Raleigh as Holly Golightly
by Antonio Rivera In July 2007 I will have resided in Wake County for thirty years. And excepting two years living in Wendell, all of it with Raleigh addresses. As a long time resident and member of the art community, I have seen many changes and yet Raleigh remains true to itself. This years' rows over the Plensa Plaza and the restoration of Fayetteville Street to a street. Fayetteville, a Street marked more by a dream of what it could be than anything real.. And what our Downtown should be. It feels like deja vu…?all over again.?
In the not too distant past there were rows about making Fayetteville Street a pedestrian mall; there were rows about the fancy pants Sir Walter Raleigh Sculpture. As well as what I feel were still born plans to revitalize Downtown, the Moore Square Art District being one of them, that are still lacking fulfillment. During the Administration of fine dressing Mayor Fetzer, there were real attempts to censor or otherwise define what Art was appropriate in Raleigh. Though we have many more artists and exhibition venues now than on my first visit here in 1977 (when I wrote to artist friends in NYC about the lack of art)…The local response to art is remains gravely conservative. Be it local governments or the majority of local dealers and collectors what is appreciated keeps Raleigh barely at the beginning of the twentieth century. Rather than as it wants to present itself (or rather as some opportunist, developers and business people) as a Southern Cultural Center in the twenty-first century. This is the basic under-current that ran through the Plensa fiasco, that we are not ready for anything new. With rare exceptions I do not believe there is such a thing as Public Art, when what most cities still want is Civic Art and symbols (the St. Louis Arch for example). And the season's fiasco proves this true for Raleigh too. My reference to Holly Golightly, (Audrey Hepburns role in Breakfast at Tiffanys) in relation to Raleigh, refers to dressing up a country girl and trying to pass her off as a class act. The politicos and developers, cultural mavens (sadly I have to refer to Plensa as an example) by foisting their own interest are trying to buy a status for Raleigh that it lacks. Holly Golightly was not only a country girl but also a high class, well-dressed call girl without many ambitions…And I say this is the case for tart-ing up Raleigh too. The making of a small town into a fancy tart, does not change it, really change it from a small town, where the majority has small cultural ambitions. I am an émigré from a major city and art center there is much I miss about living there, but I choose to live here. There is much to recommend Raleigh and I have also seen genuine advances here and hope to see more. But cultural changes take time and education of the citizenry and can not be imposed by vested interest. In 1997 the art I found here were variations of American Regionalist/Realism and as I wrote to friends a form of Regional Surrealism (movements of the 1930-1940?s). Today there seems to be an under-current bringing to light (though still more by mimicry than sensitivity) mid-twentieth century abstraction. Hey, let us be grateful that we have culturally advanced another ten years over the last thirty.