2022_심화영어독해와작문

Reading for Writing A different view of public art Imagine walking past a sculpture in a city plaza — you might see a 19th- century statue of a Civil War general on horseback or a statue of the Greek goddess of victory on a high stand. Perhaps you glance up at the artwork in passing. Or maybe you don’t even take notice, as it is just one of the many urban sculptures honoring past heroes. Richard Serra wanted passers-by to have a very different relationship to public sculptures. His 1981 sculpture Tilted Arc was a 12-foot-tall, 120-foot- long, 15-ton steel slab that cut across Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. Instead of focusing on the visual experience of sculpture—looking at it from a distance—Serra wanted passers-by to experience the sculpture in a physical way. He said that the long, curving metal sheet would “encompass the people who walk on the plaza in its volume,” altering their experience of the space as they moved to and from the surrounding government buildings. Serra shared this interest with many of his minimalist colleagues such as Dan Flavin and Robert Morris, who sought to engage the spaces surrounding their sculptures. Minimalist artists considered their audience as moving beings with changing perspectives, not static viewers. For example, Tilted Arc could seem like an elegant curve from some angles and an imposing barrier from others. The sculpture was commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) as part of its Art-in-Architecture program, which commissioned large-scale, permanent artworks for new government buildings. However, Serra’s work would not be permanent. The controversy Serra saw public art as a way to expose and critique the surrounding public space, not to beautify it. This approach made Titled Arc a target of criticism from the moment of its installation in 1981. New York Times art critic Grace Glueck called it “an awkward, bullying piece that may conceivably be the ugliest work of art in the city.” Employees of two government divisions that were housed on Federal Plaza collected 1,300 signatures requesting the removal of the sculpture. However, this criticism did not gain real attention until William Diamond became the GSA administrator in 1984 and took up the cause. Diamond held a public forum about Tilted Arc , in which 180 federal plaza workers, art critics, artists, curators, and other concerned parties expressed their opinions about the piece. Richard Serra, Tilted Arc Essay by Mya Dosch 22 I Unit 1