The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society

The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society (1997)

By Lucy Lippard

Synopsis: Lippard is an art-critic/teacher who's concerned with "The historical narrative as it is written in the landscape or place by the people who live or live there" (7). Mostly, she is advocating for “the possibility of an art boasting stronger contextual ties and audience access” (263); art that arises from the conditions of the place and says something to many people. This is because today local art is “about but not of a place” (283). Art governed by the “place ethic” would be: specific, collaborative, generous and open-ended, appealing, simple and familiar enough to attract people, layered and complex and unfamiliar enough to hold attention, evocative, provocative, and critical (286-87). Overall tone of the book is very activist-oriented, with the view that we need public art so that we can better understand each other and our connections to place. Seems to be advocating a kind of regionalism. Seems to be very influenced by early 1990s "decline of place" trope - esp. Kunstler and Margaret Crawford- hence her belief that place needs to be rescued from its current "homogenization." Tone is also romantic, poetic, personal, and activist.

Interesting Specifics:

“Each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity” (6).

“If space is where culture is lived, the place in the result of the union” (10).

The Western world views Nature as something apart from humans – to be held at a distance and in awe, or else “raped.” [This idea connects with Jennifer Price, etc.]

Rebecca Solnit quote: “[Suburbia] seemed to me a voluntary limbo, a condition more like sedation than exile, for exiles know what’s missing” (225).

“If the city has stood for vice, and nature for virtue, then the suburb is morally somewhere in between” (226).

Interacts With:

Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs, Elvis Culture,

Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life

Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life
By William Leach (1999)

Synopsis: Asks: What is this cast landscape of the temporary doing to us, and how did it come about? Since the 1970s or so there has been an incredible weakening of place in the lives of ordinary people, and the wearing away of this sense of place-connection is dangerous. We've become too obsessed with a freedom from history and freedom from place, and we need to reestablish the importance of place in order to connect to one another and to feel whole. Includes a discussion of transportation and the flow of global goods; yuppies and businessmen have replaced bohemians and the literary "higher goal" types by constructing a bland landscape of the temporary full of extended-stay hotels; Indian casinos (ironic) and gambling places as substitutes for "real" place; universities are more linked to global flow; "new cosmopolitanism" says it's good to not be tied to anything, but Leach says this is bad. Basically, Leach is all about regrounding us in a stronger sense of place and of the local. Says that all great art has arisen from a strong sense of place. Without this, we weaken and fragment as a nation. I think this can be seen as kind of a nostalgic and conservative book - seems like it should have appeared in 1993 and not 1999.

Interacts With:
Lure of the Local, Variation on a Theme Park (not on this list), Celebration Chronicles, Geography of Nowhere (not on list)