citizen artist : 20 years of art in the public arena : an anthology from high performance magazine 1978-1998 : Vol. 1

Anthology of articles on public art in the High Performance Magazine published between 1978 en 1998. The essays in the book cover the evolution of public art in the US from the late seventies when art was highly experimental, through the eighties when art retreated and refined its interest in social issues, through the nineties when artists began to recognise that despite their concerns for social response they remained a subculture. The book is divided in three parts : the art/life experiment, the artist as activist, the artist as citizen. Titles which at the same time characterise different areas of specific concern and roughly reflect three chronological periods in the magazines existence: from the conceptual art experiments of the '70s to the community-based art of the '90s, from political theories to humanist concerns of the public and the historical elements that have been integral to the development of public art.