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like Ronald Rugan) soothed U5 inlO believing the war was a bloodless, complllcri7.cd science demonstration of gigamic proportions. Youug American men with adroit rcflues trained by a video-gamc ,ullUTe demonstrated our superiority as a nation over Salldam Hussein through
video-screen 51rau:g;c air striku.

From the triumphant bron7.t general on

public's

view of whidl is the underside of galloping hooves-to lIS more conlemporny corporate versions, we find cumplcs of public an in the service of dOlll;nancc. By their daily presence in Ollr lives. these utworks intend to

persuade liS of the justice of the aclS they represent. The power of the corporate sponsor is embodied in the sculpture standing in fronl of the tnwering office building. These grand works, like their military predeces in the parks, inspire a sense of awe hy their the importance of the artist. Here, public art is unashamed in its intention 10 mediate between the public and the developer. In a "things go down bettcr with public art" menulity, the biller pills of development are delivered to the public. While percent-for-art bills have heulded developers' creation of amen;l.ulC public phces as a positive side effecI of "growth,M every inch of urban space is swallowcd by sk yscrapers and priYlli7.ed imo the socalled public sp;l.ce of shopping malls and corporate plaus. These developments prelletermine the public, selecting OUI the hamden. vendors, ;l.doleseents, public urban poor. ;l.ml people of color. Planters. benches. and other M amenities" arc suspect as potential huards or public loitering places. Recent attemptS in Los Angeles to pass laws to StOp or severely resu'!cl push<:art vt'lltledorCI from sdling dOUJ,frllltU. pale/as, and raJpados made ;l.etivis15 of merchants who had silently appropriated public spaces in hq::ely Latino sections of our cilY. VcnJedrmJ.lovcd by the people for offering lUll only popular produclS but reminders of their homelanlh, provide a Latino presence in public spaces. Any loss of botanical, mercadoJ. t'endtdorel, and things familiar reinforces segregation. as ethnic peoplc disappear to another corner of the city. Angeles providcs clear and abundant examples of developmenl .1S a lonlto colnni?'e and ethniC communitics. Infamous dcveloplIIenu abound ill public record. if 110t consc;ousness-Dod\;er Sudium,

which displaced a historic MeKican community; Bunker Hill, now home 10 a premier arts CentCr, which displaced another; and the less well documented hinory of how four major freeways inlersected in the middle of East Los Angeles's Chicano communilies. One of the mOJt catutrophic consequCnces of an endless real estate boom was the concreling of the entire Los Angeles River, on which the cilY was founded. The river, as the carth's arleries-thus atrophied and hardened-crcated a gianl scar acrou the land which served to further divide an already divided cily. It is Ihis metaphor that inspired my own half-mile long mural on thc hislory of ethnic pcoples painted in the Los Angeles riVer conduit. Just as young Chicanos UllOO battle scars on their bodies. thc Great Wtllf of LOJ AngeltJ is a lallOO on a scar where the river once ran.' tn it rC;l.ppear the disappured stories of ethnic populations that make up the labor force which built our city. SUle, and nation. Public art often plays a supportive role in developers' agendas. In many instances. art uses beauty as a falte promise of inclusion. Bcauty ameliorates the crasure of ethnic presence, serving the transformation imo a homogenizcd visual culture: give them something beaulifullo sund in for Ihe loss of their right to a public presence. Two New York-bascd artists were seleetellto deconte the lobby of the new skyscraper of Fim Internate Bank in downtown Los Angeles. To represent muhicull\lraliSIll in Los Angeles. Ihey chose angels from the Basilica of Santa Angeli nur Assisi, Italy. They Ihen tacked ethnic cmblems Onto the angels, -borrowing- the preColumbian feathercd serpent Quctu1coul from the A7.lees. the crowned mahogally headpiece (rom Nigerian masks, and the eagle's wings from our Nalive peoples as cm blems of a variety of Thelc symbols replaced the real voices of peoplc of color;n a city torn by the greatest civil disorder in the United States in decades. At the dedication, which took place shortly after Ihe rebellion (the Los Angele., riots of 1992). black and Lalino children un veiled the angels in an e1aborale ribbollculting ceremony. Hailed by the developers as a great symbol of unity. these arlifacts st('lod in for the real pcople in a city terrified of thc majority of its citizens. the $SOO.OOO spem on this single work was more thall Ihe whole city budget
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fund public murals by ethnic artisu who work wilhin Los Angeles's

concepl of "min over

on which this country was founded. I heri-

diverse Chinese, African American, Korean, Thai, Chicano, and Central American neighborhoo<h. No single view of public space and Ihe art ill occupies it will work

uge of thought that hu brought u. clearcuuing in first growth forellS and concrete conduits that kill river. as an acceptable method of flood control. These ideas nnd their parallel in the late modernist and postmodernist cults of the exalted individual. in which personal vision and originality are highly valued. As a .olitary creator the artist values self-expression and freedom (or separateness uther than conncctcdness). He is therefore responsible only to himself rather th.1n to a shared vision, failing to reconcile the individual to the whole. When the nature of El Tejon Pass-a place known to locals for its high winds-asserted iuelf during Christo's project and uprooted an umbrella planted in the ground, causing the tragic death of a woman who had come to see the work. Christo $lid. "My project imitates rcallife." I couldn't help musing on what a different project it would have been had the beautiful yellow umbrellas marched through Skid Row. whcre l.os Angeles's 1<40,000 hornelen lie in the rain. Art can no longer be tied to the nonfunctionalist state, relegated by an "art for art's tyranny. Would it nat have been more beautiful to shelter people in need of shelter, a gesture and statement about our failure as 11 society to provide even the most basic needs to the poorl Why is it not possible for public an to do Illore than Public art could be insep..r..ble from the daily life of the people for which it is created. Developed to live harmoniously in public space, it could have a function within the community and even provide a venue for their voices. for the Melliean sensibility. an imponant manifestation of public art is a work by Mellicao artist David Alfaro Siqueiros on Los Angeles's historic Olvera SlTeet. This 19)) mural, paimed over for nearly sillty years by city falhers because of its portrayal of the plight of Mellic1nos and Chicanos in California. is currently in restoration. Siquciros depicted as the central ligures a meni7.o shooting at the American eagle aod a crueilied Chicano/Mellieano. While this mural is becoming mIHco-lied. with millions of dollars provided by the Getty foundation for iu preservation and fe-presentation to the public. it is important to recogni?e that the same images would most likely be censored if painted today on Los Angeles's

of multiple perspectivu. While competition for public v.rows daily. cultural communities call for it to be used in dr;unati-

cally different ways. Whal comes into question is the vcry different sensibilities of ordcr llnd bellulY that operate in different cultures. When for eumplc, looked for the lirst time at EI Tejon Pass. he HW potential. He saw the potenti11 to create beauty with a personlll vision imposed on the landsc1pe-1 beauty that fit his individual vision of yellow umbrellas fluncring in the wind. marching up the sides of rolling hills. The bnd became his C;l.nvas,;I. backdrop for his personal aesthetic. Native people might look at the S1mc landscape with II very differellt idea of heauty, a beauty without imposition. They might sec a perfect order eKemplified in nnWre itself, integral to a grounded in place. Naturc is not 10 be umpered with; hence, a plant taken requires an offering in return. Richard Ray Whitman. a Yaqui anist. sllid. Scientifically cohesive-I am the atoms. molecules, blood, and dust of my ancest(lrs-not as hislOry, but as a continuing pcople. Wc describe our cuhure as:l circle. by which we mean that it is an integrated whole.'" Maintaining a relationship with Ihe dust of onc's anceators requires a generational relalionship with the land and a respcctful treatment of other life found on the land. Or perhaps Native peoples could nOt think of this area without rccalling fori Tejon, one of the first California Indian reservations established ncar this site in the Tehachapi Mountains, placed there 10 "protect Indians. rounded up from various neighboring HUS, most of whose cultures have heen entirely deuroyed. In Christo's and the Native visions we have tWO different aesthetic sensibilities. as divergent as the nineteenthcentury English manicured garden is from the rugged natur.11 New Muican landscape of the S.1ngre de Criuo Mountains. Perhaps a less benign impliution of Christo's idea is that landscape unlouched by man undeveloped land." This is a continuation of the

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strC1:u. The subject maller is as rdevant now, sixty yurs later, as it was then. Murals depicting the domination of 1nd resistance by Los Angeb's L1tinos or other populations of color provoke the same official resina nee
15

message from the boy in the principal's office nid, MI need you to come here right away because I'm going to get thrown out of school again.My dul with the boy, formulated over a long mentorship, W1S that he would not quit school again without talking to me fint. I arrived to find the principal lOwering over the young cho/o, who This Stance, relniniscent of a
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they did in

19]].

Despite these

muuls h1ve been the only

intCTvenlions in public Ipacelthat articuhtl: the presence of ethnicity. Architecturc and city planning have done liule to accommodlle communities of color in our city. As competition for public space h1s grown, public art policies have hecome calcified and increasingly bureaucr;l!ic. An that is sanctioned has lustlhe political bite of the seventies murals. Nevertheless, a rich legacy of Illuuls hu been produced since Amrriea Tropiea/wa.s pa.inled on Olvera Succt by the maenro. Thousands of public lnurals in phces where people live :md wOIk have become tangible public monuments to the shared experience of communities of color. Chicano munls have provided the lcadership and thl: form for other communities to asSUt their presence and anicuble their issues. Today, works appear that speak of children caught in lhe cross fire of gang warfare in the barrios of Sylmu, the hidden problcm of AIDS in the South-Central African Amerie1n community, and the struggles of immiRration and assimilation in the Korean community. Thesc mural! have become monumellt'lhat serve as a community's memory. The generations who grew up in neighborhoods where the landsca.pe was doned by the mural movement have been influenced by these works. With few avenues open to lfaining.a.OlI art production, ethnic teenagers have crealed the graffiti art that has become another method of resisting privati7.Cd public space. As the fim visual ut form entirely developed by youth culture, it has become the focus of increasingly severe rcprinls by .1lIhorities who spend fifly-two million dollan in the County of Los Angeles to abate what they refer to as the Mskin cancer of society.M It is no accident that Ihe proliferation of graffiti is concurrent with the reduction of all youlh recreation and aru programs in the schools. Working with communities in producing public artworks hal put me into COntut with many of the'e youths. On one occasion, I was called
to a local high school after

holding his hud in

a defiant manner I had seen over and over in my work with the gangs. unccremoniously Mholding your mug, is about maintaining dignity in adverse circumstances. The principal was completely frustrated. MYou've wrinen on the Ichool', w111s and you simply do not have respect for other people's property. Tell me, would you do this in your own housd- I couldn't help but smile at his admonition, despite the seriousness of the situation. This boy was an important graffiti artist in his community. I had visited his house and seen the walls of his room, where every inch was covered wilh his intricate writings. Two diHerent notions of beauty and order were operaling, as well as a dispute about ownership of the school. The boy's opinion was that he had aesthetically improvcd the property, not dcstroyed it. At this time the conditions of our communities are worse than those that prC1:ipimcd the civil righu activism of the sixtics and seventies. FiftytwO percent of all Afric1n American children and forty-twO percent of all Latino children are living in poverty. Dropout rates exceed high school graduation rates in these communities. What, then, is the role of a socially rcsJlolllible public utili? As the wealthy and poor arc increasingly polarized in our society, faee-to-hcc urban confrontalions occur, often with catastrophic consequences, Clin public art avoid coming down on the side of wealth and dominance in that confrontation? How can we as artisu noid becoming accomplicCl to

If we chose nOt to look at

triumphs over nations and neighborhoods 11 victories and advancemenu, what monuments could we build? How can we crute a public memory for a many-cultured society? Whose story shall we tell? Of grutest interelt to me is the invention of systems of voice M giving for those left without public venues in which 10 speak. Soci11ly responsible artists from marginalized communities have a puticul.r rcsponsibility to uticulate Ihe conditions of their people and 10 provide

convinced one of the young Great Wall

production tum members that he should retUrn to school. The urgent

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catalysu for cllangc. since perceptions of us as individuals are tied to the conditions of our communities in a racially unsophisticated society. We cannot escape that responsibility even when we choose to try; we are made olthe and dust of our anceSlors in a continuing history. Being a catalyst for change will change us lisa. We can evaluate ourselves by the processes with which we choose to make an. not simply by the lrt objects we crute. Is the artwork the ruult of a privlte act in a public Focusing on the object devoid of the creuive process used to achieve it has bankrupted Eurocentric modernist and postmodernin traditions. Art processes. jun as art objects, may be culturally specific. and with no single aesthetic. a diverse society will generate very different forms of public
HI.

COMMON WOH) Jrfl Krllry

Over the pa" decade, those of us intereJ!ed in a serious and public Art have heard often of thc benefits of collaboration between artists and archilccts. The ccmVentiollal wiHlnm is Ihal cumbuccl sense of design ties of thc
10 architectural

a frcsh, unen-

projecu. and that Ihe peculiari-

ego-celllcr sl'lmehow enliven Ihe Cltherwise COllvelltional,

corpOratclqHe environments architects come up with too much of the time. The artist is assumed to be freer than the architect. and freedom is usuOlcd to be art. The archilect is regarded as a relative technician by comparison, constrained as he or she is by the legal, fiscal, and material limitations of Ihe trade. The idea is IhAt as artlsts and architccts architecture will be made II1Me human, or M least morc art-like. Art-likeness auumed to be more humalle. CClnventil'lnal wisdom aside. true collaboralinll alllong .,nd architects rarely happens. Given the stereotypical ways in which we see each othcr, it's no wonder. What passes today for collabontion lends in faCt to be a frustrating process of compromise and concession. The architecl is almon always in charge, and artislS. who arc paid very little for their services. often must fight for recognition u members of a design team. Moreover, in ou, society the conditions are nOI usually safe for coltabontion to occur. The loss of professional identity is at stake, and in corponte

Who is the public now that it has changed color? How do people of various ethnic and class groups use public space? What ideas do we want to place in public memory? Where does art begin and end? Artins have the unique ability to transcend designated spheres of activity. What represents somethiJlg deeper and more hopeful about the future of our ethnically and class-divided cities arc collaborations that move well beyond the artist and architect to the artist and the historian. scientist. environmentalist. or social service provider. Such collaborations are mandated by the seriousness of the tasks at hand. They bring a range of people into conversations about their visions for their neighborhoods or their nations. Finding a place for those ideas in monuments that are constructed of the soil and spirit of the people is the most challenging task for public artists in this time.
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America. professional identity is often all one has. Given this territorial antagonism and the bureaucratic hassles of thc public seclQr (which
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