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Art and the Public Sphere
What is the fate of art in an age of publicity? How has the role of traditional public (i.e., government-owned) art changed in contemporary culture, and how have changing conditions of public space and mass communications altered the whole relationship between art and its potential audiences?
With contributions from the arts, philosophy, criticism, and the law, the thirteen essays in this volume explore the aesthetic, social, and political dynamics that make contemporary public art so controversial, and that that have placed recent art work at the center of public debates.
Contributors include Vito Acconci, "Public Space in a Private Time"; Agnes Denes, "The Dream"; W. J. T. Mitchell, "The Violence of Public Do the Right Thing "; Ben Nicholson, "Urban Poises"; Michael North, "The Public as From Heavenly City to Mass Ornament"; Barbara Kruger, in an interview with W. J. T. Mitchell; Barbara Hoffman, "Law for Art's Sake in the Public Realm"; Richard Serra, "Art and Censorship"; James E. Young, "The Memory Against Itself in Germany Today": Charles Griswold, "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography"; John Hallmark Neff, "Daring to Dream"; and David Antin and Virginia Maksymowicz.
Presenting a balance of theoretical and performative essays by both critics and artists, this book will provide deep and discordant analyses of contemporary public art for general readers, as well as students and scholars of art, architecture, and public policy related to the arts.
Most of these articles originally appeared in the journal Critical Inquiry .
With contributions from the arts, philosophy, criticism, and the law, the thirteen essays in this volume explore the aesthetic, social, and political dynamics that make contemporary public art so controversial, and that that have placed recent art work at the center of public debates.
Contributors include Vito Acconci, "Public Space in a Private Time"; Agnes Denes, "The Dream"; W. J. T. Mitchell, "The Violence of Public Do the Right Thing "; Ben Nicholson, "Urban Poises"; Michael North, "The Public as From Heavenly City to Mass Ornament"; Barbara Kruger, in an interview with W. J. T. Mitchell; Barbara Hoffman, "Law for Art's Sake in the Public Realm"; Richard Serra, "Art and Censorship"; James E. Young, "The Memory Against Itself in Germany Today": Charles Griswold, "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography"; John Hallmark Neff, "Daring to Dream"; and David Antin and Virginia Maksymowicz.
Presenting a balance of theoretical and performative essays by both critics and artists, this book will provide deep and discordant analyses of contemporary public art for general readers, as well as students and scholars of art, architecture, and public policy related to the arts.
Most of these articles originally appeared in the journal Critical Inquiry .
- GenresArt
280 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1992
About the author
W.J. Thomas Mitchell
102 books64 followersWilliam J. Thomas Mitchell is a professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. Editor of the journal Critical Inquiry.
His monographs, Iconology (1986) and Picture Theory (1994), focus on media theory and visual culture. He draws on ideas from Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx to demonstrate that, essentially, we must consider pictures to be living things. His collection of essays What Do Pictures Want? (2005) won the Modern Language Association's prestigious James Russell Lowell Prize in 2005. In a recent podcast interview Mitchell traces his interest in visual culture to early work on William Blake, and his then burgeoning interest in developing a science of images. In that same interview he discusses his ongoing efforts to rethink visual culture as a form of life and in light of digital media.
His monographs, Iconology (1986) and Picture Theory (1994), focus on media theory and visual culture. He draws on ideas from Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx to demonstrate that, essentially, we must consider pictures to be living things. His collection of essays What Do Pictures Want? (2005) won the Modern Language Association's prestigious James Russell Lowell Prize in 2005. In a recent podcast interview Mitchell traces his interest in visual culture to early work on William Blake, and his then burgeoning interest in developing a science of images. In that same interview he discusses his ongoing efforts to rethink visual culture as a form of life and in light of digital media.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 23, 2017
A useful and readable introduction to this topic, though it's now over 25 years out of date and it doesn't address things like Confederate statues.
July 8, 2014
Essays originally published in Critical Inquiry. The essays in this book are mostly concerned with the place of art in the public domain (e.g. monuments in public squares); it does not offer a detailed historical or conceptual analysis of the public sphere vis-à-vis art and/or aesthetics. To my mind, that makes the majority of the essays in this book relatively useless for those interested in the relation between art and public sphere.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews