Thesis Proposal

Okay, so I just wrote up my revised proposal and I would appreciate whatever input people are in the mood to give me. On the thesis topic itself, on the proposal, suggestions for sources or interesting directions I could go. I was a little unsure of what the format for the proposal should be, are there things I should include that I didn't, things I did include and shouldn't? You know, the basic peer review. KF, your input would also be quite welcome.

Without further ado, my thesis proposal:

Beyond Heroes on Horses: Re-theorizing Public Art

The majority of scholarship on the topic of public art has traditionally been devoted to aesthetic critics of monumental artworks situated in public spaces. The works in question were usually commissioned by a governmental agency or funded by a Percentage for Art or Art in Architecture program. Public art, it seemed, was accepted to mean “art in a public place”. Until the “Tilted Arc” fiasco little critical thought seems to have been given to public itself or how it might interact with the artwork in question. Commissioned by civic counsels and corporations, the pieces seemed to be motivated by urban beautification projects or erected as markers of social and cultural power. It is hard to say exactly when socially motivated, counter-institutionally public art entered the picture, arguably the ‘60s with the various counter-cultural movements of the time, perhaps in the ‘30s and ‘40s with political murals, perhaps earlier. However, I feel that it can be said that ephemeral activist public art has seen a strong upswing since the ‘80s. Groups like Gran Fury, ACT Up, and more recently the Think Again, Guerilla Girls and Banksy have been making use of this art form to bring their political messages to public.

Their work and the social implications thereof have inspired me to re-envision public art criticism not purely as a matter of aesthetics but of social work, to call into questions exactly what is meant by “public art”, “the public”, and “public space”. I intend to argue that public art is not merely art in public, but art for the public, art directed to the public. A public artwork should not be critiqued solely, or even primarily, on its aesthetic qualities, but by the social good (or harm) that it does, by how well it engages the public, by how well it makes use of it status as public art.

One of the greatest impediments to this re-theorization is a conception of public art that lumps “Tilted Arc” together with “Kissing Doesn’t Kill”, which holds them to the same standards and expects them to operate in the same manner. Therefore, I suggest that public artworks be placed with in a matrix defined by their permanence and their explicit social agenda, separated into four broad quadrants: Civic Monuments, Memorials, Civic Art/Art in Architecture, and Guerilla Art/Ephemeral Public Art. I will attempt to explore the interplay and significance in variance of permanence and explicit social agenda (by which is meant, the extent to which an artwork makes apparent the social work it intends to do) and the inter-related nature of the quadrants of public art. My main focus, for the purpose of this thesis, will be on the category of Guerilla Art, which I view to have the greatest social potential, as well as the least cultural capital. With the increasing privatization of our public spheres, I feel that we, as a society, would benefit from the open dialogue and reclamation of public space that I feel could be created if Guerilla Art were instead understood as Ephemeral Public Art, if room were made for it, not so much in the institution, as in our society.