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Memorandum To: Colleagues From: Peter Levine (405-4767)

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Memorandum To: Colleagues From: Peter Levine (405-4767) Memorandum To: Colleagues From: Peter Levine (405-4767) Re: CP4 Workshop April 23, 2001 Attached is the paper for the next CP4 workshop: "Public Art, Public Outcry: The Scandalous Sculptures of Jacob Epstein and Richard Serra" Caroline Levine, English Department, Rutgers University/Camden May 3, 12:30 to 2pm, in the Humanities Dean's Conference Room, 1102 Francis Scott Key Hall Abstract: What kind of art belongs in public spaces? Who speaks for the “public” in controversies over public space? In 1925, Rima, a sculpture by Jacob Epstein, was installed in Hyde Park in London. An avant-garde relief, the sculpture became the focus of public controversy for almost a decade—both reviled and defended in the tabloids, disparaged in the House of Commons, extolled by art critics, and defaced three times by vandals who scrawled “Jew” and “Bolshevist” across it. Taken by some as a proof of England's innovative role in the art world and by others as the subversive work of a foreigner, Rima became the emblem of a dispute over the national character of British art. Sixty years later and across the ocean, a comparable quarrel played itself out, and this time with more troubling consequences for the art work. In the early 1980s, Richard Serra's sculpture, Tilted Arc, appeared in Federal Plaza in New York City. It was a tall, curving steel wall that bisected the plaza, transforming the public space—and, some said, ruining it for the public. Protests became increasingly forceful, and eventually, after a hearing, the sculpture was demolished. Tilted Arc, like Rima, came to embody competing ideas of the community that had allowed the object to enter its space. Taken together, these two cases suggest that public art functions not only as a reshaping and adornment of public space, but as a representation of the public itself. Public Art, Public Outcry—Levine 1 Public Art, Public Outcry: The Scandalous Sculpture of Jacob Epstein and Richard Serra Caroline Levine, Rutgers University In the twentieth century, hardly a year went by without some public uproar over art. In the past fifteen years in America, the most famous of the upheavals were the National Endowment for the Arts controversy, the trials of rap groups 2 Live Crew and Ice T, and, as the century reached its very end, the Brooklyn Museum scandal. Since the courts have defined art as a form of speech, these debates have largely raised familiar policy questions not limited to the art world: what is the proper relationship between free speech and the public good? Are there particular kinds of speech that are particularly injurious to the public? Should taxpayers pay for speech that offends minority beliefs or identities? These questions have a long and intricate history, and as a cultural critic, I do not aim to shed light on central issues of First Amendment law or political philosophy. But I do want to suggest that governments for the past hundred years have had to grapple with public policy questions that are specific to the arts. These are the questions that arose in the wake of the Modernist avant-garde, a set of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artistic movements that were proud of their rejection of both officially sanctioned academic art and mass culture, assigning the highest moral and aesthetic value to the art that satisfied the smallest audience. They claimed authenticity only for the art that challenged familiar and conventional tastes. “Public art” became something of an oxymoron in a context where art deliberately flouted public approval. Yet Western governments continued to exhibit, protect, and commission works of art throughout the twentieth century, citing the value of art for national edification, identity, and pride. Thus art policy found itself continually split. If artists insisted that the only genuine art was that which defied public expectations, democracies had to reconcile an official respect for art with an art world that deliberately resisted the tastes and preferences of both state institutions and the voting majority. Two controversies make my case: the first, Jacob Epstein’s Rima, a memorial to the writer William Henry Hudson, erected in 1925 for London’s Hyde Park; the second, Tilted Arc, a Public Art, Public Outcry—Levine 2 monumental piece created by Richard Serra in 1981 for Federal Plaza in Manhattan. Both Rima and Tilted Arc were designed specifically for public spaces. Both prompted immediate and vociferous outcry. But neither was obscene, violent, or offensive on grounds of race, religion, sex, or sexuality. Neither could be said to cause injury, corrupt the innocent, endanger the community, or threaten the status quo. Neither controversy could be said to be about harm. What was at stake in both cases was a matter of style, of aesthetic preference, of taste. Public outcry in both cases revolved around what we might simply call “dislike.” And dislike, these two cases suggest, is complex indeed. As we will see, some voices in the art world actually argued for the desirability of displeasing the public, citing “dislike” as an appropriate aim of public art. Art’s purpose was to unsettle and to upset. Others insisted that the majority was capable of appreciating the most esoteric works, and that it was important to educate the public out of their dislike. Politicians in both the Epstein and the Serra controversies acknowledged the necessity of placating irritated voters, but they also refused to grant majority rule, insisting that it would be absurd to call a referendum on aesthetics. Few argued for sheer numbers when it came to art. Yet, without a referendum, both debates then ran into the problem of gauging the extent and depth of public “dislike”: who would speak for the public? Was it the press, politicians, the courts? Even more troubling, which public mattered most? Was it the people who had to see the work in order to conduct their daily affairs or was it the whole nation? Was it only those who had paid for the work, or did the public include international visitors and future generations? National identity played a conspicuous role in both public debates, with voices both for and against the art object insisting that public art represented the nation to the rest of the world. And in both instances we hear a great deal of insecurity about the wisdom of judging art in the present, since generations to come might look back on naïve first impressions with contempt. Wracked by anxiety about the problem of a properly public aesthetic judgment, the two controversies reveal struggles over the relationship between an elite art world and a larger public, over the weight and significance of “dislike,” and over the value of public art in democratic nations. Public Art, Public Outcry—Levine 3 There once was a sculptor of mark Who was chosen to brighten Hyde Park; Some thought his design Most uncommonly fine, But more liked it best in the dark.1 In 1922, friends and admirers of the novelist and naturalist William Henry Hudson gathered in London to plan an appropriate memorial for their beloved writer. Best known for his novel, Green Mansions, Hudson had also penned an extraordinarily popular ornithological guide, The Birds of London. But he was no Londoner himself: born in Argentina to parents who had come from the United States, Hudson moved to England at the age of 29, and although he lived there for the rest of his life, never became an English citizen. Despite his foreign origins, however, Hudson’s English enthusiasts decided to build a memorial to him in one of London’s best known public spaces—Hyde Park. The newly formed Hudson Memorial Committee agreed to invite the renowned sculptor Jacob Epstein to design a medallion depicting Hudson to adorn a new bird sanctuary in the park. Jacob Epstein’s career up to that point had been controversial. He had come to England, like Hudson, as an adult. Born to Jewish parents in New York, he had studied art as a young man in Paris before moving to London. In 1908, his series of statues outside the British Medical Association building in London brought charges of obscenity, charges which were repeated in 1912, when his memorial to Oscar Wilde in Paris was covered over by the authorities. His 1920 statue of “Christ” shocked conventional viewers with its rejection of traditional iconography, and indeed his stark Modernist style startled many, who called it “hideous,” “barbaric,” “grotesque,” and “repulsive.” But although his work had provoked controversy in the past, Epstein was increasingly considered one of the best of England’s sculptors. One artist interviewed by The Daily News in 1925 called him “by far the greatest sculptor in the world,” and this was not the only voice to sing Epstein’s praises.2 The Hudson Memorial Committee chose Epstein because, they said, they were “really anxious to give the Nation a dignified piece of art.”3 Public Art, Public Outcry—Levine 4 The committee’s proposal was at first rejected by the Office of Works because portraits are not allowed in the Royal Parks. But although the government forbade portraits of living or historical people, they approved “imaginary figures,” as the statue of Peter Pan already in Hyde Park made clear. So the Hudson Memorial Committee suggested an image of Rima, a character from Hudson’s fictional Green Mansions. The committee described Rima as a “bright spirit in human form, so akin to wild Nature, yet endowed with such extraordinary intelligence,” and imagined that “such a theme would be in accordance with [Epstein’s] inclination.”4 Epstein duly produced a new sketch and a plaster model, and the committee submitted the plan.
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