Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy, by Fred Evans (preface)

PUBLIC ART AND THE FRAGILITY OF DEMOC RAC An Essay in P

olitical Aesthe

D E R F

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tics

S N A EV

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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book that I wrote years ago developed a genealogical critique of cognitive psychology’s computational model of mind. A later volume concerned society, communication, and democracy in “the age of diversity”; it clarified and built upon some of the ideas in the book previous to it. In particular, it proposed viewing society as a “multivoiced body,” a creative interplay among voices that also resists “oracles,” that is, nihilistic tendencies in societies. I appeal to political ontology once more in the current book, Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy. Its role here, however, is to help us address the problems public art faces in a democratic society. These problems derive in part from democracy’s insistent and intrinsic questioning of what it is or should be. This openness is a strength that invites us to explore creatively democracy’s possibilities as a way of life and form of governance. But it also renders democracy fragile, allowing it surreptitiously or inadvertently to incorporate racist, plutocratic, or other tendencies that corrupt it.

In response to this paradoxical nature of democracy, I develop a criterion for assessing when public artworks either reinforce or resist the nihilistic forces that plague this form of polity—that is, when such works do or do not qualify as “acts of citizenship” in a democracy. The criterion proposes both political and aesthetic guidelines, the latter concerning the creative tension between the aesthetic and political dimensions of given works. To ensure that the criterion doesn’t betray the democracy it supports, I show how it shares the openness of democracy, acting as a

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lure for always further articulations of itself and thus adopting the form that contemporary philosophers call an “event.

The construction of this criterion involves extended critical discussion of key theorists of democracy (both “continental” and “analytic” thinkers), art critics and art historians, as well as artists. I have selected them on the basis of their importance in their fields but also for their relevance to the specific task of fashioning the public art criterion. Although I discuss an ample number of public artworks for carrying out this undertaking, including topical Confederate and diversity-oriented monuments, I devote a chapter to Millennium Park, whose conviviality celebrates life, and another to New York’s 9/11 memorial, whose commemorative task addresses death and mourning. The critical discussion of these two multifaceted memorials allows me to refine the public art criterion and test its mettle for the burden I am assigning it.

Much is at stake in this endeavor. Many governments that profess democracy today nonetheless adopt rhetoric and policies promoting bigotry, authoritarianism, and thuggery. They thereby revive social–political tendencies that have historically threatened democracy from within as well as from without. Moreover, the vast amount of wealth that is passing into the hands of a decreasingly smaller group—the “one percent”— progressively turns freedom and equality, the two bulwarks of democracy, into a mirage. All the more reason to explore how public art can enlist its aesthetic and political power to resist these destructive tendencies as well as to reveal new possibilities for a democratic way of life.

I present the themes, figures, and pathways of this book more fully in chapter 1 of this book. Instead of repeating what I say there, I will shift to a lesson I’ve learned from writing this book and the other two before it: that a single-authored book is nonetheless a collaboration. This lesson makes me all the more eager to acknowledge the many people who have helped me produce Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy. To begin, the staff of Columbia University Press have been unfailingly generous as well as expert in bringing this book to print. My editor, Wendy Lochner, went beyond guidance and patience. She provided sagacious advice that led to some substantial changes in the text. Of the many other members of the Press who helped, I particularly want to thank associate editor Lowell Frye and production editor Kathryn Jorge for the helpful and friendly attention they gave to me and my work; thanks also to copywriter and

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catalog manager Zack Friedman and senior designer Chang Jae Lee. My appreciation also goes to others in this chain of creative support whose names I do not know or will learn only after these acknowledgments are part of the finished book.

Within my academic circle, encouragement and good advice came abundantly from friends and colleagues. First place, as always, goes to my life partner, Barbara McCloskey. She read multiple drafts of the text, advised me wisely on my ideas and prose, and, as an art historian, saved me from a number of embarrassing errors. Her own work on the political culture of twentieth-century Germany impressed upon me the intricate manner in which the aesthetic and political dimensions of a successful artistic work complement one another. Most importantly, the pleasure of reading and commenting on each other’s work continues to be part of the joy of all our years together.

Edward Casey and Leonard Lawlor commented extensively on the text and continue to educate me, the first about phenomenology, the second about Derrida and Deleuze, and both about how to extend such paradigms into visionary philosophies of one’s own. Tony Smith’s rigorous and insightful work on economic democracy, as well as on Marx and Hegel, inspired me to write more critically on capitalism in this book and to study further his own ideas about what could replace it. Greg Nielsen continues to lend nuance to my understanding of his notion of “imaginary audiences” in the area of journalism and to our mutual appreciation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “heteroglossic voices.” Andreea Ritivoi, like these four others, gave me helpful advice about revising some sections of my book and, from within her field of expertise, tutored me about the power of rhetoric in determining political destinies. I also benefited from the work and comments of three other art historians besides Barbara— Erika Doss, Kirk Savage, and Terry Smith—and from the friendship and creativity of the artists/scholars Andrew Johnson and Susanne Slavick.

Two anonymous referees for Columbia University Press enlightened me on how to improve my text on a number of important points.

Besides these individuals, I wish to thank a former graduate student, Boram Jeong, for preparing the list of references for my book; another, James Bahoh, for helping me with related bibliographic research; and two others, Melanie Walton and Brittany Leckey, for inviting me to give keynote presentations at their respective universities on topics related to

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chapters in this book. More generally, two groups of graduate students frequently commented on some of the ideas that were central to the book. The first group are the graduate students whose dissertations I was directing during the time I was writing Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy: Brock Bahler, Nathan Eckstrand, Boram Jeong, Ariana Ragusa, Tristana Martin Rubio, Tom Sparrow, and George Yancy. Besides introducing me to their challenging dissertation topics, they greatly aided me with their critical questions about the ideas in this book. Similarly, I also must express my gratitude to the faculty, staff, and graduate students of Duquesne University’s philosophy department; they provided me with a rich philosophical setting for my work in addition to the administrative support it required. With respect to the latter, the department’s administrator, Joan Thompson, has been particularly helpful and kind over the years. Duquesne University itself—especially Jim Swindal, the dean of the College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts—helped by granting me financial aid for the images used in the book and the indexing for the latter, as well as by allowing me to take a leave of absence for a semester in order to complete a rough draft of the manuscript.

The other group of students I want to thank are those on whose dissertation committees I served on as an external reader at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hispanic Language and Literature Department: César Zamorano Díaz, Carolina Gainza, Juan Carlos Grijalva, Lizardo M. Herrera, and Fabio López de La Roche. Besides what I learned from their impressive work, our frequent conversations enriched the concepts I was developing for my book. More particularly, each helped translate some of my articles into Spanish and to publish some of those in Latin American journals and/or present them at conferences south of the U.S. border. One of these scholars, Fabio López, invited me to team-teach a course with him at the Universidad Nacional de Bogotá, Colombia, and to give a keynote address on public art at an international conference there. A friend separate from this group, Luis Herrera, invited me to give a keynote talk at the Universidad de Cuenca in Ecuador on a topic directly related to this book. Also separate from this group, curator and art historian Luiz Guilherme Vergara has discussed with me some of the material in this book during the last few years and introduced my work to some of his colleagues in Brazil. I very much appreciate the attention they have all given my work.

More generally, I have been able to improve my ideas for Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy through the critical commentary I received at

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numerous conferences and other speaker situations, as well as though publication opportunities. These are too many to list here in full. I will limit myself to already published work related to some of the chapters in this book. In each case, the work in question has here been significantly revised as well as reframed by the rest of the book: Related to chapter 2: “Citizenship, Art, and the Voices of the City: Wodiczko’s The Homeless Projection,” in Acts of Citizenship, eds. Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen (London: Zed Books, 2008), 227–46.

Related to chapter 3: “The Dilemma of Diversity: Rawls and Derrida on Political Justice,” in Justice through Diversity? A Philosophical and Theological Debate, ed. Michael Sweeny (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2016), 123–55; “Derrida and the ‘Autoimmunity’ of Democracy,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2016): 303–15; “Cosmopolitanism ‘To Come’: Derrida’s Response to Globalization,” in A Companion to Derrida, ed. Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 550–565; and “El cosmopolitismo que viene: Derrida y el pensamiento ‘fronterizo Latinoamericano,’ ” trans. César Zamorano Díaz, in Revista de humanidades de Valparaíso 1 , no. 9 (2017): 49–72.

Related to chapters 6 and 7: “Citizenship and Public Art: Chicago’s Millennium Park,” in Outrage! Art, Controversy, and Society, ed. Richard Howells, Andreea Ritivoi, and Judith Schachter (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 144–71;“Citizenship and Public Art: The Political Aesthetics of New York’s 9/11/01 Memorial,” Belmont University Symposium Journal 3 (2013): 79–105; and “The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence,” in “Permanence in Public Art,” ed. Erika Doss, special issue, Public Art Dialogue 6, no. 1 (Spring, 2016): 58–81.

These thanks, to so many, are meant wholeheartedly. They are also extended to many friends who I could not name here but have contributed to this book over the years. All this helps confirm what I said earlier: a single-authored book is indeed a collaborative affair.

p r a i s e f o r Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy “Fred Evans’s closely argued book on the public object exposes the fragility of democratic discourse in its relation to image and monument. Democracy does not find a voice in public art but instead it is the public object that gives form and space to the symbolic imagination. Public art is not about the placing of a more or less beautiful object in a public space. It is instead the struggle for space and object to find resonance with communal conversations of place and therefore the shared languages of togetherness and difference.”

—Anish Kapoor, winner of the Turner Prize “This book is a critically needed study in political aesthetics addressing complex connections between democracy, citizenship, and public art. Its systematic analysis and criticism of selected artistic projects and ideas from such thinkers on democracy as Badiou, Derrida, Deutsche, Fraser, Lefort, Rancière, and Rawls make this book an excellent companion to our intelligent thinking regarding the meaning and value of public art as ‘acts of citizenship.’ ” —Krzysztof Wodiczko, recipient of the Hiroshima Art Prize “Combining stimulating commentaries on art with insightful analyses of contemporary philosophers, this book is a major contribution to the ongoing debates about the nature of democracy. In a way that is immensely compelling, Evans shows how works of public art might (or might not) qualify as acts of citizenship in democracy. Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy is a book I wish I had written.”

—Leonard Lawlor, author of From Violence to Speaking Out: Apocalypse and Expression in Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze “In this thought-provoking book, Evans asks which public artworks constitute acts of democratic citizenship and which serve autocratic tendencies, and proposes a philosophical criterion for assessing public artworks as acts of citizenship. The field and subject of public art is in particular need of critically engaged analysis, and this book is particularly strong when Evans merges close visual and material observation of public art with close critical analysis.”

—Erika Doss, author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America

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