As president and artistic director of Creative Time since 1994, Anne
Pasternak has changed the face of public art in New York. While most
people think of public art as a monumental sculpture mounted on some
landmark property, Pasternak has given free reign to countless artists
to transform historical sites and manifest ephemeral gestures in ways
poetic, profound and provocative.
Occupying the Anchorage at the Brooklyn Bridge for an ongoing
open-ended cultural rave, turning the legendary Coney Island Cyclone
into a canvas, or allowing David Byrne to re-make a building into a
giant musical instrument, Pasternak's tenure at Creative Time has
literally made us all look up to art. We have seen Vik Muniz's
sky-writing clouds, Cai Guo-Qiang creating fireworks for Central Park's
centennial anniversary, Jenny Holzer flying banners on the eve of the
2004 elections, and the 2002 "Tribute in Light" -- the two light
structures created to fill the void of where the Twin Towers once stood.
Pasternak believes in the social and political mandate of artists and
their fundamental role in our community, and willfully uses her position
of authority to allow them to decorate the city's urban landscape.
"Something tells me many artists are frustrated with the limited audiences and conventions of galleries and museums; but whatever the reason, they are turning to the public realm in cities all over the country to realize new experiments. Nowhere is this more obvious than in New York City, which is setting the bar for so-called "public art" around the nation, and we have a number of public officials to thank for that: Mayor Bloomberg and the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Kate Levin, and Deputy Mayor Patti Harris, who has taken charge to see that all the various City agencies work together (no easy task!) to make sure this is a big moment for culture in New York City. If it weren't for Harris we never would have had Christo's Gates or Eliason's Waterfalls. I also give props to our brand new Commissioner of the Department of Transportation (DOT), Janette Sadik-Khan. One of her first commitments was to hire the great Wendy Feuer, a seasoned public art administrator who built the MTA's Arts for Transit program, and assigned her the task of creating a plan for art to animate DOT property. And Amanda Burden, from the NYC Planning Commission, just because she's down-zoning the Lower East Side and East Village, which will discourage developers from tearing apart these historic neighborhoods and displacing the last bastion of artists who have made the area the funky, fresh and vital area we know and love.
There are so many artists who are inspiring me these days, but I thought I'd focus on those artists blazing bold trails in the public realm. Legendary grafitti artist STEVE POWERS (aka Espo) never ceases to inspire -- just how much more brilliant could his Waterboard Thrill Ride in Coney Island be in raising consciousness and debate on the grossly overlooked public issue of American torture?!
I love, love, love the THE YES MEN, who exist completely outside the cannons of acceptable cultural behavior, performing huge corporate hoaxes that result in real consciousness and change.
Houston artist RICK LOWE has made embracing community part of his rigorous artistic practice.
Speaking of New Orleans and community, PAUL CHAN made an intense commitment to the people of this post-Katrina city by moving there for months to work with local folks in a grassroots, ethical and caring way. In the process, he made an incredibly poignant artwork -- one that told the market-centric art world that great art and community can go hand-in-hand in powerful and compelling ways.
TRREVOR PAGLEN is one of my new favorite artists. He's been photographing spy satellites as well as secret military installations and operations -- making the invisible military covert industry more visible and therefore real.
And then there's DUKE RILEY, an artist who re-created an "antique" submarine and rode it in Manhattan's East River, as well as the BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION, who chased the Smithson Floating Island in their little fishing boat with a recreation of a Christo Gate along a similar path."
[From top to bottom] Steve Powers: "Steve Powers, The Waterboarding Thrill Ride," 2008. Photograph by David B. Smith, Courtesy of Creative Time. Duke Riley: "After the Battle of Brooklyn," 2007, Courtesy of Damon Winter/The New York Times/Redu, Magnan Projects, and Creative Time. Paul Chan: "Paul Chan Waiting for Godot in New Orleans," 2007. Photograph: Paul Chan, Courtesy of Creative Time. Trevor Paglen: "keyhole 12-4 (advanced crystal) in milky way (usa 161)," 2007, Courtesy of the Artist and Bellwether, New York.
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