REVIEW AND REVISION DRAFT. Please send
suggestions to me, John Lofland, at jlofland@dcn.org
ALICE ART
We come at last to why we care about Robert Arneson and his
house in the first place: his art. And the reason we care about his art is to determine
if his house should be a candidate for designation as an historical resource.
If historical resource designation required only that
Arneson be a world-class artist, little would need to be said here. I would
simply refer you to Jonathan Fineberg’s A
Troublesome Subject and let it go at that.
But that act would be insufficient. It would leave out the
most amazing aspect of this historical resource case. Arneson not merely lived
there, he made 1303 Alice Street itself the subject of a large and striking
body of art.