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Jane Kramer, Whose Art is It? (Duke University Press, 1994) Also published in paperback by Duke. Debates about public art are notoriously thorny, and Kramer's book—in a potent 132 pages—takes a look at a particularly tenacious argument about art and representation that took place in the Bronx in 1991. After going through the long process of being commissioned by the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, artist John Ahearn found the sculptures he produced—a man with a pit bull, another with a boom box and basketball, and a girl on roller skates—created an uproar in the South Bronx community where they were installed. Seen variously as racist, evil, and admirable, the sculptures become the focus of intense public debate over multicultural representation. Kramer chronicles the series of events that lead to Ahearn's installing the pieces and then taking them five days later, detailing the nuanced intricacies of the debate as it unfolds against the backdrop of the rise of political correctness and upheaval within the NEA. Kramer's book touches briefly but deeply on all the issues surrounding public art, though it is rarely about art itself. The main issue in this particular controversy, as Kramer identifies it, is the increasing anxiety over community representation. Do the sculptures misrepresent the community, and does a white artist have any business attempting to represent the South Bronx to begin with? Some in the South Bronx yearn for more "positive" images; others find the grittiness of Ahearn's statues a fitting tribute to the neighborhood. Kramer describes the dangers when the availability of viewpoints allowed to comment on your experience shrinks to one. The book reads like the extended essay that it is; it first appeared in the pages of the New Yorker, where it won a National Magazine Award in 1992. While Kramer holds back from answering the questions she raises in any definitive way, or questioning the motivations of Ahearn—a character whose motivations are often difficult to understand—her objectivity and clarity allow readers to draw conclusions as they will. MORE: A interview with Jane Kramer from “Collision,” a University of Pittsburgh student publication Reviews on Amazon.com |
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