Revised Revised Thesis Proposal

So after discussing my first revised thesis proposal with my girlfriend I came up with this second revision, and seeing as no one has commented on my first proposal post, I might as well put this up and hope you will give me some feedback on it. Come on guys, it's shorter than the first one!

Beyond Heroes on Horses: Re-Theorizing Public Art
Thesis Proposal

The majority of scholarship on the topic of public art has traditionally been devoted to aesthetic critiques 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 was accepted to mean “art in a public place”. Until the “Tilted Arc” fiasco, little critical thought seems to have been given to the 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. However ephemeral activist public art has seen a strong upswing since the ‘80s. Groups like Gran Fury, ACT Up, and more recently 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 will 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. Public art need not be art for the ages, instead it could utilize it’s potential for ephemerality to both inspire and provide a forum for public discourse. 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 within 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 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, in my opinion, has the greatest social potential, as well as the least cultural capital, in that it is usually situated firmly outside of the institution, which, along with it’s transitory nature, often causes it to be dismissed by both the academy and the public at large. 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.