Janet Zweig ain’t Karen Finley

The breaking news from Milwaukee’s City Hall Tuesday was that the Common Council voted, by a lopsided 12-2, to approve the public art installation for E. Wisconsin Avenue designed by Janet Zweig.

The tempest in a teapot didn’t boil over and Mike Brenner did not even have to resort to defecating on the lawn of any alderman who opposed the project. The threat, he says, was a conscious decision to throw fuel on the fire of the controversy to focus attention on the importance of supporting Zweig’s project.

Ald. Joe Dudzik, who, along with Ald. Bob Donovan, ultimately voted against the project, went for Brenner’s bait. He left a message on Brenner’s voice mail daring the provocateur to make good on his promise, thoughtfully leaving his home address.

Brenner, being the creative guy he is, recorded a remix using Dudzik’s phone message and posted it on his web site.

Well, boys will be boys.

Now I really have to move on from the Brenner-Dudzik, err, pissing match before you get the impression that the Zweig piece coming soon to Milwaukee’s downtown is some kind of creepy, offensive concept with the potential to embarrass our fair city.

History is full of examples of high-concept art intended to shock and/or disgust, often referencing urine or feces. Who can forget Karen Finley’s creative use of chocolate or the incredibly self-indulgent Andres Serrano even going all the way back to Marcel Duchamps’s celebrated and controversial urinal of 1917.

Zweig’s public art for the Instructional Technology Center, Santa Fe Community College. It invents and writes a new line of text, displayed on a mechanical “flip-disk” sign every time someone passes through.

Sorry to disappoint, but Janet Zweig’s art is none-of-the-above.

Janet Zweig is a Milwaukee-born artist who has built a national reputation developing the kind of interactive art that engages without offending. Take a look at the current issue of Sculpture magazine for an overwhelmingly positive examination of her work.

The process that culminated in her being chosen for this project has been going on for years, at least since 2002. Milwaukee Magazine’s Bruce Murphy does a nice job of reviewing the history and, bless his soul, contextualizing the current flare-up.

Zweig seems to have bent over backwards to avoid offending anybody. Her use of old-fashioned flip-disk technology, the kind associated with signs at rail stations, introduces a type of interactivity to her work that is refreshingly modern without appearing pretentious.

And she plans to involve local artists and others in the work as a clever way to return some of the funds to the community. The lion’s share of the $300,000 cost is coming from the federal government and the $60,000 city contribution goes exclusively to local folks.

Hard to find anything to complain about, right?

Well, not so fast. I’m not an expert on art but my gripe with the proposal is that it doesn’t appear to be public enough. As engaging as the concept seems, I believe that one strength of the best public art is that it is observed at the same time by groups of people, often strangers, whose reactions influence each other.

As I understand this series of eye-level displays, it requires pedestrians to stop and look into a kind of viewfinder. Though the art itself promises to be inoffensive, the displays remind me of nothing more than a peepshow.

That in itself doesn’t bother me (though, in some Freudian way, it may explain some of the resistance by our apoplectic public officials) but it seems to run contrary to the purpose of public art.

Have we become so timid in our support of public art that we almost have to hide it from view?

Not only does it appear that only one viewer at a time can look in, but it seems to raise accessibility issues.

Will children have to be lifted to see it? What about people in wheelchairs?

But it’s approved, so obviously I waited too long to voice my concerns. In time, we will all have the opportunity to judge for ourselves whether it meets our personal definition of good art.

But controversy and art go hand-in-hand and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The idea is to stimulate those brain synapses of ours in one way or another. It’s one of those things that make us fully human.

And guess what? It’s a Gallery Night weekend, so get out to see some art and enjoy yourselves!