Summaries- Public Art as Text

Four Stages of Public Art

This essay explains the four stages of public art according to Roy Bhaskar’s formulation of a four-stage dialectic, which is the practice of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments. The stages are aligned with historical stages, and trace the transformations in the possibilities for public art. It talks about the different possibilities of public art, and how all types of public art in different locations encourage viewers to react and engage in different ways.

The first stage is non-unity, or of something “not being the same” as it was. This is how Bhaskar begins any argument that has to do with transformations. In the case of public art, the first stage is putting some art in some public space. It is the change that makes the non-unity of the art that is not the same as the art of the past.

The second stage is negation. Because the first stage did not include a connection between the making of art and the reception of that art by the public, this stage is the one where “the relationship between subject and object becoming visible.” This is the realization that the form of public art is changing the reaction of the audience to something other than it would have been without the art. Artists realize that the work is not detached from the public and therefore also change their art making process depending on how they think or want the public to view and understand it.

The third stance is totality, or the reciprocal relationship between the two stages. In public art this means that there is a conversation between the meaning of the artist and the meanings of the viewers.

The last stage is the practice of transformation, or the self transformation. Which in turns of public art means that it continues to transform the possibilities of what public art might be. So, this kind of art is difficult to judge because it is always transforming. Simply the act of attempting to define it is helping to change it more.

Protect us From What we Know

This article is about Jenny Holzer’s most recent work, in which she has used declassified government documents, that we made available through the Freedom of Information Act. as the source for her text based artwork. The work is done on silk-screens, which is a new and different medium of work for her. She tries to stick to using black and which because it gives her work the official feel of the documents, but in a larger than life bold manner. Holzer sees the documents as physical objects with specific visual qualities, and wants to stay as true to that as possible. The most significant visual aspect is the government censorship of the material before it is released, abstracting her work. She blacks out names and identifications, as well as some large sections. Her most notable screen is a large black and white print of the Phoenic memo, which was a warning to New York about a possible coordinated effort by Bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. Her work is unique because it allows viewers to piece together the missing information and interpret the documents on their own