"What does it mean to be a Philadelphian?"

The other day I received an email response from a friend about my blog. Here it is.

Dear M,

Apologies for the long delay in response to your original email, following our chance meeting. Your blog gets at many issues, perhaps too many, and that is part of why I didn’t respond earlier. The few blogs I’ve read seem to share the same flaw/habit: they are so personal and presumptive as to be confusing. Your blog makes a number of quick assertions about the planning commission, about the plaza, about the sculpture, etc, that I find myself wondering about the last sentence while reading the next…I think it is the “diary” nature of the blog. But in your latest entry, you throw out a personal observation that, I think, is at the heart of your Phoenix Rising argument, if not at the heart of your sensibilities: “[Phoenix Rising] was created by a Philadelphian for a Philadelphian.” There is the crux of the value and vision; the fact that the commission is making decisions and plans, whether or not public art is really art, whether or not public art is anything more than decoration, all those questions may be fodder for an art-class paper, but at the heart of your story is “created by a Philadelphian for a Philadelphia.” What the hell does that mean? What does it mean to be a Philadelphian rather than a Parisian or Londoner or New Yorker? Not just in the current sense of the idiots who threw things at Santa at an Eagles game, or the Phillies fan who threw up on other fans last year, what does it mean to be a Philadelphian?

Who and what was Dilworth and why is he less remembered than Rizzo? Less revered than Rizzo? How and why did Etting, a second or third-rate artist, feel the need to memorialize him? What does all this say about Philadelphia and being a Philadelphian? Isn’t Philadelphia a second or third-rate city by international standards? And yet, isn’t it home to development of one of the greatest ideas? An idea that is part of the current political and military landscape today: revolts in Egypt? Libya? You’ve made me think that being a Philadelphian is far greater than the sum of its parts…yes, architecture and history and art have passed away, but Philadelphia is still here. Washington Square is a playground/park with a single flame, and yet it was once (and still may be) a cemetery for soldiers and indigents…but the light is lit. So if Phoenix Rising is moved or lost or destroyed, there is a central question about being a Philadelphian, recognizing other Philadelphians, memorializing Philadelphians.

And then we have K’s book, which “was created by a Philadelphian for a Philadelphian.” What sense of place, what sense of shared experience, what sense of Philadelphia-ness is contained there? And as you defend Etting’s sculpture, what motivates you from your sense of place?

Good luck with the film.

I found this email fun to think about.

What does it mean to be a Philadelphian? I do not know the answer anymore than I know what it means to be a woman.

Finding out what it means to be a Philadelphian is beyond the scope of my blog and film and beyond the scope of my abilities. It may be impossible to answer that question. But it is a question worth investigating. What does it mean to be a Philadelphian?

Lately I have been struggling to create what I envision. On paper or in discussion, everything seems crystal clear or at least vaguely clear. But when I put pen to paper or my editing icon to my Final Cut Pro timeline, something falls apart. Not something that was solid and sturdy to begin with, but something that gave me the illusion of sturdiness and strength. There is an ongoing fight. An indecision. An inability to serve and guide my present through my past.

It is said Philadelphia is a city of twos. Two rivers: Delaware and the Schuylkill. Two bridges: Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman. Two thoroughfares: Market and Broad Streets. Two icons: William Penn and Benjamin Franklin.

The name Philadelphia was created from two Greek words: phileo (love) and adelphos (brother). Hence The City of Brotherly Love.

But the city of brotherly love never came to fruition. Penn’s utopian plan did not last; it barely began. While Penn’s design looked good on paper, the newly anointed Philadelphians felt differently. Philadelphians immediately began dividing Penn’s generous sized lots. Penn’s green country town quickly became a congested mess as narrow alleys were created for the designation of row homes.

So what does it mean to be Philadelphian?

Thomas Eakins painted The Gross Clinic in 1875 at the age of 31. The painting is considered by many to be the most important work of American Realism. It has been written that Philadelphia “was not an art center in the sense in which it was a medical center.” (Philadelphia A 300-Year History, p.449) Led by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia art instruction started with anatomy; Eakins pushed that instruction beyond PAFA’s standards. In 2006, Thomas Jefferson University attempted to sell The Gross Clinic for $68 million dollars.

Frank Furness, like Eakins, was another eccentric product of conservative Philadelphia. Furness’ Victorian designs were bold and innovative and his aesthetic altered the face of Philadelphia. He is regarded as having produced a “Philadelphia Style” which was carried on in the work of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis I. Kahn. Furness’ designs did not last. Nearly 90% of his work in Philadelphia was demolished.

Louis I. Kahn immigrated to Philadelphia at the age of 4 or 5. Not a Philadelphian by birth, he was one by design. Kahn’s structures are low lying and monumental. The Gentlemen’s Agreement, the determining factor of 20^th century Philadelphia architecture, is present in everything Kahn designed. No skyscrapers, no sleek, slender structures. Just modern-day ruins. Massive stone and concrete structures adapted to the space and light of their environments.

What does it mean to be Philadelphian? I do not know. Do these three eccentric, obsessed, failed, visionaries represent what it means to be Philadelphian? I don’t think so. But they shaped the environment that is Philadelphia. And they represent the best that is Philadelphian.

Like Penn, their visions were not accepted. They were rejected immediately by their own. Philadelphians rejected by Philadelphians.

As the above email points out Philadelphians throw snowballs at Santa Claus and vomit on 9 year old girls at Phillies games. In no other city have football fans pelted Santa Claus. That is Philadelphian. It is Philadelphia sports – a subculture of the Philadelphian. Perhaps that’s all Eakins, Furness, and Kahn are – sub-cultural Philadelphia icons, sub-cultural Philadelphians.

In the case of Phoenix Rising, what does it mean to have a sculpture created by a Philadelphian for a Philadelphian?  Isn’t its relocation the rejection of two Philadelphians (Etting/Dilworth) by Philadelphians?

Like me, Philadelphia is constantly at odds with itself. It cannot escape its past anymore than it refuses to leave it. I am constantly culling information from Philadelphia history for my own work. I know that at some point I must stop. But I cannot help it. There are too many great stories and images that must not be ignored and forgotten.

Raphaelle Peale painting his scars into a piece of fruit. Eakins tearing the loin cloth off a male model in front of female students and being fired as a result. Muybridge filming nude women throwing water on one another and arguing with Eakins about the best way to photograph the action. There are myriad stories that all reflect a Benjamin Rush quote I have snipped in order to suit my own purpose, “All men are public property.”

I will not respond to everything in the email. I disagree that Dilworth is less remembered than Rizzo. If he is, that is rapidly changing: a new exhibition about Dilworth at the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the Dilworth Plaza plan incorporating details about Dilworth’s legacy, and countless articles asking “What would Dilworth do?” There is evidence that he is not only remembered but missed. Dilworth, like Santa Claus and Muybridge’s models, was public property. Perhaps that’s why we are moving his memorial. Perhaps moving his memorial is a very Philadelphian thing to do.

Right now I am looking out the window of my 18^th floor apartment. I live on Washington Square. I cannot see the eternal flame because my view faces south. I see the Delaware River, the Walt Whitman Bridge, and the stadiums at the south end of Broad Street. In my quest to answer the email’s question, “What is a Philadelphian?” I am unfortunately stuck in the city of twos with a view of just one side.

A Tilted Mind - Part II

Look up public art or sculpture on the web and within seconds you will be reading about Richard Serra’s controversial Tilted Arc at Federal Plaza in New York City. Serra’s 120 foot long, 12 foot high steel wall was installed on the plaza in 1981 and removed in 1989.

Tilted Arc, Richard Serra, 1981

Poster for March 6th Hearing

Serra stated that Tilted Arc made people more aware of themselves and their movement in space. Unfortunately, Serra’s intentions were lost on the majority who felt the piece was an aggressive act and unsuitable to the plaza; they demanded its immediate removal. Serra argued that the work was site specific and stated that if it was removed from the plaza, the sculpture would be destroyed.

In 1989, Tilted Arc was dismantled and removed.

The Tilted Arc controversy sparked debate about what public art is, what it should be, and how it is funded. It also questioned the artist’s role and the public’s role in public art practices. For Serra, there was no discussion: “Art is not for the people. Art is not democratic.”

By my nature I side with Serra. Watching this video clip makes me appreciate him more.

http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/videos/90

But what can one say if something does not work? In the case of public art, does the notion of good art apply blindly? By that I mean does good art necessitate good public art? According to philosopher, Arthur C. Danto, it does not.

Here are three passages from Danto’s essay, “Tilted Arc and Public Art” in his book, The State of the Art.

                       

1.           

“First, works of art, and certainly works of public art, do not exist in interest-free environments. There is a public interest in good art, but that is not the only public interest art serves. There is ground for removing a piece of public art when its placement represents interests that the work subverts, even if the work itself is good.”

2.

“What, then, should be the criterion for good public art? I find Henry James instructive here, as in most cruxes of life. There is a passage in The American Scene where he records his surprised admiration for Grant’s Tomb. ‘I felt the critical question…carried off in the general effect,’ he wrote. ‘The aesthetic consideration, the artistic value…to say, was the manner in which the tabernacle of General Grant embodied the values of a democratic society. He contrasts the monument with the tomb of Napoleon in Paris which, ‘as compared to the small pavilion on the Riverside bluff, is a holy of holies, a great temple jealously guarded and formally approached.’ His point is that these two structures project the deepest public values of the societies that built them. If esthetic values were a society’s deepest values, then ‘the aesthetic consideration’ would not melt into irrelevance unless a work failed artistically. In these two monuments, the two societies embody themselves.

3.

“Public art is the public transfigured: it is us, in the medium of artistic transformation. ‘The experience of art,’ Serra argued in his testimony, ‘is in itself a social function.’ So it is. But the social is not the public, any more than the individual is the private. Private and public are dimensions of the political. So when Serra’s attorney spoke of the ‘imposition of the political considerations into Federal programs related to all the arts,’ he was making a mistake of category. The public is already the political. What Serra has insisted is that the esthetic override the political, which it cannot do when the art is public.”

Public art is a delicate matter. It is for the public and paid for by the public yet the public is never consulted. The public’s interest is decided by panels and authorities. What is the criteria on which these boards and authorities judge and decide works of public art?

In the case of Tilted Arc and Phoenix Rising, it can be said that the sculptures did not connect with the people. Where Tilted Arc sparked outrage, controversy, and countless articles and documentary films, Phoenix Rising sparked a deafening silence. Not a word, not an article, just this blog and my documentary film. Where one went with a bang, the other will certainly go with a whimper. But a work’s lack of popularity, like Phoenix Rising’s, does not lessen this discussion. It balances the debate and points the finger back at the public – the group that ultimately decides the success, failure, and future of the public art they fund.

Last weekend, my wife and I went to NY. On Sunday morning, armed with a disposable camera (I had forgotten my digital camera in Philly) we walked from our hotel on Wall Street to Federal Plaza so that I could photograph the vacant plaza where Tilted Arc once stood. When we arrived I could not see any trace of the sculpture’s past life. In fact, I could not see the plaza because there was a long, tall fence encompassing the entire side of the building where Serra’s confrontational piece once stood. A new, chain-link Tilted Arc now blocked the plaza. It was just as tall as Serra’s work but much, much longer. The sign beyond the fence read: Recovery In Progress.

[Photo by Michael Johnston]

From what I could find online, the recovery of the plaza is a federal program that “provides the opportunity to contribute to the nation’s economic recovery.” It was created to stimulate job growth and to repair our infrastructure and improve environmental performance. By improving environmental performance, I imagine that they will rip up the existing materials and dump them somewhere – never trying to recycle or reuse what is available.

[Photo by Michael Johnston]

I wonder how Serra’s Tilted Arc would survive the latest federal program impedance. If Tilted Arc had lasted, would it now be removed in its 30^th year because we have the urge to “green” everything? Would Tilted Arc be used as a symbol for the obstruction of environmental technologies? In my mind, the best thing that could have happened to Tilted Arc happened – it was installed, sparked controversy, and was removed. It had an interesting moment and is now greater as myth than history.

The same for Phoenix Rising. Why subject an interesting sculpture to standing alongside a café? Why reduce all plazas to public eateries and spitting fountains? I do not object to them, I think the new plan is perfect for Dilworth Plaza and the best remedy to a dead section of the city. But as we move closer to all plazas being public eateries, the possibility for works of art like Tilted Arc and Phoenix Rising to be incorporated into the public landscape becomes obsolete. While only a select few view a work's difficulty as high art, the majority view the difficulty as an obstruction to their daily lives. I have never liked a work of art, be it a painting, film, or sculpture, that did not challenge or confront me. Yet I do not like my public spaces to challenge or confront my daily activities. Should we install artworks that force the public to engage with their surroundings in different ways? Can we and should we install confrontational art in non-confrontational spaces at the public’s expense? 

I remain on the fence.

[Photo by Michael Johnston]

A Tilted Mind – Part I

“Every life is a contradiction, a new truth, a new miracle, and even frauds are interesting. I am not a philosopher and I do not believe in philosophies; the word itself I look upon with suspicion. I believe in the right of man to contradict himself.”

                                                                           William Saroyan – Myself Upon the Earth

Last year I was told that Phoenix Rising was not being relocated; it was being removed. The city was not making any effort to procure a new site where the memorial would be installed. In fact, the city was attempting to give the sculpture away to the descendents of either Dilworth or Etting – anyone willing to take a 20 foot aluminum sculpture off their hands. However, Dilworth’s law firm stepped in and things changed. Recently I was told that the plan is to relocate the sculpture to Society Hill. A plan I support.

I am concerned with the disposal of the different strata of Philadelphia history. That anything that is not the Liberty Bell is replaceable and removable. That the vernacular is eliminated for the international. That 90% of Frank Furness’ architecture was demolished as a result of drastic and progressive city planning. 

My original intent was to create a web-based documentary about the removal and relocation of Emlen Etting’s Phoenix Rising. My goal was to stir up discussion and controversy. I even entertained the notion that through this blog and future website, I would find collaborators to help me fight to keep Phoenix Rising where it is. That is no longer my goal.

I have decided against the website. It is not the right medium for this project. The project is a film. It has always been a documentary film. It will not be a typical documentary where I intercut interviews with those responsible for moving the sculpture with time lapse footage of the sculpture showing how many people pass by it every day. Nor will I intercut interviews with those responsible for moving the sculpture with those that oppose the moving of the sculpture.

The documentary film is about the history of Philadelphia and the mythology of Philadelphia. Etting has his place in both as do Phoenix Rising and its honoree, Richardson Dilworth. Part of the mythology is that Philadelphia is a city of twos: two rivers, two bridges, two icons. The same goes for Phoenix Rising. It was created by a Philadelphian for a Philadelphian. When the memorial to Dilworth is removed from Dilworth Plaza, should its new location reflect its maker or its honoree? Should it be treated as art or memorial? Another aspect, one that I have been investigating for some time, is the connection in form and design between Phoenix Rising and Cira Centre. Again, twos. One is functional and the other expressive. How do these two pieces work in tandem? Do they? For me, there is a project here beyond the typical political documentary. And with the latest proposal for a statue of Octavius V. Catto to be placed at the south end of Dilworth Plaza, the politics are infinite.

Earlier this month I attended my first Design Advocacy Meeting at the AIA on Arch Street. I urge everyone to sign up and attend these meetings. People can and do speak candidly at these meetings and it is refreshing to hear Philadelphia’s failures, successes, and potentials discussed without inhibition. I found that many others shared my views and reservations. Listening to the latest Dilworth Plaza proposal, which can be found on the CCD website, I began rethinking my project and my views. And my film became much more personal.

My film will deal with Philadelphia the way I see it and the way I interact with it. Perhaps some of my opinions will be unpopular or naïve or biased but they will be mine.  Phoenix Rising’s relocation is a single aspect of my view of this city. While Phoenix Rising is public my connection to it is personal. I view Phoenix Rising as a Philadelphia design. As a native form by a native son. Just because I view the sculpture in this light does not mean that I think it should remain at the north end of Dilworth Plaza. I feel that relocating the sculpture is the only way to give it a chance with the public.