more paper posting: public art

Art Apologetics

How Maria Alquilar’s “The Doors” demonstrates the relationship of public art, public artist, and public, and why each of these should be sorry when the relationship fails

Like all personal or museum-quality art, public art faces the challenge of straddling several relational situations. Upon presentation, each piece begs a series of questions: Whom is the piece meant for? Which conversation is it a part of? What is the audience trying to say to the public? What is the artist trying to say to a specific group or person? What is the artist trying to say to his or her self? Is the artist even trying to say anything? Was the artist asked to say something? Was the artist forced to say something? After the original placement of an art within the public sphere, these original questions settle and yet, a dialogue still remains. Some public art (like Biola’s own “Jesus Mural”) is a gift; other art (think graffiti) is a statement. Thanks to the sense of “shock value” brought into the world of public art by artists like Banksy, incursions of art into the public sphere are more likely to be associated with phrases like, “I can’t believe [the artist] would think to do that!” rather than, “How nice that [the artist] would think to do that!” Other, more local-community oriented pieces occur as gifts that artistically represent some long-standing local history and continue a dialogue about their content with the community. Maria Alquilar’s ceramic mural installment “The Doors” is an example of an incursion piece that enters the public art and local community dialogue by the artist’s interaction with the community rather than the art itself – by how it is done rather than the fact that it is done. The situation surrounding Maria Alquilar’s relationship to the city of Livermore shows how an artist’s conduct plays a major role in the acceptance of a work and how, if this relationship is abused, it can detract not only from the significance of the work itself but also from the intended relational results of the work.

Maria Alquilar, a Northern Californian installation artist and muralist, installed her mosaic creation “The Doors” for the city of Livermore, California, in June 2005. Located just outside the entryway of the city’s new library, “The Doors” fittingly contains visual and textual references to what any lover of books would consider “literary landmarks” – the phrases and scenes from and names of the greatest authors such as Dante and William Blake. Alquilar explains how the ceramic mural “contains 300 references to artists, scientists, dancers, heroes, explorers, writers, poets, adventurers, inventors, saviors, musicians, areas of the world, mythology, religions, folklore and world crafts” (Good Experience). Also depicted within the mosaic are different cultures along with “illustrations of the culture as well as the influence of that culture on artists, explorers, scientists etc,” (Maria Alquilar) which also emphasize the sense of information to be found within the doors of the library. In terms of content alone, “The Doors” sits very appropriately in location and in significance – a mosaic loaded with historical and literary meaning almost asks to be a decoration for a library.

Maria Alquilar’s stated intentions for “The Doors” read as follows:

“The words and the quotes along with the esthetics of the work is designed to engage the viewer at the basic esthetic level to the intellectual and spiritual levels if the viewer takes advantage of the vast wealth of material that the library has to offer. in other words the viewer is encouraged to interact with the work at their highest level of interest” (Maria Alquilar).

What is intriguing about this artist’s statement is the degree to which it’s intent depends on the viewer. The statement itself seems to be a conditional statement: “if the viewer makes use of the library, he or she will be able to understand this mosaic to a greater extent.” Though this criticism might come across as harsh, it helps to elucidate on the conversational aim of “The Doors.” Alquilar explains that the mosaic intends to relate the viewers with the library (the location of the mosaic). “The Doors” serves, hopefully, to enlighten library attendees as they walk, before they even sit down to study, read, or learn. In the artist’s statement, Alquilar invites learners of all levels and walks to meet her piece. By stating the mosaic’s purpose, Alquilar avoids the controversy potential involved in the creation of public art, as discussed earlier. With this purpose, “The Doors” saves itself from having to defend a statement, and instead can interact clearly with the Livermore community.

Had this gentle account been the end of this quaint mosaic’s story, had Maria Alquilar served simply as decoration for the Livermore Public Library, “The Doors” might have faded away into the countless catalogs of public art that adorns suburban parks and downtown sidewalks. No art, however, is sheer decoration, and so “The Doors” remains a piece in and of itself that demands attention. On it’s own, “The Doors” worked its way community controversy – the mosaic has become a local scandal. Why? It contains mistakes. The textual references in the original mosaic contained “11 misspellings, including ‘Eistein,’ ‘Shakespere’ and ‘Michaelangelo,’ among the 175 names,” an incident laughable given that the mosaic sits just outside a library, a house of words (BNET). At first, this situation rippled lightly throughout the Livermore community as little more than an everyday mishap, but later the mosaic installment turned into a focal point for scandal and offense between Alquilar and the Livermore Arts Council as well as between the art world and the rest of community. Alquilar fixed the mistakes at cost to the city, but refused to offer any apology.

Alquilar rebutted the situation in a way that comes across at first glance as safely and then at second glance snidely. What began as a humble artist pleading for her work became a tightly defensive woman unconsciously revealing the incongruencies between her action and intention. In a news interview, Alquilar complains of the disjoint between "The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people… they are denigrating my work and the purpose of this work" (USAToday.com). Great irony lies in the fact that Alquilar advocates for unity through her piece while demonstrating a destructive attitude towards the community for which it was made. In a later letter to the press, Alquilar begs that the public attend to the spirit of her work and not the dramatic circumstances surrounding it: “My greatest goal would be for people to explore these different cultures and come to realize that the elements that we have in common are far greater than the elements that separate cultures and lead to violence… Please enjoy this work in the spirit in which it was conceived” (Good Experience). Though this rebuttal seems to maintain the sense of universal invitation that her original statement demonstrated, Alquilar’s discourteous interactions with the Livermore community both veil and detract from any original intention. Unfortunate as it seems, Alquilar’s rebuttal came too late to save the reputation of “The Doors” – her coarse behavior as an artist had already turned what should have been a narrative about the mosaic into a narrative about Alquilar.

Alquilar’s response to the mishap was not only untimely but also incongruent with her original stated purpose. Two reasons support this claim of incongruency: firstly, the fact that the mosaic represents a library should imply some sense of explicit attention to words; secondly, the fact that Alquilar advocates unity while acting in a de-unifying manner. Alquilar’s hasty defense of “The Doors” betrays her stated purpose for it on an intellectual level: though she urges using the library to pursue and increase individual education, intellect, and insight, she decries the need for those same things. In an interview, she wrongly states that “the people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words. In their mind, the words register correctly” (USAToday.com). In actuality, people who are into the humanities, in the day and age in which “The Doors” exists, possess an acute perception and respect for words. Furthermore, the public recognizes the library as a center for words. Alquilar asks, in these statements, that viewers grasp the spirit of her work without the letter of it. In actuality, again, the library itself houses spirit by the letter. The irony demonstrated in this paradox reveals Alquilar’s first inconsistency as an artist. Her second inconsistency, the greater of the two, lies in her intent for and actual interaction with the community. Her claim that “The Doors” “is supposed to unite people” goes unheard by a community offended by Alquilar’s own actions. This disjoint, a direct result of Alquilar’s disrespectful handling of the artistic mishap, causes the work to be viewed as a center for scandal (and therefore disunity) rather than a gift that promotes the well-being of the community. Were Alquilar to have simply apologized and fixed “The Doors” upon first notice of its mistakes, her original intent for unity through the mosaic would have been maintained. Because of her refusal to apologize, instead sustains a rift between not only herself and the Livermore community, but between the artistic and political centers of all community.

Two implications surface as a result of the circumstances surrounding “The Doors” (which remains a lovely public installation, regardless). The first implication stands as a lesson to the artist, and the second as one to the larger art community. After observing Maria Alquilar’s interaction with the Livermore community as a result of her public art, an artist should learn to act with consistency surrounding his or her piece in order to maintain the piece’s intent. In the case of someone like a vandal graffiti artist, an apology would be unfitting for a work whose intent might be destruction or denouncement in the first place. For someone like Alquilar, however, who claims that the intent of her work is unity, to not offer an apology where necessary is to actually detract from both her work’s significance and her own statement. An artist should learn that in order to preserve the intent of their work, they must act in congruency with that intent. To do otherwise will at the least change their work’s original intent and at greatest, as in the case of Alquilar, detract from it.

The larger art community can learn from Alquilar’s installment in Livermore by observing the community’s reaction to “The Doors” in light of its “scandal.” This specific incident had implications within Livermore’s larger community. Press coverage of the situation questioned the future of local public art in light of the controversy: “…some wonder what might happen to the future of public art in the Bay Area after the mosaic mishap. Will cities that have not yet undertaken public art programs avoid adopting them in the future, to avoid embarrassment or controversy? If communities continue funding public art, will they interfere too much with artistic expression -- even to the point of censorship?” (BNET). As a result of Alquilar’s actions, the rest of the art community receives the burden of proving its beneficial worth to the public. A California State University East Bay Professor and Art Department Chair Michael Henninger recognizes the hole that this sort of scandal digs for the entire artistic community: "Whenever something like this happens, when an artist is not careful, it colors all artists and puts public projects in a bad light. When an artist is reluctant to correct the piece, it makes a bad situation worse" (BNET). The way that an artist acts affects not only his or her relationship with his or her work, but also the way the public perceives the entire art community.

Any Livermore resident can vouch for the tarnished reputation of Maria Alquilar’s ceramic installment “The Doors.” Though it could have been, as hoped for in it’s original intent, the sort of piece that library patrons walk past and comment “How nice that [the artist] would think to do that,” “The Doors” is now widely known throughout the community as “the piece that the artist messed up on.” For this loss of meaning, the art community, the Livermore community and Maria Alquilar should all be truly sorry.