Richard Serra's Tilted Arc and the Public Art Controversy

Introduction: Public Art and the Seeds of Controversy

Public artworks such as Koons's Train (2011), Serra's Tilted Arc (1981), Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1981), and James's Sea Flower (1978) ignite discussion to the point of modification, rearrangement, or removal. The reason for this controversial treatment of public art lies in its embrace of a wide variety of aesthetic practices. The adoption of different aesthetic values — including poster art, outdoor sculpture, earthworks, multimedia projections, and community-based projects — breaks the public's traditional understanding of art (Glahn, 2000). This critique finds that the public's totalizing classification of the public sphere generates controversy and dialogue over public art displays. By reviewing Richard Serra's famous public artwork Tilted Arc (1981), this analysis will demonstrate that there are distinct differences between public and professional understandings of public art.

The government, with the intention of exhibiting, protecting, and edifying art, commissions public art in America to foster identification with national pride. According to Levine (2002), artists follow the traditions of public art in which it holds the highest moral and aesthetic value and satisfies the interests of the many (52). In this context, public art becomes a nuisance if it deliberately ignores public approval. This policy creates a paradox in the art world, since the art world resists the need to create art that meets the tastes and preferences of the state and the majority. However, democracies require public art to meet the tastes and preferences of the ruling power and the majority (Levine 53). Public art in public spaces thus raises controversy because institutional artists defy the majority. Public art that disrupts the social status quo and prevents the community from freely moving through and inhabiting public space is often rejected (Lewis and Lewis 68). This critique uses the example of the Tilted Arc to show how institutional artists defy the public sphere and the interests of the majority, producing art that is ultimately rejected.

The Tilted Arc is an outdoor sculpture commissioned by the General Services Administration (GSA) through its "Art in Architecture Program." The commissioning of this public piece was an attempt by the GSA to reinvent itself and "rethink of public art as a subsection of the art world" (Fleming 58). The GSA commissioned Serra to create an artwork in the form of a cor-ten steel wall that would run through the plaza outside the Federal Courthouse in New York (Wall Street Journal, Editorial a, 1). The funds for the project came from the GSA's budget, which allocates half a percent of construction costs to prominent artists (Levine 53). The GSA committee selected Richard Serra from a list of professional artists, believing his work was monumental enough to stand in the shadow of Manhattan's skyscrapers, including the World Trade Center (Levine 53). The GSA believed Serra had the artistic skills to create a public artwork that could capture the fast, enterprising, and energetic movement of Manhattan's inhabitants.

The Commissioning of Tilted Arc

However, the artwork turned out to be a disaster. It was a huge wall set in the plaza that interfered with pedestrian traffic by blocking walkways (Fleming 58). Serra's intentions were to create deep and disturbing implications for the viewer and to highlight the manner in which public life and involvement with the federal government affected Americans. To achieve this, the artist studied pedestrian movement in the plaza. After completion, inspection of the sculpture rested with the GSA, and included assessments of health and safety, lighting, pedestrian traffic, law enforcement, and drainage.

After completion, the Tilted Arc dissected the plaza space, blocking paths and sightlines for frequent visitors and workers. The sculpture was an unfinished cor-ten steel solid plate, 2.5 inches thick, 12 feet high, and 120 feet long (Levine 53). It was site-specific, fixed directly into the ground. Serra intended the tilted form to give viewers a perception of movement through its varying heights and angles (Wall Street Journal, Editorial b, 1). Because the steel was unfinished, it oxidized to a natural rusty appearance, blending into the site. Given the public reaction, it is evident that Serra did not fully meet his intentions — and the work certainly did not meet the expectations of the GSA. Visitors to the plaza found the sculpture an eyesore that inconvenienced and interrupted their daily lives (Fleming 59). This interruption ultimately led to a court case, as Serra's educational intention was overwhelmed by public opposition.

There are several reasons why a piece of public art like the Tilted Arc or Sea Flower can become a public nuisance rather than a source of public appeal. This analysis finds that one of the key reasons for the controversy surrounding the Tilted Arc is rooted in theories and concepts of the public sphere. Traditionally, a bourgeois model holds the public sphere in high esteem as an ideal setting for civic discourse. In this model, the public sphere constitutes the separation of public life from private life, and critical reasoning defines it as universally accessible and opposed to public and private power interests, enterprises, and apparatus (Gamboni 155).

The public space is any space open to individuals regardless of their culture, socioeconomic status, gender, or ethnicity. According to Zachary Neal (2010), in principle if not always in practice, public space is an area accessible to all members of society (1). Historically, public spaces have functioned as realms in which the public sphere operates — where individuals deliberate, form opinions, and discuss political consensus, as described by Jürgen Habermas. This sphere is respected and valuable to society because it mediates between state and society, with the public organizing it in terms of public opinion (Habermas 50). This function is exemplified in the public spaces of Renaissance cities, ancient Greece, the Enlightenment, and the early nineteenth century. The public space is thus the surface on which the public deliberates and reaches consensus; the sphere becomes a democratic function of society.

Public Space, Public Sphere, and the Bourgeois Model

This description helps explain the rejection of the Tilted Arc by the Manhattan community. The sculpture invaded the plaza — the public space and public sphere for those who frequently used it. In many respects, the sculpture interrupted the interaction of community members by blocking their walkways and paths (Gamboni 155). This interruption represents the sculpture's failure to respect the deliberations and interactions occurring in the plaza, which served as the public sphere for occupants of the Federal building. According to Habermas, public space is the physical location where political and social interactions and activities occur (50).

To Habermas, the public sphere is a domain in social life where public opinion is formed and accessible to all (51). It should be blind to class associations and positions, calling instead for general interest — a product of democracy. The rise of mass culture and welfare state interference, however, contributed to the deterioration of the public sphere in the modern world (Glahn 10). Habermas believes that the borders between private, public, and state in the contemporary world are transgressed, supporting this view. This transgression constitutes the devaluing of the public sphere and explains the negative opinions directed at much public art (Gamboni 155). The transgression of the public sphere is also identified as the conversion of culture into ideology, causing it to lose its original position. In this understanding, leisure time and the arts are invaded by popular culture and by economic and private interests, leading to the replacement of critical dialogue with apolitical consumption (Glahn 12). It is therefore evident that Manhattanites viewed the Tilted Arc not as part of the city's art and culture, but as a transgressor of their public sphere.

The invasion of their space arose partly from a lack of understanding of professional art. A general dislike among Manhattanites led to the rejection of the Tilted Arc. According to Levine (2002), this arose from the sculpture's inability to meet and satisfy public tastes, aesthetic values, and preferences. The artist failed to consider the voices and opinions of the public prior to designing and erecting the sculpture (Lewis and Lewis 68). Moreover, the art critics and the GSA committee that approved the sculpture assumed the artwork would please the public — following the general assumption in the art world that art is meant to unsettle and upset, an assumption associated with the theory of the avant-garde (Levine 54). The sculpture did not represent the viewers' culture or life and was therefore not embraced as public art, but experienced instead as an invader of the public sphere.

The refusal of Manhattanites to accept the sculpture as public art is also associated with the weakening of the principles of the public sphere in the twentieth century (Habermas 51). The twentieth-century public sphere comprises organized individuals who exert their influence over public debate and space institutionally. This public cannot appreciate the placement of public art in the public sphere in the way the eighteenth-century public once did. According to Habermas, public art gained popularity in the eighteenth century because the public was more directly subject to political decisions. In that era, the public sphere was marked by a close link between church, state, and public and private sectors under a feudal system. Political authority held the highest levels of power, and politicians and rulers represented their ideals through symbols placed in the public sphere — statues and emblems of the ruler, for instance. The public appreciated these as forms of art representing their identity, culture, and community (Kleiner 793). Since those feudal power relations no longer exist, the placement of any public art by public, private, or government institutions now draws controversy.

Conclusion: Understanding and Misunderstanding Public Art

Therefore, in every respect for the principles of public space and public sphere, the Tilted Arc was a representation of public art. This analysis finds that the decision to remove the art from public space was driven by a lack of understanding and education on the meaning of public art. The public was not educated — through art catalogues or other means — about the meaning of the Tilted Arc, its place as a public artwork, or its relationship to the public sphere. The GSA imposed the artwork onto the public without factoring in the changing social and political interests in public emblems. Moreover, the GSA committee overlooked the power of the paying public — the economic and political class that demands respect for its opinions. The Tilted Arc failed to depict its intended meaning of democracy, to meet public interest, and to satisfy public tastes and preferences. The colossal manner in which it blocked pathways and walkways represented an interruption of the public sphere it was meant to inhabit.