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Sure, it was criminal, but was it art?

This is the easily ignored question regarding an art student's decision earlier this month to turn the Union
 Square subway station into a gallery by hanging black boxes with the word "Fear" written on them.

The project quickly got out of hand. Nervous straphangers concluded that the boxes were bombs. The station was
 shut down and the student, 25-year-old Clinton Boisvert, was arrested.

OK, bad idea, but was it bad ART? To this layman, "Fear" got to the heart of  New York's anxiety. To New
 Yorkers today, every subway interruption is the beginning of the end. Every low-flying plane, a death knell.
 But judging from the panicked reaction to Boisvert's piece, what we're really fearing most is fear itself.

Apparently, I am alone in this assessment. I called every controversial artist and critic I could think of and
 none wanted to defend this guy (which amazed me because I've always felt that artists have a much higher
 threshold of revulsion than the rest of us).

"It was naïve," said Hans Haacke, the artist who riled Rudy Giuliani a few years back by likening him to a
 Nazi. When Hans Haacke has turned against you, you've got a problem. "This is not the way to address the issue
 of fear."

Tom Eccles of the Public Art Fund even called Boisvert's work "the equivalent of yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded
 movie house." He said frightening people is easy; creating a work of art that makes people think about WHY
 they're frightened is tough.

Natalie Jeremijenko -- who once photographed suicide jumpers at the Golden Gate Bridge -- said that Boisvert
 was bold, but ultimately failed because the piece got out of control

"He wanted to demonstrate that there is fear and paranoia, but rather than beginning a public discourse on the
 subject, he succeed only in creating more fear and paranoia."

To me, that means it worked, but even my colleagues in the press attacked Boisvert (pronounced, "I'm French, so
 it MUST be art").

"Artists who aren't good tend to go for push-button things," said ARTnews editor Robin Cembalest. "It's like a
 playwright who uses 'f---' all the time."

Boisvert is facing a year in jail. And considering that most judges think Christo is a shortening and Basquiat
 is a pancake mix, he could be in serious trouble.

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gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net