KALLE PUOLAKKA

Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience: The

Case of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls

abstract
The aesthetic and political sides of public art have recently been examined from different theoretical vantage points. Pragmatist
accounts, however, have been largely absent from the discussion. This article develops a theory of public art on some central
ideas of John Dewey’s aesthetics and social philosophy. From a pragmatist perspective, the best cases of public art turn out to
have high social significance, for they are means of promoting the sense of community, which Dewey saw as foundational for
well-functioning democracies. The Deweyan account of public art developed in this article is set against theories that explain
its social value by public artworks’ ability to disrupt people’s everyday routines and beliefs, as well as by the political alertness
they often raise. Diana Boros’s recent treatment of what she calls “visionary public art” serves as the main specimen of this
approach. The Deweyan understanding of public art is illuminated and defended with the help of a reading of John Adams’s
On the Transmigration of Souls—a piece composed in memory of the victims of 9/11—that highlights its capacity to generate
such communal experiences that have a fundamental role in Dewey’s theory of democracy.

i. introduction Bamiyan Buddhas (Hein 2006, 50), or even

Public art is a somewhat fluid term that has been
invented only recently, and there have been far
fewer serious attempts to define it than has been
the case in defining the concept of art itself. Some
points of emphasis, however, do run through
the relevant literature. One such point is that
public art is not solely an aesthetic phenomenon,
but has an ulterior purpose beyond eliciting
an aesthetic reaction valued for its own sake
(Carroll 2005, Knight 2014). Typically, this extra
aesthetic element has been thought to be of a
social character, ranging from commemoration
to celebration (Hein 2006, 50). Yet despite its
short history as a concept, some scholars have
considered public art a much older phenomenon
than art itself. It not only encompasses the recent
happenings and environmental works erected in
public spaces and buildings, like those of Christo,
but its earliest examples have been traced back
to Roman monumental sculpture (Boros 2012,
91–95; Knight 2014, 313), the now destroyed
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74:4 Fall 2016

C 2016 The American Society for Aesthetics
further back.
It is easy to associate public art simply with art
that is located in public places, such as parks and
squares. This definition, however, is simplistic
and misses some important aspects concerning
what makes some art genuinely public. Hilde
Hein makes an illuminating distinction between
“public art” and “art in public places” (Hein 2006,
53). In her view, the place of exhibition or the
fact that a great number of people are exposed
to an artwork on a daily basis are not essential
features of public art. What makes a work public
is a specific kind of relationship between the
artwork and the audience. Its audience does not
consist of some indeterminate generic group of
unrelated individuals. Instead public art “sets
out to forge a specific public by means of an
aesthetic interaction” (Hein 2006, 49). True public
artworks draw in the audience in a particular
way, collecting people together, almost like “a
congregation” (Hein 2006, 49). This does not
necessarily mean that the work would address
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a specific group, but that the collectivity of the
experience would be built in to its reception.
This aspect is absent from the experience of
what Hein calls “private art,” such as traditional
painting or symphonic music, which elicits “an
intimate exchange” between artist and recipient
(2006, 49). In the case of public artworks, the fact
that the work is intended to gather together the
public to reflect on an issue of common concern
by means of an aesthetic interaction is a consti-
tutive part of the experience. Not all artworks
exhibited in public places embody this type of
relationship to their audience, and their social
content is, consequently, thinner as well. Some
may have a merely decorative function, while
the representational and expressive contents of
many artworks situated in public places may
lack the communal aspects Hein sees essential
to public art, hence not qualifying as public art
in her sense of the term. Henry Moore’s massive
Reclining Figure at New York’s Lincoln Center is
one example of this type of art. Following Hein’s
analysis, it is possible to see some paintings as
public artworks as well. Picasso’s Guernica, for
example, seems like a potential candidate for such
a status. The painting is a response to a major
historical event (as public artworks usually are):
the Spanish Civil War. Its experience arguably has
a powerful collective sphere; the painting in a way
pleads to the audience as a collective and attempts
to draw people together, if only on an imaginative
level, to reflect on the absurdity of war.1
The social value of public art and how the aes-
thetic and the social come together in public art-
works has increasingly come under the spotlight
in different traditions of aesthetics.2 One voice
that has been largely absent from the discussion,
however, is that of pragmatist aesthetics. This is
surprising, given the central place that the em-
phasis on social aspects of art and other aesthetic
phenomena has had in this tradition. This aspect
can be seen, for example, in a vital stage of John
Dewey’s well-known critique of the “museum con-
ception of art,” which argues that the concept of
art bears no essential connection to the modern in-
stitutions of art. In order to show that the origins
of art and of the aesthetic lie elsewhere, Dewey
refers to different cultures in which the arts are
considered essential parts of “the significant life
of an organized community,” as well as “the rites
and ceremonies” that bring the members of the
community together (Dewey 1980a, 7). He posits
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
an aesthetic naturalism which regards art as an
“extension of the power of rites and ceremonies
to unite men, through a shared celebration, to all
incidents and scenes of life” (Dewey 1980a, 271).
But if social aspects are an important part
of Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy, his social
philosophy, in turn, includes strong aesthetic
undercurrents, especially in his reflections on
democracy. For Dewey, the right to vote at certain
intervals captures only part of the idea of democ-
racy. Democracy does not merely refer to an
abstract principle governing the relationship be-
tween citizens and those in power, but what holds
democratic societies together and guarantees
their well-being has more to do with how people
interact and communicate with one another, as
well as with the sense of community reigning
between them. Dewey, thereby, promotes an
experientialist notion of democracy, and the
interactions of societies and communities that
live up to Deweyan democratic ideals involve
features that Dewey sees as aesthetic.3
Though these aspects of Dewey’s work are im-
portant considerations in the philosophical and
aesthetic questions related to public art, his more
explicit reflections on the topic are very scarce,
being basically limited to a grieving over the “ter-
rible civil-war monuments” and “municipal stat-
uaries” of his country (Dewey 1980a, 206). Nei-
ther have contemporary pragmatist aestheticians,
such as Richard Shusterman, taken up the issue
extensively.4 The primary purpose of this article
is to develop a pragmatist account of the function
and value of public art based on some fundamen-
tal elements of Dewey’s aesthetics and social phi-
losophy and to show its significance for the cur-
rent discussion on the aesthetic and social sides
of public art. As an alternative approach, I intro-
duce Diana Boros’s recent defense of what she
terms “visionary public art.” From the views on
offer in contemporary aesthetics and art theory,
I have chosen to discuss hers for two reasons: it
includes a very systematic defense of a particular
type of aesthetic theory as the best background
for explaining the social value of public art, and
her understanding differs in decisive ways from
the ideas I draw from pragmatism in the article.
Boros’s theory is thus an ideal test case for the
pragmatist account of public art’s function that I
develop.
The distinctions present in Hein’s analysis—
public art versus art in public places, public art
Puolakka Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience
versus private art—will not be further examined
in depth in this article, nor will I provide any more
specific definition of public art based on Hein’s
work. This article is primarily about the function
and value of public art, not its definition, and
the distinctions Hein puts forward are compati-
ble with the different positions on the value of
public art examined below. The primary role of
the aforementioned distinctions in the article is
that, in showing how misconceived it is to identify
public art simply with the works situated in public
places, they help to see its major case example,
John Adams’s memorial piece for the victims of
9/11, On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), as
a public artwork.5 Many of the Deweyan ideas I
introduce below emerge from my interpretation
of this work. It might seem counterintuitive to
give a key role to a musical work in an article on
public art, especially one that is intended to be
performed in a concert hall, and not in an outdoor
public place that intersects with people’s everyday
lives. However, as my Deweyan reading shows, On
the Transmigration is characterized by a relation-
ship between work and audience similar to that
which Hein claims is essential to public art. The
public character of On the Transmigration has al-
ready been emphasized in the piece’s reception
(Schiff 2006, 193), and one critic places it among
Adams’s “public pieces” (Rich 2006, 64). My in-
terpretation gives further insight into the public
dimensions of the work as well as illuminating the
primary question of the article, which is the value
of public art.
ii. diana boros on the political significance of
public art
Boros’s view on the social value of public art
stems from her highly pessimistic assessment of
the current state of American democracy. In her
view, democracy is threatened by people’s in-
creasing lack of interest in public affairs as well as
by their unwillingness to take part in its processes,
all of which has an effect on the state of their
society and community. Boros considers this an
example of what in political theory is called “the
free-rider problem,” which points to a paradox
inherent in democracy that makes it possible for
citizens to leave deliberation on public issues in
the hands of the people who have been voted into
office. Things get done even without direct citizen
373
participation. The health of a democratic system,
however, is founded on a more participatory
idea of citizen involvement, to which such an
autopilot-like attitude toward public issues poses
a threat. In other words, democracy makes
possible an attitude which ultimately is in danger
of undermining its foundation (Boros 2012, 2–3).
Boros sees public art as one possible remedy for
the inactivity threatening democracy, since it can
create a setting for increasing people’s awareness
of their society’s problems as well as inspire them
to initiate change. She writes: “Art that is housed
and experienced in our public spaces presents a
great opportunity—it can freely access the public
at large, in the midst of their daily lives, and put
before them, or involve them, in challenging ac-
tivities and dialogues” (Boros 2012, 95). Not all
types of public art, however, exemplify the qual-
ities Boros seeks in politically revitalizing public
art. It has to shake people’s everyday routines and
to encourage “new ways of feeling and thinking
about that with which [they] are already familiar”
(Boros 2012, 81). In short, to be politically activat-
ing, public art has to be “visionary.”
In her book Creative Rebellion, Boros presents
numerous powerful descriptions of visionary pub-
lic art and the galvanized experiences she believes
it can generate. She even regards visionary public
art as a means of recreating in a contemporary
context the powerful Dionysian rites Nietzsche
describes in his book The Birth of Tragedy. Along
with Nietzsche, other important background the-
orists to her account include Albert Camus,
Marquis de Sade, and Herbert Marcuse. Boros
says these theorists all emphasize the rebellious
potential of artworks and see art and the aesthetic
as potential sources of social transformation. Vi-
sionary art, in other words, “has to excite people
and encourage them to be critical” as well as “em-
power the individual and motivate their desire
to participate and create change in the public”
(Boros 2012, 72). While Boros’s favorite exam-
ples of visionary public art are performances and
happenings in public spaces that direct attention
to social problems like homelessness, she also in-
cludes permanent sculptures within this category
(Boros 2012, 156). A work of performance art ex-
ecuted by Filip Noterdaeme in the Bowery in the
Lower East Side of Manhattan in 2008, included
in Boros’s large collection of examples (2012, 144–
145), illuminates her concept of visionary public
art. The performance centered around a wooden
374
booth which the artist had named “The Home-
less Museum of Art.” The booth also included the
ironic tag “The director is IN.” The goal of the
performance was to get passersby to stop and dis-
cuss with “the director” played by Noterdaeme.
What Boros thinks is significant in this work is
its location in the vicinity of the New Museum
of Contemporary Art and the long-serving home-
less shelter, the Bowery Mission. The impressive
new building of the museum opened in the begin-
ning of the century radically changed the urban
scene of the area as well as made it more middle
class and brought commercial interests more in-
tently into its development. With his performance
Noterdaeme wanted to make people realize how
difficult it is for places like the Bowery Mission
to survive under the pressure of this sort of devel-
opment. The discussions with the director were
precisely intended to raise peoples’ awareness of
the different worlds that met in the Bowery at the
time.
The contrast between visionary and “main-
stream” or “plastic” public art forms an important
part of Boros’s investigation into the revolu-
tionary potential of public art. While visionary
public art “challenges the overarching status quo
understanding of how we live and relate to society,
by provoking deeper individual engagement with
the world,” works belonging to mainstream art
are “supportive, of both the content and form that
defines the boundaries of our daily existence, and
enables us . . . to delay or even entirely avoid, a
truly independent critical examination of how and
why mechanisms in our lives function as they do”
(2012, 121). Boros singles out Ancient Roman
sculpture, whose purpose was to impress upon
its citizens a sense of imperial power in the midst
of their everyday lives, as a notable example of
plastic art (2012, 91–95). Contemporary examples
of this type of public art, in turn, represent for
her a hopeless and even questionable attempt to
create harmony and order in a disordered and
fractured world.
From the point of view of pragmatist aesthet-
ics, Boros’s analysis sees the political and social
challenges that contemporary America is facing
as the very same ones that troubled Dewey in
his views on democracy: how to make democracy
more participatory (2012, 54). Yet, the two differ
widely as to how art and other aesthetic phenom-
ena could promote this goal. There is no room
for the core concepts of Deweyan aesthetics—for
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
example, unity, order, development, and closing
fulfillment—in the disruptive terminology with
which Boros characterizes visionary public art and
its experience. The qualities Nietzsche attributes
to the Dionysian rituals are also very different
from the qualities appearing in Dewey’s analysis
of aesthetic experience.
Despite these differences, I argue that Dewey’s
aesthetic theory forms a promising framework for
explaining the social value of public artworks and
that pragmatism as a whole can even be consid-
ered the preferable option. The interpretation of
Adams’s On the Transmigration, articulating its
Deweyan aspects, will be a cornerstone of my ar-
gument. What in particular it seeks to show is that
the sense of communality that Dewey sees as the
bedrock of well-functioning democracies is an es-
sential feature of the artwork’s proper experience.
The work’s capacity to create this sort of expe-
rience forms the core of its public character and
value. But Adams’s role in the article is not limited
to this particular piece of music. Also of impor-
tance are his reflections on the elitist character of
modernist music. In the later parts of the article, I
combine them with Richard Shusterman’s critique
of modernist aesthetics. Together they reveal
that Boros’s analysis of visionary public art con-
tains some problematic assumptions concerning
aesthetic experience and the power of art.
iii. early fears and the shaping of on the
transmigration
John Adams occupies a unique position in con-
temporary classical music, for he has combined the
seemingly irreconcilable achievements of being
highly acknowledged by critics and having a large
group of fans among the general classical music
public. Given his reputation as a vivid portrayer
of the American way of life through his music,
it is no surprise that the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra commissioned Adams to compose a
work to commemorate the victims of 9/11. At
first, Adams was reluctant to accept, saying he
had “difficulty in imagining anything ‘commemo-
rating’ 9/11 that would not be an embarrassment”
(Adams 2008, 263). After realizing that, despite
its rich past, America had not produced a musical
work “that could satisfy the need for collective
emotional experience that a seriously traumatized
public maintained in those jarring days after the
Puolakka Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience
attack” (Adams 2008, 262), he decided to take up
the challenge even though he had no clear picture
of the final composition. The only thing he was
sure about at this stage was that he would in every
way try to avoid writing a piece that “yanked or
tugged the heartstrings” (Colvard 2006, 197).
After a period of research, Adams became
inspired by the idea of incorporating pieces of
text into the work that victims’ loved ones had left
at Ground Zero, giving vital details of the missing
person and which usually concluded with a per-
sonal note to them. Here is one example: “Louis
Anthony Williams. One World Trade Center.
Port Authority, 66th Floor. ‘We love you, Louis.
Come home.’” Adams found similar material
from among the short obituaries dedicated to the
victims that appeared in the “Portraits in Grief”
section in The New York Times. An obituary of a
young man that Adams included goes as follows:
“He was tall, extremely good-looking, and girls
never talked to me when he was around.” For
Adams, these personal reminiscences were not
mere textual fragments, but “emotionally charged
cues that stood for larger, longer personal narra-
tives that one could never completely know but
might imagine” (Adams 2008, 264). The choral
parts of the work are put together mainly from
these personal reminiscences, while the contents
of the notes left at Ground Zero are mostly
recorded on tape. Adams believed that with the
help of these very personal texts he could create a
work which would not make the piece an embar-
rassment and would instead give it a very specific
tone that would set it apart from the appalling way
he thought that parts of the mass media had dealt
with the attack. Adams writes: “I decided that the
only way to approach this theme [of 9/11] was to
make it about the most intimate experiences of
the people involved” (Adams 2008, 264).
A taped, mantra-like recitation of the victims’
names forms another important element of the
work. The piece begins with sounds of street
noise—cars accelerating, brakes squealing, fleet-
ing laughter, shoes scuffling, sounds of distant
sirens—recorded by the composer in New York
at nighttime. Then, a young boy is heard recit-
ing on tape the words “missing, missing,” giving
the piece “a verbal heartbeat” (Schiff 2006, 194).
The work also includes a veil-like orchestral ele-
ment. Apart from a few climaxes, the work consists
of twenty-five minutes of highly static music, cre-
ating an intensively meditative atmosphere. On
375
the Transmigration was premiered in New York at
Avery Fisher Hall on the 19th of September 2002.
iv. recollection and on the transmigration as
public art
Even though on the face of it On the Transmigra-
tion does not bear the obvious marks of a work of
public art, it nevertheless has a communal dimen-
sion that makes it as rightful a member of this
category as some of its more traditional examples.
In fact, On the Transmigration can be seen to
belong to the growing number of public artworks
that take healing and consoling, instead of the
glorification of the events or figures portrayed, as
their extra-aesthetic goal (Hein 2006, 94–95).
On the Transmigration has been fittingly called
a “musical memorial” (Schmidt 2010), along with
pieces such as Arnold Schönberg’s A Survivor
from Warsaw. Noël Carroll’s (2005) close exami-
nation of the effectual mechanism of memorial art
proves illuminating in this context. He posits that
besides their aesthetic intentions, it is equally im-
portant that memorial artworks serve as vehicles
of recollection. In other words, memorial artworks
seek “to commemorate the past for the present—
to recall to mind exemplary events and persons
and to limn their significance to the ongoing cul-
ture” (Carroll 2005, 5). He says that in many cases
memorial art performs this recollective function
“exceedingly well,” and in some cases “the [social]
functions performed by memorial art at least ri-
vals and arguably surpasses the aesthetic function
of art” (Carroll 2005, 5–6). What makes memo-
rial art into a powerful medium of recollection, he
continues, is that it addresses not just perception,
but “imagination, memory, emotions, and cogni-
tion” (Carroll 2005, 6). This is precisely what in my
view takes place in the case of On the Transmigra-
tion, and the way it engages the listener largely
explains its social value.
Because it includes powerful extra-musical
elements, Adams—instead of describing On the
Transmigration as a musical work—has called it “a
memory space,” where “you can go and be alone
with your thoughts and emotions” (Tommasini
2006, 365), a kind of cathedral, for he found
the atmosphere reigning inside great cathedrals
deeply moving and inspiring. Adams explains:
What I remember [from my visit to Notre Dame in
Paris] was that there was always sound. Even though
376
they forbid people to talk—they still do. And there are
noises. Any large public space with several hundred peo-
ple walking around is going to have a sort of constant
level of ambient noise . . . [of whispered voices, children
whimpering, shoes scuffling on the stone floor]. . . . To
be in that space itself is intensely moving, because you
feel that you’re in the midst of many, many souls—not
just the people in the building, but all the souls that have
been there before. It was an image that I had in my mind
when I was composing the piece, that we would be in this
space, and that there would be this constant, low-level
noise . . . of humanity. It might be the boy just saying
the word “missing, missing,” or people reading names,
or traffic sounds, or what life is like. (Colvard 2006, 200)
This description shows why this work can be un-
derstood as public art. It forms an artistic setting
which brings the public together collectively to
reflect on an issue of common concern in a way
that Adams’s traditional orchestral pieces, such
as The Chairman Dances, do not. In this respect,
On the Transmigration can even be considered a
more genuine example of public art than many of
the artworks situated in public places which only
call for the sort of “intimate exchange” Hein finds
characteristic of private art, such as those having
a mere decorative function. The collective sphere
of the experience is of course at its strongest in a
live performance. However, I see no reason why
this collectivity could not figure in a performance
heard from a recording in the privacy of one’s
home; even then the work’s public character can
constitute an important background to the experi-
ence, even though the memory space, in this case,
is only present metaphorically.6
Dewey is an important figure in Hein’s investi-
gation of public art, even though she does not rely
on his aesthetic theory in any systematic way. Her
reading of Dewey, however, does not take into ac-
count the great social significance he attributes to
the sorts of collective experiences that public art
can create. In a similar vein, Lambert Zuidervaart
claims that Hein fails to give a proper account of
the social input of public art (Zuidervaart 2011,
126–127, 297). I shall bridge this gap by showing
that the memory space of On the Transmigration
promotes the kinds of communal experiences
Dewey places at the very heart of democracy.
This experience forms the core of the pragmatist
view of the value of public art developed in this
article.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
v. the democratic experience in on the
transmigration
Emphasizing the social functions of memorial
art is also an important part of Carroll’s anal-
ysis, and his perspective on them interestingly
overlaps with the Deweyan idea of democracy.
Carroll claims that the best examples of memorial
art have the capacity “to enculturate and reinforce
the ethos of social groups in a way that promotes
their cohesion and continuance,” all which con-
curs with Dewey’s views on democracy (Carroll
2005, 6). However, it can be argued that with the
help of Dewey’s pragmatism it is possible to go
deeper into the social functions of memorial works
like Adams’s On the Transmigration.
While Dewey is very aware of the dangers in-
herent in overly communitarian attitudes, such as
the suppressing of individuality, he nevertheless
finds communal bonds a key ingredient of good
societal life. Gregory Pappas in particular empha-
sizes the importance of these communal experi-
ences for Dewey’s theory of democracy, which
he understands “as a complex array of transac-
tions where each individual has a high quality of
shared experiences,” which are, in turn, achieved
“through participation and interaction in common
rituals and practices” (Pappas 2008, 219, 232). In
ideal cases, these communal happenings “provide
an order and stability that is not rigid or oppres-
sive to individuality”; instead, “the participation
of individuals is aesthetic and not mechanically
imposed” (232). Given the social character of its
reception, public art seems an especially fitting
medium for creating the types of participation and
interaction that further Deweyan democratic ide-
als. By drawing on “common materials of memory
and experience” public artworks can strengthen
the experience of communality between people or
even give rise to “a sense of relatedness that might
not have existed before” (Mattern 1999, 62).
Carroll mentions 9/11 as an important impetus
for his reflections on the connection between art
and recollection. In his view, this tragedy requires
us to examine closely “war memorials and mon-
uments” in particular, for he thinks they inspired
“the iconography” of what he calls “the media
memorials to the police and firefighters of 9/11.”
The recollections they incite also have a direct so-
cial function, for these memorials are intended to
“transmit cultural values” by celebrating the vir-
tuous and courageous actions of the remembered
Puolakka Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience
people and by making them something to live up
to for future generations (Carroll 2005, 8).
However, the memorial aspects of On the
Transmigration have a much more personal tone,
and its social goals are less grandiose than those
Carroll attributes to the media memorials of 9/11.
Adams explains his intentions: “The piece is not
about the towers falling, or politics, or who did
it, or the violence. It’s really just about loss, and
about the mother who lost a son, the wife who
lost a husband, the daughter who lost a father”
(Colvard 2006, 201). Here there are parallels with
Pappas’s interpretation of Dewey’s conception of
democracy. According to Pappas, the idea of com-
munality at the heart of Dewey’s account requires
that people have “an emotional readiness to as-
similate the experiences of others” (Pappas 2008,
271). Dewey refers to this capacity with the term
“sympathy,” and a democratic society should pro-
vide a setting in which it can flourish, that is,
a moral life “where the interests, demands, and
needs of others are vital and moving realities in
one’s moral deliberation” (Pappas 2008, 200–201).
Dewey sees that the relationship between sym-
pathy and sense of community—as a condition
of a well-functioning democracy—is, in the end,
reciprocal; for achieving a sense of togetherness
with other members of one’s community requires
the capacity to engage sympathetically with their
situations, but the sympathetic traits of a person
themselves can “only grow out of having certain
communal experiences” (Pappas 2008, 201).
By engaging the listener in the fates and
losses of others in an imaginative and emotional
way, the memory space afforded by On the
Transmigration creates a promising setting for
the emergence of these kinds of communal
experiences. Like all great public art, this work
contributes to “the development of community
as individuals acquire and maintain an awareness
of common experiences, memories, beliefs, and
commitments” (Mattern 1999, 62).
vi. the elitism of visionary experiences
Such an interpretation of On the Transmigration
gives insight into the constitutive elements of the
Deweyan conception of public art. As can be seen,
it is built on a very different aesthetic terminology
from the visionary understanding of public art that
Boros promotes as a Dionysian bacchanal in the
377
course of which one’s everyday beliefs and val-
ues are put into question. Instead it involves a
distinctive kind of concentrative unity and coher-
ence that does not preclude the intensity of the
experience. A reworking of beliefs and values can
take place without the substantial shaking of their
foundations that Boros sees in visionary works of
public art. In Dewey’s pragmatism the experience
of public art can be likened to a ritual, but it is a
ritual of a very different kind from the Dionysian
gatherings described by Nietzsche that Boros
references.
My reading of Dewey’s aesthetics shows that
a viable account for explaining the social value of
public art can be built on a very different aesthetic
foundation from the one underlying Boros’s view.
My aim is not to present any detailed argument to
show the pragmatist understanding of public art
superior to hers. However, there are some ques-
tionable assumptions in her view regarding the
effectiveness of public art which are relevant to
this discussion.
Boros regards visionary public art as a successor
to modernist and avant-gardist art (Boros 2012,
149–150), and at times she contrasts this aesthetic
conception with the idea of harmonious beauty
contained in classical conceptions of art (2012,
123). This theoretical setting is already apparent
from her sources of inspiration: Camus, de Sade,
Nietzsche, and Marcuse—theorists who share a
rebellious attitude toward society similar to that
of avant-garde movements and who believe that
aesthetic resistance and challenging the classical,
harmonious conception of beauty can serve as fuel
for social change and revolution (Boros 2012, 66,
110, 121).
A similar attitude can be seen in Boros’s
many flamboyant descriptions of the Dionysian
experiences she believes visionary public art can
engender. For example, she states:
Artistic experiences, particularly social and public vi-
sionary creative encounters, are vital sources of life, of
quiet thoughtful moments, of chaotic rearrangements,
of confrontations with taboos and fears, of affirmations
of innate unity and interconnectivity among humans,
and of nature. These opportunities to create our own
“realities” in the creative realm, however temporarily,
make possible true liberation. (2012, 72)
And to take another example:
378
[V]isionary artistic experience disorders, and this chaos
produces a metaphorical clean slate within our inner
selves that enables an expansion of the imagination and
a space for new possibilities. . . . [O]nly truly transcen-
dent visionary art opens the way to freedom of thought,
real conceptual change, and an expanded worldview that
extends individual concerns into concern for the greater
human community. (2012, 142)
Now, I have no intention of questioning the sig-
nificance of these experiences as such. However,
I would suggest Boros’s account of them has
some unfortunate consequences. Here, Richard
Shusterman’s reservations about modernist
aesthetics can be used to reveal particular limits
in Boros’s visionary aesthetics, which suggest the
need to develop supplementary views on the expe-
rience of public art for explicating its social value.
Shusterman accuses the different proponents of
modernist aesthetics of excessive elitism: they
equate genuine instances of the aesthetic with
the radically new and the startling and regard all
conceptions of the aesthetic that are understood
in more traditional terms as backward-looking,
both aesthetically and politically. In a very prag-
matist spirit, the danger Shusterman detects in
this approach to the aesthetic is that it looks down
on or even ridicules the experience of a great
number of people and turns genuine instances of
aesthetic experience into the sole property of a
small group of elitists (Shusterman 2000, 144–145,
178–179, 186–187, 254).
The discriminatory implications Shusterman
sees in modernist aesthetics overlap with Adams’s
critical view concerning musical modernism. An
important aspect of Adams’s work has been his
critical confrontation with the tradition of musical
modernism—ranging from Arnold Schönberg’s
atonalism to composers like Milton Babbitt,
Iannis Xenakis, and Pierre Boulez.7 He has ar-
gued that musical modernism put contemporary
music in danger of becoming a playground for a
circle of intellectuals, which had the unfortunate
consequence of distancing classical music from
“communal experience” (Ross 2006, 34). He is
also greatly puzzled by the almost hostile attitude
adopted by modernist composers toward genres
of popular music like rock and jazz—genres that
have greatly inspired him (May 2006, 10). Adams
also found the image, inherent in modernism, of
the composer as a kind of “outsider” of the com-
munity off-putting (May 2006, 7).
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Instead, Adams found the key inspiration for
his musical development from that pioneering fig-
ure of American classical music Charles Ives. He
was especially impressed by Ives’s ability to keep
“the vernacular roots of the art alive within the
context of his formal experimentation” as well as
the sensitive way with which he tried to accom-
modate the experience of “cultural connectivity”
within his works (Adams 2008, 228). The pragma-
tist qualities considered central to Ives’s work, like
the critique of the dualism between vernacular and
high culture, are important underlying qualities of
Adams’s music too (Spurgeon Hall 2011).
Adams saw the value of musical minimalism,
when he began his career as a composer in the
early 1970s, as bringing the “pleasure principle”
back into classical music. In minimalism and in its
understanding of tonality, he saw the possibility of
creating a new musical language which could over-
turn the idea of contemporary music as inherently
difficult and elitist as well as bringing back clas-
sical music’s ability to move people more widely
(Adams 2008, 24).
The reservations Shusterman and Adams
have toward modernist aesthetics and musical
modernism, respectively, point to some downsides
in understanding the social value of public art in
terms of visionary experiences. Can a large group
of people indeed in the midst of their everyday
lives undergo the kinds of visionary experiences
at the heart of Boros’s view, that is, “Dionysian
occasions,” during which they “experience
transcendent feelings of freedom and mystical
understandings of human unity and wholeness,
and oneness with nature” (Boros 2012, 58)?
Shusterman and Adams’s analyses of the short-
comings of modernist aesthetics show there
to be a genuine danger that a large group of
people will fail to form meaningful connections to
visionary public art.8 In the worst case, visionary
public art can become a mere playground of
the cultural elite, as Adams thinks happened
with modernist music. Even the more cultured
members of the general public may have as much
trouble engaging with this kind of music as they
have in engaging with much avant-garde art. As
important as visionary experiences may be, their
role in explicating the social value of public art
is arguably more limited than Boros presumes.
At least, it would be good to pursue alternative
accounts of the experience of public art, which
can add to the understanding concerning its social
Puolakka Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience
value that Boros provides. The pragmatist view
of aesthetic experience can, I believe, offer such a
supplementation.
vii. a new aesthetic for public art
As we have seen, Boros’s conception of pub-
lic art is based on a stark contrast between an
avant-gardist visionary aesthetics and traditional
accounts of harmonious beauty. Disrupting the
ideal of beauty serves as a means to challenge peo-
ples’ mind-set and to inspire them to look at the
surrounding world with more socially alert eyes.
Public art that is committed to the harmonious
conception of beauty does not shake viewers, and
works of this kind, at least indirectly, merely sus-
tain established ways of thinking.
Situated between these opposing views is
Dewey’s reinterpretation of the concept of beauty
in the light of his pragmatism. Dewey admits that
in emphasizing unity, gradual development, and
closing fulfillment as essential features of aesthetic
experience, the key pillar of his aesthetic theory
can be regarded as a successor of the classical idea
of beauty as unity in variety. Yet, he says there are
some decisive differences. For Dewey emphasizes
the “dynamic” character of the unity he attributes
to aesthetic experience. In other words, although
he places unity and order at the very heart of
aesthetic experience, his view of the relationship
between the individual elements of the unity is dif-
ferent from that present in classical conceptions of
beauty reigning in antiquity and the Renaissance.
Dewey’s idea of the relationship between the
elements of aesthetic experience is not harmo-
nious, but live and tension filled. The Deweyan
aesthetic is an energetic unity: “There is unity
only when the resistances create a suspense that
is resolved through cooperative interaction of the
opposed energies” (Dewey 1980a, 161). Aesthetic
experience thus involves a more dynamic engage-
ment with the aesthetic object than it does in the
contemplative perception of harmonious beauty.
It is characterized by a participation in which the
recipient’s mental faculties, like imagination, are
actively engaged.9 The mental processes under-
lying this type of experience are very similar to
those Noël Carroll attributes to the experience
that he sees successful memorial art inspiring—a
characterization that captures particularly well
the experience of Adams’s On the Transmigration
379
of Souls. It is precisely this type of experience
that is a key element of the Deweyan conception
of the social and aesthetic dimensions of public
art.
The primary relevance of Dewey’s reinter-
pretation of the traditional formula of beauty is
that it offers an opportunity to understand the
experience of public art in a way that manages
to avoid both the criticism Boros levels against
mainstream public art, which exhibits the harmo-
nious conception of beauty, and the elitist charge
Shusterman and Adams raise against modernist
aesthetics. Put bluntly, public art that inspires
communal/aesthetic experiences of the Deweyan
kind, like Adams’s On the Transmigration, is
more easily approachable than the visionary
artworks of Boros’s theory and thereby can reach
a larger audience. Simultaneously, however, it
stimulates or even challenges the imaginative and
cognitive faculties of the recipient and thereby
does not uphold the kind of simple harmony that
makes mainstream public art politically dubious
in Boros’s eyes.10 Such communal/aesthetic ex-
periences, I believe, can take place in connection
with painting as well.11
With these remarks my primary intention is not
to call into question the significance of the ex-
periences Boros describes as visionary. Rather, it
raises the need to look for supplementary views
on how the social value of public art could be
explained. Boros manages to single out only one
type of valuable experience, whose role, if my cri-
tique is accurate, may very well be more limited
than she assumes. In my view, pragmatism offers a
promising supplementation to her account as well
as an important addition to the current discussion
on the social and aesthetic character of public art
as a whole.
viii. closing notes on on the transmigration of
souls
Adams won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for On
the Transmigration of Souls, and its première
recording received the Gramophone Prize in
2005 in three different categories. The piece
has been performed widely around the world,
which, in part, shows that it is not too strictly
tied to its original context but has more universal
dimensions.12 Despite this success, the composer
was not unreservedly happy with it, explaining
380
that his response fluctuated between “loathing
and loving,” and that, until he heard a particularly
well-executed performance in 2007, it seemed to
him to be “compromised and uneven” (Adams
2008, 267).
Not many have shared Adams’s doubts about
the work. On the contrary, On the Transmigration
has been described as “a breakthrough” and a
great example of how contemporary classical
music can speak to a wider audience. The critic
concerned hoped it would signify a more fun-
damental “turning point” in American classical
music (Schiff 2006, 189–191). The Deweyan
interpretation of the piece I have presented in
this article supports these sorts of assessments:
On the Transmigration gives a moving expression
of collective sorrow as well as a unique collective
musical space for recollection. I am by no means
claiming that the piece will cause in all listeners
the sorts of experiences I have tried to explicate
with the help of Dewey’s aesthetics; some people
might gain those kinds experiences from a very
different kind of work.
The function pragmatism assigns to public art
has a lot to do with building cohesion, overcoming
controversies, and disentangling opposites. There
might, of course, be other legitimate social
aims that some other type of public art could
serve better. In some situations, there might, for
example, be a need to shock the public, and the
pragmatist framework, given its aspiration to
coherence, might not give the best understand-
ing of how public art can serve these goals. I
nevertheless believe that On the Transmigration
is a great example of the social aspects Dewey
attributes to art and provides insight into the
experiences where the social value of public art
from the perspective of Dewey’s pragmatism
lies. The following quotation from Dewey sums
these up:
Works of art that are not remote from common life, that
are widely enjoyed in a community, are signs of a unified
collective life. But they are also marvelous aids in the
creation of such a life. The remaking of the material of
experience in the act of expression is not an isolated
event confined to the artist and to a person here and
there who happens to enjoy the work. In the degree in
which art exercises its office, it is also a remaking of the
experience of the community in the direction of greater
order and unity. (Dewey 1980a, 81)13
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
KALLE PUOLAKKA
Department of Philosophy,
History, Culture, and Art Studies
FI-00014 University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland
internet: kalle.puolakka@helsinki.fi
references
Adams, John. 2008. Hallelujah Junction: Composing an
American Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Boros, Diana. 2012. Creative Rebellion for the Twenty-First Cen-
tury: The Importance of Public and Interactive Art to Political
Life in America. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carroll, Noël. 2005. “Art and Recollection.” Journal of Aesthetic
Education 39(2): 1–12.
Colvard, Daniel. 2006. “John Adams Discusses On the Transmi-
gration of Souls. An Interview by Daniel Colvard.” In The
John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Com-
poser, edited by Thomas May, 196–204. Pompton Plains, NJ:
Amadeus Press.
Dewey, John. 1980a. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee
Books; originally published by Putnam’s, 1934.
. 1980b. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to
the Philosophy of Education. In The Middle Works, 1899-
1924, Volume 9, 1916, edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Southern
Illinois University Press.
. 1984. The Public and Its Problems. In The Later Works,
1925-1953, Volume 2, 1925–1927, edited by Jo Ann Boydston.
235–371. Southern Illinois University Press.
Gracyk, Theodore. 2001. “‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ as an Anti-
dote to the Social Erasure of the Public.” Genre 34: 219–242.
Hein, Hilde. 2006. Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently.
Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Knight, Cher Krause. 2014. “Public Art.” In Encyclopedia of
Aesthetics, vol. 5. 2nd edition. Edited by Michael Kelly, 312–
316. Oxford University Press.
Mattern, Mark. 1999. “John Dewey, Art and Public Life.” The
Journal of Politics 61: 54–75.
May, Thomas. 2006. “John Adams Reflects on His Career.” In
The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American
Composer, edited by Thomas May, 2–28. Pompton Plains, NJ:
Amadeus Press.
Pappas, Gregory Fernando. 2008. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democ-
racy as Experience. Indiana University Press.
Rich, Alan. 2006. “Life as Music: John Adams Goes Public.” In
The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American
Composer, edited by Thomas May, 63–66. Pompton Plains,
NJ: Amadeus Press.
Ross, Alex. 2006. “The Harmonist.” In The John Adams Reader.
Essential Writings on an American Composer, edited by
Thomas May, 29–44. Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press.
Schiff, David. 2006. “Memory Spaces (On the Transmigration
Souls).” In The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on
an American Composer, edited by Thomas May, 189–195.
Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press.
Schmidt, James. 2010. “Cenotaphs in Sound: Catastrophe, Mem-
ory, and Musical Memorials.” Proceedings of the European
Society for Aesthetics 2: 454–478.
Shusterman, Richard. 2000. Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living
Beauty, Rethinking Art, 2nd edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield.
Spurgeon, Hall. and Richard Anthony. 2011. “The Deweyan
Aesthetic of Charles Ives.” In The Continuing Relevance
Puolakka Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience
of John Dewey: Reflections on Aesthetics, Morality, Science,
and Society, edited by Larry A. Hickman, Mathew Caleb
Flamm, Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński. and Jennifer A. Rea.
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Steinberg, Michael. 2006. “Nixon in China.” In The John Adams
Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer, edited
by Thomas May, 110–119. Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus
Press.
Tommasini, Anthony. 2006. “Washed in the Sound of Souls
in Transit (On the Transmigration of Souls).” In The John
Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Com-
poser, edited by Thomas May, 365–367. Pompton Plains, NJ:
Amadeus Press.
Zuidervaart, Lambert. 2011. Art in Public: Politics, Economics,
and a Democratic Culture. Cambridge University Press.
1. Guernica’s first place of exhibition, the Spanish
Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition of 1937, also
proves significant when considering the painting’s status.
The Exposition was surely in Picasso’s mind when making
the work, for Guernica arose in response to a commission
Picasso got to compose a painting to this setting. It is very
likely that one of the reasons why Picasso settled on such a
topic for his commission painting was a hope to gather, with
the work, a great number of people together to reflect on
the horrendousness of the events depicted in the painting.
2. Besides the already mentioned Carroll (2005), Hein
(2006), and Boros (2012), see also Zuidervaart (2011, espe-
cially 78–81, 120–128).
3. Dewey’s key works on democracy include Democ-
racy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Education (1980b) and The Public and Its Problems (1984).
Gregory Pappas (2008), in particular, has developed the ex-
perientialist idea of democracy in Dewey’s footsteps.
4. Mattern (1999) touches upon questions related to
public art from the perspective of Dewey’s pragmatism.
5. In a similar vein, Gracyk (2001) problematizes the
idea of identifying public art solely with the physical statues
and memorials located in public places and defends, against
the background of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Kant’s
aesthetics, the public art status of some products of popular
culture distributed through the channels of mass production.
For him, Elton John’s memorial piece for Princess Diana
381
“Candle in the Wind,” a rewritten version of an earlier song
by John dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, is an epitome of such
a public cultural artifact.
6. Compare with Gracyk’s claim that it was not until
a studio recording of “Candle in the Wind” brought the
song within reach of a worldwide audience of millions that
it became “truly public” (2001, 236).
7. This sort of critical attitude is especially important
for Adams’s orchestral work Harmonielehre (1985), which
the composer has described as “a statement of belief in the
power of tonality at a time when I was uncertain about its
future” (Adams 2008, 139).
8. Knight (2014, 314) sees similar problems in certain
types of public art.
9. In Chapter 12 of Art as Experience, Dewey (1980a)
emphasizes the role played by imagination in aesthetic
experience.
10. The following description of Adams’s music by
Michael Steinberg aptly captures the kind of experience I
am after here: “Adams’s music enters the ear easily, but it
is not simple, certainly not simple-minded, and never pre-
dictable. At no point, were the music suddenly to stop, could
you foresee with certainty what comes next, even when
the sense of pattern seems at its clearest” (Steinberg 2006,
114).
11. Good examples include aesthetically interesting
paintings that attempt to lift national spirit. For example
Finnish art history of the turn of the twentieth century is
filled with such cases. Finland was then only a province of
Russia, suffering from its motherland’s oppression. It was
a goal of many great Finnish painters of this time, such as
Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Albert Edelfelt, to increase the
sense of togetherness of the Finnish people with their artis-
tic output and to inspire them to oppose Russia’s attempt to
get a tighter grip on Finland.
12. Adams (2008, 265) explains that with On the Trans-
migration he wanted to bring attention to the variety, both
ethnic and social, of the people who were killed in the WTC
attack. The work has in fact been considered a homage to
the variety and sense of community simultaneously reigning
in New York (Schiff 2006, 195).
13. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers
of the journal for very helpful comments.
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