Arc without covenant: after years of fighting in the courts and in the media, a creation in rusted steel, called Tilted Arc, has finally been carted away.

After years of fighting in the courts and in the media,

The artistic elite is outraged,

the vox populi breathes a sigh of relief

ABOUT 95 PER CENT of the artists who are hailed by critics, extolled by gallery owners, enshrined by museum curators, and blindly swallowed by the public are proved hacks by history. Competent, often even clever hacks, but hacks nonetheless. If you walk through any leading museum in the world today, you will see perhaps 3 to 5 per cent of the artists who were considered preeminent even as recently as a century ago. And how many of those are indispensable? I am not talking, of course, about special exhibitions of works by great artists, where the number of important and desirable works is much higher, though probably not so high as museum directors and other interested parties would have us believe.

"What is art?" is a question that has occupied a small but choice portion of humanity since long before Tolstoi published a rather philistine book by that title. But unlike many another endlessly debated subject, this one is worthy of continuous probing. For once it stops being debated, art will either become a monolithic, officially regimented mediocrity or cease to exist altogether-neither prospect particularly cheery. And a small but not insignificant part of the great debate has focused in recent years on Richard Serra's sculpture Tilted Arc. Commissioned by the General Services Administration for lower Manhattan's Federal Plaza in 1979, it was installed in 1981 and, after immediate virulent public protest and lengthy litigation, removed in this year of grace. It raises both contemporary and sempiternal questions worth adverting to.

The history of art begins with Anonymous and ends with Untitled. In other words, it begins with the work of art all-important and the identity of the artist inconsequential; and it ends with the name of the artist trumpeted about and the work of art negligible. In still other words, art begins with the emphasis on making beautiful, significant, lasting things, and is ending now with the artifact insignificant, and the ego, hype, and celebrity (or notoriety) of the artist paramount. It means that the artist, once anonymous, selfless, and concerned only with making something beautiful to the greater glory of God, man, or art, has become a huckster, bustler, hypocrite peddling any old -or, rather, any new-concoction to the greater glory of his trendy self. It's a damned sad state of affairs, and the truism that a society gets the art it deserves is no consolation; give a society such as ours the art it deserves and who-artist or art consumer-should, in Hamlet's words, 'scape whipping?

Richard Serra's meaningless piece of self-aggrandizement, nUed Arc, is (was?), as described by the Washington Post (Sept. 19, 1987), "a 12-foot-high, 120-foot-long, slightly curving wall of rusting pitted steel." It had the same dimensions in Time magazine (March 14, 1988); but in the less impressionable-or less consistent-New York Times it was sometimes only 112 feet long (July 16, 1987, Dec. 16, 1987), though at other times (March 11, 12, and 16, 1989) likewise 120. Perhaps that rampant object grew in the last couple of years, but what's eight feet more or less except to an octopus? At either length, the rusty wall that until recently bisected Federal Plaza in front of the Jacob K. Javits building impeded free pedestrian traffic in a busy area, obstructed the happily roving gaze, and put a barrier between people who might have used this space for communal eating, listening to outdoor concerts, or just wordlessly communicating with one another. Why add to the claustrophobia of the city by depriving it of a rare and much-needed oasis of open space?

TILTED ARC was (is?) so ugly that it repelled even the ubiquitous and tireless graffitists of New York, whose aim in life is to deface anything that is defaceable, from subway cars to works of art. It may be that rusting pitted steel is not a hospitable medium for the graffito painter, but that is underestimating the ingenuity and perseverance of these street artists, which often surpass those of recognized sculptors. Or it may be that such graffiti as cropped up were promptly removed by the building maintenance staff, but that seems like an overoptimistic view of what maintenance cares, or can afford, to do. Most likely the object lacked some appetizing quality such as cleanness, sleekness, loveliness that the graffitist's vandalism prefers to feast on. Still, Tilted Arc was pre-desecrated by its own unappetizingness.

Serra's four-year-long effort in the courts to maintain this eyesore in the public eye invoked the First and Fifth Amendments and centered on two arguments: the artist's "moral right" to keep his work untampered with in any way offensive to him, and the "site specific" nature of Tilted Arc, i.e., the alleged way in which it fits into a particular space and nowhere else. This in the teeth of countless protests starting almost immediately after the work went up-a work on which the General Services Administration had spent $175,000 of taxpayers' money!

The "moral right" issue is a thorny one, especially in the United States, which until very recently refused to sign acts of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and in which divergent state laws-or, more often, no laws-govern the fate of artistic works after they leave their creators' hands. Serra and his lawyers in a $30-million suit contended at various times that the GSA was treating Tifted A rc-which it proposed to move carefully to some other location-as if it were "a desk in someone's office" (Gustave Harrow, one of Serra's lawyers) or "a paperclip" (Serra himself). Granted, Tilted Arc is no 120-foot desk or 112-foot paperclip (that would require the no-less-formidable talent of a Claes Oldenburg), but, a nagging doubt remains, is it art?

On the one side are the 1,300 outraged employees at Federal Plaza who promptly signed a petition declaring the work ugly and the plaza rendered useless by it; also the 4,500 complaints from citizens at the three-day public hearing that found against the sculpture, as well as Judge Milton Pollack of the Federal District Court, who ruled that Serra "has alleged extremely abstract violations of constitutional rights," something that would seem like sufficient grounds only to an extremely abstract artist.

On the other side, besides Serra and his lawyers, was a committee appointed by the General Services Administration in 1986 to advise it in this matter. The committee met, less than expeditiously, in December 1987 and inspected Tilled Arc under Serra's guidance on a day of cold, driving rain. It may be that such weather helped Serra's cause: viewed from the leeward side, the Arc might at least serve as a shelter from the elements. The seven members of the committee also regarded the sculpture from a second-floor vantage point (again under Serra's guidance why wasn't some member of the opposition present?) and concluded that the work is indeed site specific and that its removal would destroy its artistic value.

Who exactly were the seven members of that committee? Only four appear to have been identified, and I am not convinced of their ecumenism: the artist Robert Ryman (a bird of like plumage), the architect James Ingo Freed (whose work I regrettably don't know), a Los Angeles city councilman (seen from Los Angeles, the Arc, even if it were 120 New York miles long, would be no problem), and Theodore Kheel, the committee chairman, known as a labor-dispute arbitrator, but not an arbiter of taste or art. I daresay none of the three other committee members was a traditionalist sculptor or conservative critic, if such a one can still be found.

NOW FOR THAT BUSINESS of being site specific, a fairly barbarous neologism of dubious provenance. It strikes me that other than a monument to a dead herofireman, which belongs in front of his fire station, or one to a great educator, which belongs in front of the ministry of education (if the country is enlightened enough to have one), no sculpture is site specific, or else every sculpture can be declared that. Rodin's Balzac looks great on its particular Paris boulevard, but looks just as good in the museums that have casts of it. It can be argued that Lord Elgin had no right to abscond with those marbles wrenched from the Parthenon, but not that they don't look as splendid at the British Museum. If a given sculpture works only in a certain location-because, in other words, it sops up something crucial from its surroundings-doesn't that diminish it as a work of art? But yes, if Christo wraps a bridge or a harbor in paper, and some misguided souls mistake that for art, even they would not esteem the wrapping paper, once it is removed, a work of art. Is Tifted Arc, then, made of wrapping paper?

It seems to me that the notion of a site-specific sculpture is derived by false analogy from architecture. A building must, or at least should, be functional and adapt itself to its environment: one intended for the middle of a block of apartment houses ought to be designed differently from one intended to nestle by itself on a hilltop. The pyramid of Cheops, though a very good thing on a desert site as a tomb for a mighty pharaoh, would look out of place in Times Square as a movie theater or office building. But the great Egyptian statue of the Seated Scribe from the Louvre would look equally fine in the plaza in front of a megalopolitan newspaper tower or anywhere else in the world as a monument to writers.

Why, in any case, is a tilted arc more appropriate to one place than to another? I have looked at this object many times (though not in the rain) trying to discover any way in which its shape might be related to its surroundings, but, not having had the benefit of Mr. Serra's presence to guide me and my thinking, could find none. It was, however, a typical Serra work, as anybody could have ascertained from, say, a recent Serra show at the Museum of Modern Art. The one characteristic, other than ugliness, that all the works shared was their monstrous size; more specifically (though not site specifically) the rapacity with which they grabbed the greatest possible space for themselves: you could have fitted the high points of Michelangelo's entire career into the rooms required by a few recent Serras. If Tilted Arc and other Serra works make a statement, it is this: "Behold how much of your Lebensraum I can arrogate to myself! How great and important I am! How puny compared to me are you!"

SOMETHING TRUER than the "site specific" argument emerges from the plea Serra made (as reported in the Times) that "his reputation and career have been harmed by efforts to remove his sculpture." Why would anyone's reputation and career depend on whether one particular work proved inappropriate to a certain spot? What does it mean that Serra threatened to sue Clemson University or C.W. Post University-two institutions interested in obtaining the work and deemed suitable by the GSAif they received it? What does it mean that, as I recall reading at the time, Serra threatened to leave the country forever if Tilted Arc were moved to another spot (a promise that, I fear, no one will hold him to)?

It all adds up to megalomania and lust for celebrity. Serra's reputation depends on publicity and, clearly, far fewer people would see-and carry on about-nUed Arc if it were relocated to a North Carolina or even a Long Island campus. No, he wants to impose his encroaching artifact on the site where it will call the greatest attention to itself and to him, regardless of whether that attention is admiring or hostile. An equally megalomaniacal Serra work, Twain, consisting of eight (not two, as you might hope from the title) steel slabs, encloses a landscaped block in St. Louis. No doubt Serra dreams of enclosing entire cities in slabs of steel, tilted or otherwise, to indulge his delusions of grandeur. I am confident that if by some miracle of engineering Tilted Arc could be suspended from the tip of the Empire State Building-and if the spot were offered him-he would forget all about site specificity and graciously accept the offer.

The Art in Architecture Program allocates 0.05 per cent of the Federal Government's annual construction budget to the beautification of government buildings. That's the figure as reported in the Washington Post; Time (March 14, 1988) gave it as 0.5 per cent. Needless to say, I believe the lower figure. In either case, though, the money is not meant for uglification, which, if you ask me, is all you can get from Serra, regardless of what the chorus of today's incestuous art experts may warble to the contrary. It is a wretched age that perceives Serra, and countless others equally vacuous and untalented, as having anything to do with any art other than that of self-promotion. Thank goodness for the vox populi, which, unacquainted with current art criticism, has the honesty and courage to pronounce ugliness offensive. If the artist has moral rights, let them be exercised where they do not clash with the moral and aesthetic rights of the rest of the population. The person who seeks out a work of art, however questionable, in a museum, gallery, or private collection has every right to do so. But innocent multitudes who have a horror thrust upon them in a public place near their homes or offices may rightfully refuse to put up with it.

Later generations, of course, may have different tastes and should be entitled to outdoor Serras or post-Serras if that is what they want. The good news is that the Art in Architecture Program has amended its guidelines to include consultation with the communities before their moneys are spent on things that turn their stomachs whenever they're compelled to see them.

The relocation order for the Serra sculpture having been upheld by the U.S. District Court of Appeals, and a lastditch stand based on the recent signing by the United States of the Berne Convention document having failed too, the General Services Administration has moved the Arc-in the three parts in which it was cast, and without inflicting damage on them-to a motor-vehicle compound in Brooklyn. Only minuscule damage was inflicted on the English language by William J. Diamond, the regional administrator of the GSA, when he said he could understand Serra's "poignant feelings." (Words or actions can be poignant, feelings cannot.) But Serra insists that "to remove the piece is to destroy the piece," and announces rather unpoignantly that "if they ever use the name Tilted Arc or my name in connection with those three steel plates, I'll sue them." I suggest that the piece, or pieces, be re-erected on one of our more prominent garbage dumps and outfitted with a plaque reading: "Untitled, by Anonymous." Thus art will have, rather than merely describing an arc, come full circle.