talk in a disciplinary way about their work, can be hard to understand from a normal person’s perspective. And the public often is unclear about what their participatory role actually is. I’ve often thought that artists working in public art should be given some form of introduction to the way in which the processes come about and/or that the general citizenry participating in the selection process would be well served by getting an introduction to contemporary art practices. Of course, both thoughts are relatively impractical, even though successful public art programs tend to implement after-the-fact tours that acquaint the public with what already has been placed in public view. For me, the circularity of this problem is echoed in the legal jury system. It appears that, some time ago, most regular upstanding citizens would opt out of jury duty, if that were an option. In place of the rotating pool of citizens, then, there was a sort of professional cadre who were happy to come in and get the per diem to sit for the trial. Now, it's become very difficult to get out of jury service, though people still try to avoid it. If they go to great lengths, they find that the judges advise them that they might be found in contempt of the court. There is no penalty in the art world for those who don’t want to be a part of the public art process. In turn, the people who show up for the committee meetings either are advocates for the arts or antagonistic to the arts—with very few in between. Thinking back to the library for a moment, I wonder if collecting the information of people who go on public art tours would not be a good way of assembling a list of perspective candidates for these panels? There is a need to create a hub where people who are interested in public art can become active in the selection process.
A related, extremely problematic difficulty is that artists who are very well-known often are cultivated or emboldened to think of themselves as knowing best about art—public or studio. While that attitude can be quite productive in the gallery setting or with certain curators, it does not work in an exchange with the general public. Artists are seen as intent on speaking down to and arguing with the public—who come to be informed about their community’s art project.
Another concern is the how-to for a successful artist who does not have a public art practice when it comes to the fabrication and installation of the work in a way that follows procedures and complies with architectural codes and safety norms—things about which the average artist has no knowledge. There is a burgeoning business sector, increasing year-by-year, for organizations that step in and “make” the artist’s work “happen.” They relieve the artist of the bureaucratic aspects of the work and even the specific engineering and physical implementation. They occupy the same relationship to the artwork that a foundry might occupy with the sculptor who makes a wax or clay original. The difference is that this translation work often is much more transformative of the artist’s intentions than when molten metal is poured into a cast.
Similarly, it’s important to point out that many artists do not understand that the monies in standard public art practices are set up on an architectural pay schedule. Only 15 to 20% of a total budget goes to the design (or artist fee) and all of the rest goes to making and installing the work—including to all of the necessary structural engineering and aforementioned contractors and consultants. In Los Angeles, the Metro Art Program has elaborated a model wherein artists are independently paid for the design and, then, the public art managers distribute other sums to a fabricator for realization and installation. This approach eliminates almost all of the allocation misunderstandings and misalignments. The artist is left to their job of creating their singular artwork and the Metro Art Program is charged with turning that into a public art feature.
I’ve talked with a number of artists over the years who, after exposure to public art processes, choose one of two paths: either they develop partnerships alongside very competent public art managers and continue or they walk away from public art, disenchanted by how much time it took and how little control over the work they had. I personally continue to sit on the fence. To simply walk away from the opportunity to put art in public spaces does away with an opportunity to introduce a broader audience to contemporary art. To pretend that art works in public spaces on the same terms that it works as autonomous art, though, doesn’t work either. It seems to me that the only thing that can be worked out is to acknowledge, with transparency, the antithetical structure that this relationship occupies and continue to be active in that space working to create ways of bridging the paradox.
John David O’Brien is an artist, writer and curator who lives between Los Angeles and Umbria, Italia. He has an MFA in studio art from the University of Southern California, an AA.BB. degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, a Magistero degree from the Istituto Statale D’Arte di Urbino and was qualified as a Master Printer by the Calcografia Nazionale (National Etching Institute) in Rome. He works in both studio and public art creating new and site-specific works in Los Angeles, Rome and New York among other locations, in venues ranging from commercial galleries to artist-run spaces, to non-profit institutions, to municipal forums. He was the recipient of a California Community Foundation Artist Fellowship, a City of Los Angeles Artist Grant and a Fulbright Research Grant. He also has been art event organizing and curating since 1989. This work has ranged from curating exhibitions at a local and international level, to being on the exhibition committee for area non-profit organizations, to directing long term project spaces that create venues for new and experimental art forms. His reviews, essays and profiles have been published regularly in magazines and art journals including Artillery Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, Tema Celeste, Art in America, ArtScene, World Art, Visions, Daily American/International Herald Tribune and La Repubblica. Critical texts have been published in the books Landscapes for Art (ISC Press) and Testi Tessili (F.lli Palombi, Ed.) among others.
Sure. We have been building and installing site specific artworks for over thirty years, everything from free standing to very integrated architectural elements.
I appreciate what you are discussing here, but I would like to point out that you did not address the approach that I have followed in a public art career that has spanned thirty years so far. That is to design, build and install the work yourself. This requires mastery of many skills, and it takes a long time to get rolling, but it leaves the artist in complete control of the quality and impact of the work. I look forward to reading more on this topic. Nick Lyle, Whitesavage & Lyle.