How important is the “public” in contemporary works of art? Should we expect artists to communicate with or educate their audience? Whenever the public is brought up in debates about funding for the arts, the selection of appropriate memorials for urban spaces or art education, discussions often focus on the “difficulty” or élitism of avant-garde art and the need to transform art into an instrument of cultural stability and understanding. This paper deals with some prominent cases that have dealt with these issues in the last quarter of a century, and argues that Jean-François Lyotard’s thought provides us with a valid defence of avant-garde experimentation in the arts. The last part of the paper argues that the various calls for public relevance often oversimplify the notion of the “public” by not taking into account the heterogeneous nature of postmodern societies.peer-reviewe
