Kvalitetssäkrad konst? : Det estetiska omdömets potential i bedömningsprocesser av offentlig konst

Sammanfattning: The main aim of public art is to be avaliable and accessible to all. Public art is often connected to social and economical intentions in so far as its presence in the public space ought to benefit the general public. To ensure access to good art, rules and regulations determine the commissioning and procurement of public art. Councils work collaboratively to reach a unified and collective assessment of its quality. This essay argues that the legal framework nevertheless overlooks important aspects of how the quality assessment of public art succeeds in attaining its general status, where this status must co-exist with the fact that aesthetic judgements are grounded in subjective experience. The essay sets out to offer constructive recommendations for how the process surrounding such qualitative assessment of art for public space ought to work.  In order to examine the quality assessment of public art, and the ways such qualities is said to be guaranteed, I will use the competition West Link: Chronotopia (2017) as a case study. I will analyze the conditions under which the jury's assessment of the winning contribution for a new train station at Korsvägen in Gothenburg was made. By extrapolating Immanuel Kant's theory of aesthetic judgements (Critique of Judgement, 1790) I will show how aesthetic judgements can lay claim to the general validity while being rooted in subjective experience. To bridge this seemingly contradiction, I will examine the notion of sensus communis in relation to the case study.  The result of the essay shows that assessment of art depends largely on our abilities to communicate subjective appreciation. The legal framework turns out to have only a secondary role and does not limit how a jury motivates its assessment of the work's aesthetic qualities. Instead it encourages the jury in subjective reflection on the work's qualities.  The essay concludes by defending the claim that there is a pressing need to make more visible the role of aesthetic judgement in the quality assessment process of public art. Assessing with general validity must be grounded in the artwork's own premises, as manifested in our subjective impressions of them. Social communication is especially encouraged, and enables human beings to trust their own thoughts and feelings in balance with those of others. This essay thus defends the idea that public art, as an object of aesthetic judgement, has a very important role to play in our society.