Tilted Arc

Arts Policy as populist censorship

MA Arts in a Social Context

Module: Arts Policy

Lisa Temple-Cox
 Tilted Arc: Arts policy as populist censorship

“Every artist who agrees to have a work commissioned… will thereby become a

collaborator… of governmental censorship.” (Serra)

On the 15th march 1989 the US Government, exercising its proprietary rights,

ordered the destruction of Richard Serra’s sculpture ‘Tilted Arc’, a public artwork that

their own agency, the General Services Administration, had commissioned ten years

earlier.

Richard Serra, ‘Tilted Arc’, New York, 1981(destroyed)

The site-specific sculpture had, since its installation, generated a huge amount of

hostility from the public, who instigated a lengthy period of protest and petitioning. Its

positioning, in New York’s federal plaza, placed it directly in the heart of a busy working

environment, and in the path of “people largely ignorant of and for the most part

alienated by modern art” (Storr). The piece, a minimalist structure 120 ft long and 12 ft

high, bisected the plaza diagonally, and the furore generated by this provocative

sculpture divided the art community from the public at large.

 Did the government have the right to remove it? Serra maintained that there was a

relationship between the site and the sculpture which prevented its removal or

relocation: however, the court of appeal decided that he had “relinquished his … rights

in the sculpture when he voluntarily sold it to the GSA.” (Hoffman) Serra's appeal to

prevent its removal failed, and on March 15, 1989, during the night, federal workers cut

Tilted Arc into three pieces, remove it from Federal Plaza, and cart it off to a scrap-

metal yard.

In 1986, Senator Edward Kennedy introduced a bill called the Visual Artists Rights

Act, which would protect the artist’s intellectual copyright, and prevent distortion,

mutilation, or destruction of works of art after they have been sold.

This legislation might have prevented the executors of the estate of sculptor David

Smith from removing the paint from his later sculptures so that they resembled his

earlier (more marketable) ones. It might have prevented a bank from removing and

destroying a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi simply because the president of the bank

didn’t like it. And it would have prevented the United States Government from

destroying Tilted Arc.

Ideology and visual policy:

That art has had an ideological or political stance is without question, and works of art

have been destroyed for ideological reasons many times. A good example would be the

fresco that Diego Rivera painted in the Rockerfeller building in New York.

While in Mexico he attracted the partronage of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. In 1932, she

convinced her husband, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to commission a Rivera mural for the

lobby of the soon-to-be-completed Rockefeller Centre in New York City. Having

successfully completed mural projects in San Francisco and Detroit, Rivera proposed a

63-foot-long portrait of workers facing symbolic crossroads of industry, science,

socialism, and capitalism. It appears that he believed that his friendship with the

Rockefeller family would allow him to get away with including an unapproved

representation of Soviet leader Lenin into the fresco: however, he found that the real

decision-making power lay with the Centre’s building managers. Finding themselves

offended by his anti-capitalist ideology, they ordered Rivera to remove the image of

Lenin. When Rivera refused, offering to balance the work with a portrait of Abraham

Lincoln on the opposing side, the managers paid his full fee, barred him from the site,

and hid the mural behind a massive drape.

Despite negotiations to transfer the work to the Museum of Modern Art, near

midnight, on February 10th, 1934, Rockefeller Centre workmen demolished the mural.

Diego Rivera elected to never work in the United States again.

Diego Rivera, ‘Man at the Crossroads’, Rockerfeller Centre 1934 (destroyed)

Arts policy in 20th Century Britain:

The Arts Council was founded in 1946 as a 20th century alternative to the 18th century

idea of ‘patronage’. The notion was that the visual arts would instead benefit from what

would be effectively a public authority exercising and distributing the patronage of the

State. “The history of the visual arts in Britain is intimately bound up with the history of
the British State… the visual arts in Britain cannot be fully understood without a

consideration of the role and function of the State.” (Pearson)

‘The State’ is a political concept, and is part of the vocabulary of political life. In

Britain, particularly in the 20th century, the word has been used in an increasingly

negative sense… one only has to look at terms such as ‘nanny state’ to understand the

negative overtones of this phrase. It is no surprise then that political parties tend to

distance themselves and their actions in Government from the idea of the state. The

idea of ‘The State’ is seen to be in antithesis to concepts such as ‘freedom’ and

‘individuality’. The Government therefore tends use terms such as ‘public’, ‘national’,

‘community’ and ‘social’ to describe actions and initiatives involving State power and

organization.

In 1946, the Arts Council defined itself as an organization thus: “for the purpose of

developing a greater knowledge, understanding and practice of the fine arts exclusively,

and in particular to increase the accessibility of the fine arts to the public…. To advise

and co-operate with our government departments, local authorities and other bodies….”

In 1967 the phrase ‘the fine arts exclusively’ was changed to simply ‘the arts’, a move

designed to widen its remit as to what might be considered art, and to allow inclusivity in

arts practices of a broader cross-strata of the community.

John Maynard Keynes, first chairman of the arts council, said in 1948 that “The

artist…cannot be told his direction; he does not know it himself.” (from Pearson, the

State and the Visual Arts). However this recognition of the way in which the artist works

can no longer be justifiably funded by a body which increasingly needs to be seen to

provide a service to the public, which sees itself as having a stake in these services:

sees itself as essentially a consumer of the arts, and, more often than not, as a

participant: a role which funding bodies find themselves beholden upon to facilitate.
 The distinction between art for arts’ sake, and art as sanctioned by the policy makers,

seems to be akin to the distinction between reason and aesthetics, an ideological

distinction: pure reason transcends the material body, whereas aesthetics is “of or from

the body”. (Eagleton) We are no longer living in an age where art can exist purely for its

own sake, nor has it the same purpose it had before the invention of printing or the

camera: free from the shackles of craft or career, this freedom is now curtailed by the

needs of society in quite a different manner than the way in which artistic patronage

supported the artist in the 18th century.

Support for the visual arts in Britain now seems dependant on several things: the Arts

Council, in its Visual Arts Policy statement, that “All our arts policies…identify particular

areas of contemporary practice that we want to help develop. They confirm our support

for individual artists.”

However it follows this with the information that “Collectively the policies will help us

deliver the six areas of our agenda for the arts: taking part in the arts, children and

young people, the creative economy, vibrant communities, internationalism and

celebrating diversity. …We believe they will help us develop a confident, diverse and

innovative visual arts sector that is valued by and in tune with the communities it

serves.” (Arts Council England). The key word in their agenda appears to be

‘community’. As Munira Mirza says in her introduction to ‘Culture Vultures’, a publication

examining the effects that arts policy has on the arts themselves, “ the Arts Council and

DCMS (Department for culture, media and sport) tell us that the arts are now not only

good in themselves, but are valued for their contribution to the economy, urban

regeneration, and social inclusion.”

Funding and the control of the ideology of culture:

In the past, arts policy has been based on the assumption that “the State provides a

pre-given culture to an audience seen as essentially passive”. (Pearson) But public

policy is now trying to take an approach that stimulates a relationship between an artist

and an active and involved public. In the Arts Debate report commissioned by the Arts

Council in 2007 it finds that “ Great value is put on community based projects that will

deliver benefits for individuals and wider society”, whereas other areas of funding lead

to negative opinions about the delivery of public value. The most contentious areas

include funding for individuals, and for public art (which, they claim, often happens to be

conceptual).

It emerges that mainstream thinking is that “public art funded by the public does not

deliver value either because people find it hard to understand”. Also, the context in

which it resides affects perceptions of its value. It seems that semi-figurative works,

such as Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’, have a greater chance of being assigned value

by the public, “even if they take time to grow on you” (the Arts Debate) than other, more

abstract or conceptual designs.

Anthony Gormley, ‘Angel of the North’, Gateshead, 1998

The implication is that the Arts Council, in its role as a state-subsidised patron of the

arts, should clarify its funding streams: separate funding for community projects,
national companies, and individual artists; and that work that is perceived to have wider

populist appeal should benefit from Art Council funding. Arts organisations countrywide

“…are being asked to think about how their work can support Government targets for

health, social inclusion, crime, education and community cohesion”. (Mirza)

For the practicing artist as an individual, the process is grant led, and it is a lengthy

one: in order to apply for a grant, the guidelines alone constitute a document of some

fifty-eight pages, leading to an application form of forty-one pages. Having worked one’s

way through this form the unwary artist should be aware that grants like these however

are rarely given to individuals to develop their own work. There are exceptions, such as

in the case of artist Gordon Cheung; however he was already well established when he

applied for a grant in 2005. Given that he already had gallery representation world wide,

one wonders if he was the kind of individual artist that was really in need of that sort of

financial support. Nonetheless, he won a ‘Grants for the Arts’ award to develop his new

work.

Gordon Cheung, ‘top ten dead celebrity earners’, 2006

Otherwise, priority is given to proposals that have an aspect of outreach and

community engagement. The onus is on the artist to create work that has intellectual

and physical accessibility and reaches new audiences. Art is no longer for arts sake: it
is for the sake of the wider community, the public, the Arts Council, and ultimately, the

State. Arts funding bodies are using the very terms that Government uses to make

State initiatives more palatable to its populace: ‘public’, ‘national’, ‘community’, and

‘social’.

In a recent grant application for an exhibition at Cuckoo Farm Studios, artists Tim

Skinner and Linda Theophilus wrote an application that had little, if any, reference to the

conceptual qualities of the work they were proposing to show. In his curatorial stance for

this exhibition, Skinner says “For Outside09 I wanted to allow the work to echo the

strong interactive element existing in contemporary new media art. When new media art

becomes interactive it has this unique ability to break down the stigma attached to

contemporary art. If we are to engage with the mass Essex audience the work needs to

be exciting”.

Theophilus, an experienced curator and someone accustomed to writing grant

applications, told me that the word they used repeatedly in their - successful -

application form was ‘accessibility’.

Public Art and the public:

What constitutes, then, public art? “Today there is no consensus about what public

art should look like, or certainty about what a monument is. The public domain itself is
more complex and less functionally stable than ever before. Public art has served

concurrently as landmark, symbol, monument, functional element, architectural

embellishment, isolated aesthetic object and cultural artefact” (Raven)

Does an artist have a responsibility to his/her audience as well as to his/her art?

In the summer of 1993 Rachel Whiteread began work on an ambitious project: it

involved making a cast of an entire house, one of a terrace in the East End of London

that had been scheduled for demolition. Funded by public works organization Artangel

following discussions that began in 1991, House was completed in October 1993, and it

immediately began to create controversy. It was, like ‘Tilted Arc’ despised by the public

– not so much for its position, or indeed appearance: it appeared to be the concept itself

that offended. The publicity overshadowed the work that had been officially nominated

for the Turner prize. There was a particular edge to the prize in 1993: The K

Foundation, formed by the former pop band KLF, decided to award a prize of £40,000

(double the Turner prize money) for the worst artist of the year. On the afternoon of the

Turner announcement, she was called by Bill Drummond of the K Foundation and told

that she had won.

Rachel Whiteread, ‘House’, London 1993 (destroyed)

 Meanwhile there was the House furore. The country was divided between those who

thought that the sculpture was an outrage, and those who were determined to secure its

reprieve from destruction at the hands of the local council and see it become a

permanent fixture. "People were even lobbying in parliament," she says. "There was

nothing in the art world that had had that level of publicity before.” (Higgins, interview)

On November 23rd two decisions were made simultaneously in different parts of London.

A group of jurors at the Tate Gallery decided that Whiteread had won the 1993 Turner

Prize, and a gathering of Bow Neighbourhood Councillors voted that House should be

demolished with immediate effect.

Unlike ‘Tilted Arc’, House was never intended to be permanent: nonetheless, despite

the huge numbers of visitors, a stay of demolition was denied, and House was

demolished, a mere three months later, in January 1994.

Not that this wanton destruction of unpopular art is endemic in our culture: the

example of Kurt Schwitters’ final Merzbau stands in contrast to the experiences of the

artists I have spoken of previously.

Schwitters spent the last 8 years of his life in Britain after the war, and, as was his

wont, he began to construct the artwork that would come to be his final, unfinished,

Merzbau. Built into the wall of a barn in Ambleside in the Lake District, and left

unfinished after the artist died in early January 1948, the almost forgotten Merz Barn

was neglected for many years until artist Richard Hamilton arranged for the surviving

Merz Barn wall art work to be removed for safe keeping to the University of Newcastle

Hatton Gallery in 1965, where it is now on public view.

It was not simply a matter, however, of removing the artwork: it was embedded into

the wall of the barn. Its removal necessitated the digging up of the foundations of the

wall itself, so the stone wall in its entirety could be relocated: no mean feat, and
certainly a more complicated process than it would have been to destroy it. Note that

this process was initiated by an individual artist, rather than the local council or any

regional or national arts body.

Kurt Schwitters, ‘Merz Barn’ (unfinished), full size photograph in situ in barn, Ambleside

The Merz Barn building itself still survives and contains evidence of Schwitters’

original working methods and materials, and the site now hosts residencies by groups of

artists and others interested in Schwitters’ work. However, in contrast to the

experiences of Whiteread and Serra, Schwitters’ work was neither commissioned nor

funded in any way: he made it purely for his own creative needs, and in fact it is a

characteristic of his work and personality that he simply could not stop doing it.

Interestingly, in the years since Hamilton stepped in to save the Merz work, a group

was set up to oversee the remains of the barn and the residency process – the Littoral

Trust – and this is funded by the Arts Council.

The artist commission and community engagement:

All manner of government bodies use art to make themselves more accessible to the

community; use art as a tool to give cultural credence to its public image. A recent such

project, promoted by Parliamentary Outreach, was entitled ‘Breaking Barriers’.

 The theme was evolved around the history of the women’s Suffrage movement in

Essex, and the outreach involved was in working with adults with mental health issues.

The project would end with a touring exhibition in several Essex libraries. Parliament,

mental health, female emancipation, family history: all brought together under the aegis

of the artist. How much do the needs of the artist to create a work of integrity matter

here, for a project that has to meet the needs of so many government bodies? Not to

mention the public involved, both in the making and the viewing.

The artist instead seems to be brought in in order to give credibility – an aesthetic,

cultural credibility – to a project designed to highlight Parliamentary issues and aims.

In 2007 I was shortlisted for a project to include artists in the decoration of the

refurbishment of a number of public toilets in key tourist locations in the area. The

project brief, entitled ‘Creative Conveniences’ and circulated via the Arts Councils’

‘artsjobs’ network, was that three artists would work together on three toilets, creating

designs informed by both public opinion and the themes decided by the arts

development team.

Realistically, the public workshops designed to gain public input were, by and large,

ill-attended: however, the assistant arts officer at the time was more than happy just to

be able to count any minimal input as some sort of public interaction. A phrase I heard
then, and many times during this project, was ‘ticking the right boxes’. As Mirza says in

‘Culture Vultures’, “It makes sense to ask whether the freedom of the artist is

compromised by… the bureaucracy of box-ticking”.

It was interesting to note how, as the project went on, the allotted budget, or ‘percent

for art’, was reduced: also, over the course of a lengthy design process, our original

plans were slowly and surely cut back and simplified. For the work that I was to

eventually make, the compromises were such that I had to write a detailed account of

how my artwork would respond to the brief, the site, and the designs of my two fellow

artists, and in the end I had to insist that the final decision regarding the appearance of

the work rested with me, the artist, rather than with the Creative Conveniences

committee.

Lisa Temple-Cox, ‘Creative Conveniences:Lion Walk’, (men’s view) Colchester 2008

The project overran by some time, and in the event I was not informed when the

artwork was being installed, a process that I was supposed to oversee, with the result

that some of the work is incorrectly mounted. Nonetheless, the first toilets to be

completed won an architectural award for ‘Art in the Built Environment’.

To date the names of the artists involved is conspicuously absent from the site, nor

has the award plaque been mounted. It seems ironic that, having invested so much in

using the arts as a tool for the gentrification of its mundane refurbishment projects, the
council no longer feels any concern over its responsibility to the artists involved. In fact,

Colchester Borough Council had, by the end of this project, dispensed with its Arts

Development officer altogether, leaving such concerns in the hands of other

departments such as Waste Management and Streets and Leisure.

When the second toilet was finally opened, invitations to the artists were given at such

short notice that none could attend. The feeling was very much that we, as artists, were

regarded as little more than decorators, and having done our job and received our fee,

we were no longer considered to have any investment or interest in the finished work.

The third toilet was, for financial and political reasons, never completed.

So who owns the moral and intellectual copyright for this work? In my original

contract, it stated that the work should remain in situ for 10 years: in a later contract, this

had been changed to 20 years: but nowhere does it state what will happen to the

artwork when it is finally decommissioned.

Experiences abroad:

My first experience as an artist in another country was as part of the exchange

programme between the Chateau de Sacy and Writtle College in Essex.

The Chateau (more of a large country house than a castle) was inherited by Hermine

Demoraine in 1994. Married to English poet Hugo Williams, Hermine set about

transforming the site into both an organic smallholding and a place for artist’s

residencies. Both these causes allowed her to apply for grants from the French

government which in turn allowed for an amount of renovation work on the site. The

main body of the grant was spent on renovating the attic of the main barn, and this has

become, quite often, the main studio space and gallery for visiting artists.
 Seeking to consolidate her ties with her husband’s homeland, she created the non-

profit organisation Ateliers d’Artistes de Sacy, and began the process of hosting artists’

residencies with a number of contacts that she already had: an early resident was

Grayson Perry. Hermine has one of his pots in her ramshackle office at Sacy: it has a

smart side and a saucy side, and she turns it around depending on her visitors.

She came to an arrangement with Essex County Council, and an exchange scheme

was set up, whereby an Essex artist was give a small grant to spend a month in Sacy,

and a French artist came to make work at Writtle College. Hermine realised that with the

usage of the property both as an arts venue and an organic farm, she could get funding

from a number of different departments – and countries. During my time there, the

project was supported by the financial assistance of Direction Régionale des Affaires

Culturelles de Picardie, Conseil Régional de Picardie, Conseil Général de l’Oise, the

British Council, Essex County Council and Writtle College.

Lisa Temple-Cox, ‘Everything and More’, Maze view (in progress), Picardie, France 2005

This experience was, for me, a complete eye-opener: for the previous 15 years of my

self-employment I had been accustomed to thinking of myself as a community based

artist, and every project that I had been involved in was required to have some sort of

public or community involvement. In Sacy however, it took some little while for me to
realise that, instead of asking what I should do or where I should work, I was expected

to tell them what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to work. I was referred to as ‘the

artist’, and given complete autonomous control over my own creative process. In fact, I

was not only allowed to, but expected to do exactly what I wanted, whether or not it

complied with my original proposal. Once I had decided to work in the renovated attic, I

was given the keys, and no-one else was allowed in.

This artistic freedom is something that I have come across often in France, where it is

considered perfectly reasonable to state your profession as ‘Artist’, without having to

either justify it by emphasising the community engagement aspect, or feeling that you

are in some way elitist or above yourself. Also, there was no question but that any work

I made was mine entirely, to do with as I wished: to leave, take away, sell or destroy at

my whim.

I had a similar experience during another residency with fellow artist Natasha

Carsberg in 2007: a tiny village up in the mountains in the Auvergne annually hosts a

event called Chantier d’Arts de Cunlhat. Selected from a number of proposals based on

an annual theme, the artists are accommodated by the villagers, and provided with

communal meals by, in rotation, all the restaurants in the village.

Although the artists are expected to work with the assistance of some members of

the community, often schoolchildren, the nature and extent of this is dictated by the

artist. At the end of the project, there are two awards: one, the judge’s choice, by the

mayor and other committee members; the other, the people’s choice, voted for by the

villagers. Both awards are non-monetary, and of equal importance, and the public is

quite at ease making their choices known: there is no sense that they should, by right,

have had some direct input into the design, nor is there any sense that, without art
training, their opinion is not valid or informed. These two things struck me as the very

nub of the different attitudes towards the arts in France and in Britain today.

Dimitri Vazemsky, ‘Mon Arbre’, Chantier d'Arts de Cunlhat, France, 2007

In fact in France, if you are an artist by profession and you suffer a period of lack of

work, you are entitled to claim government assistance based on your previous income

as an artist. Ironically, however, there are not the same opportunities in France for the

kinds of community and school-based workshops that many artists depend upon for a

living in the UK.

And back in the UK:

Arts policy in this country now might best be summed up by looking at the notion of

public arts projects for the cultural Olympiad, the very title of which has hugely

ideological overtones. Proposals are required to “…fully engage the local community

within its development” (Brentwood Council). Despite making much of the fact that

these submissions are invited from artists, whether the project might be considered art

or not seems largely irrelevant. The Arts Council’s Visual Arts policy states that

“Contemporary art adds value to Britain’s competitive edge in innovation and the

creative industries internationally”, and yet the commissioning of high-profile projects

would seem to continue the idea of arts projects being largely populist in appeal, and

community-led.

“Whenever a local authority commissions a piece of public art with the aim of generating

‘community spirit’, it risks distracting the artist from the tricky job of producing inspiring

art”. (Mirza)

John Tusa states that “Art involves communication, expression, sharing and

engagement. It is a two-way process.” (Engaged with the Arts) He goes on to express

doubts that the artist would really be interested in making work if it were not for the

commission or the public display. He considers the urge to create regardless of

audience as pure hyperbole.

I would contrast this attitude by re-iterating the statement made by John Maynard

Keynes, who said that “everyone…recognises that that the work of the artist in all its

aspects is, of its nature, individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented, uncontrolled.

The artist…cannot be told his direction; he does not know it himself.”

My feeling is that if one has to compromise one’s practice in order to get funding or

approval from either funding bodies or local government, then one is subjecting oneself

to a form of censorship by the general public.

Current arts policy, with its emphasis on accessibility, community engagement, and

the reaching of wider audiences is detrimental to the individual artists’ means of

expression. According to the findings of the Arts Debate, engaging people with the arts

is a problem that needs to be overcome, and the biggest psychological problem is to

reassure people that “(the arts) is for ‘people like them’, they will feel at ease, and they

will enjoy it.”

 Ironically, the most popular exhibition in recent times in this country is the one that

so-called ‘street artist’ Banksy mounted in his native Bristol. The queues for this

exhibition stretched around the block, and none of the visitors – many of whom had not

been to Bristol City Museum, or indeed any gallery, previously - considered this

exhibition to be elitist or not ‘for people like them’. And who funded this popular and

well-received show? Banksy funded it himself, accepting a symbolic payment of £1 from

the gallery, and retaining complete autonomous control over the content and display of

his own work. The show attracted an astonishing 300,000 visitors, and boosted the local

economy by an estimated £10 million.

Banksy vs. Bristol Museum, Installation view, 2009

Since then Bristol authorities plan to become the first to allow a regular public vote on

whether popular works of street graffiti should stay or be removed. "The policy we had

inherited was basically scrub everything off unless (the artists) have got prior

permission," said Councillor Gary Hopkins, cabinet member for Environment and

Community Safety. Under the new policy, unsightly graffiti will still be removed swiftly,

but the council will consult on murals or artwork "deemed to make a positive contribution

to the local environment" (Reuters.com): an interesting case of an artist affecting policy,

rather than the reverse.

 Artist Robert Priseman has been himself the recipient of two Arts Council grants.

Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that the system of grant applications does contain an

element of needing to please the public, and is more for the benefit of the grant givers

than the recipients. Speaking to him after an artist’s Pecha Kucha evening held at

Cuckoo Farm, he told me that an artist creates because he or she needs to create, and

should not be compromised by the needs of the public or anyone else.

“The key is just to keep making the work… the reasons behind what you are doing will

emerge out of that process. You will never make good work if you continually have to

bear in mind the needs of others. This is not about pleasing other people, or caring

about what they think.” (Priseman, in conversation 13/9/09)

Robert Priseman, ‘Corridor’, 2004-2006

Conclusion:

It would seem to me that I, as an artist, face a number of choices: in order to gain

funding, should I be prepared to compromise, to some extent, my own practice? There

is funding for artists to develop their own work, but that from the Arts Council seems to

be to further the practice of established artists, a move which is designed to reflect

positively on the Arts Council policies by not taking any risks with public opinion.

How does this relate to my practice, and the work that I am engaged in on this

course? I have, for much of my career, been involved in community or public arts, and
have compromised my own practice so much that for many years there has been a

visible distinction between my personal work, and the work that is in the public eye.

The public work, publicly funded, has a function outside of my practice, and I have

been adept at fulfilling the need of the commissioning bodies, the community

engagement aspect, and the site-specificity of the work.

However as I develop my personal practice, I am interested in finding ways of making

work that has a social context without compromising my artistic integrity. Perhaps, like

Banksy, the way to retain control is to self-fund: remove myself from under the aegis of

arts funding policy altogether. This might in turn mean that, ironically, my work would

develop to the point where I could eventually gain that funding without compromise.

Lisa Temple-Cox, ‘three heads’, experimental macquettes, 2009

I would like to finish, as I started, with a quote from Richard Serra: this seems to me

to encapsulate the point I have been making.

“Trying to attract a bigger audience has nothing to do with the making of art. It has to do

with making yourself into a product, only to be consumed by people. Working this way

allows society to determine the terms and the concept of art; the artist must then fulfil

those terms. I find the idea of populism self-defeating.” (Serra)

Lisa Temple-Cox 2009 Word count: 4623

References and bibliography:

References:

• Arts Council England; Visual Arts Policy, 2007

• Castle, Tim; Banksy home city to embrace graffiti art, Reuters.com, 2009
• Creative Research; the Arts Debate: findings of Research among the General
Public, 2007
• Eagleton, Terry; The Ideology of the Aesthetic, 1990
• Higgins, Charlotte; Rachel Whiteread, The Guardian.com, 2007
• Hoffman, Barbara; Law for Art’s Sake, from Art and the Public Sphere, 1992
• Mirza, Munira, ed.; Culture Vultures: is UK arts policy damaging the arts? 2006
• Mitchell, W.J.T, ed.; Art and the Public Sphere, 1992
• Pearson, Nicholas; The State and the Visual Arts,
• Raven, Arlene, ed.; Art in the Public Interest, 1993
• Serra, Richard; Art and Censorship, from Art and the Public Sphere 1992
• Storr, Robert; tilted arc: enemy of the people, from Art in the Public Interest, 1993
• Tusa, John; Engaged with the Arts: writing from the frontline, 2007

Bibliography: Books and Articles

• Arts Council England; the arts debate: stage one findings and next steps, 2007
• Arts council of Great Britain; More bread and Circuses: who does what for the
arts in Europe, 1994
• Brentwood Council, Members’ Newsletter, 2007
• Bullock, Alan, and Trombley, Stephen (ed); the new Fontana Dictionary of
Modern Thought, 1999
• Hess, Barbara; Jasper Johns, 2007
• MFA Boston, Rachel Whiteread, press release 2008
• Michael Landy, Breakdown, Artangel.com 2001
• Rachel Whiteread, House, Artangel.com1993
• Smith, the Rt. Hon Chris MP; Creative Britain, 1998
• The Littoral Trust; the Merz Barn Project, 2009

Web pages:

• 30 things about art and life as explained by Charles Saatchi:

www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/aug/30/charles-saatchi-best-of-british
• Arts Council Funding: www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/index.php
• Arts Council; Visual Arts: www.artscouncil.org.uk/subjects/homepage
• Banksy charged £1 for Bristol Exhibition: www.entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
• Banksy’s home city to embrace graffiti art: www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle
• Chantiers d’Arts de Cunlhat 2007: www.art-nature-project21.org
• Chateau de Sacy: www.pagesperso-orange.fr/chateaudesacy/e_main.html
• Outside09: www.cuckoofarmstudios.org.uk
• Rachael Whiteread: www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/sep/08/art10
• Richard Serra: www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/05/serra.art
• Summer of Art: www.visitessex.com/discover/cultural/summer-of-art
• The Merz Barn Project:www.merzbarn.net/