NEW YORK, New York, October 11 -- In this corner, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and its "Sensation" exhibit. And in that corner, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. At stake, the right to exhibit artworks that offend the delicate sensibilities of narrow-minded politicians and clergymen.
The main artwork in question, "The Holy Virgin Mary," by British artist Chris Ofili, has been blasted by Giuliani and representatives of the Roman Catholic Church because it makes use of elephant dung, and because it's got some gross imagery mixed in.
As Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times notes in a September 24 article, the artist didn't intend the painting as a denigration of the Catholic church:
Ofili, the artist of "The Holy Virgin Mary," is himself a Roman Catholic, and his work, although clearly meant to be provocative, may be regarded as a genuine, if not particularly brilliant, stab at a subject involving his own upbringing.
However, Giuliani is trying to evict the Brooklyn Museum from the building where it has resided for over 100 years, because he's upset about the painting, claiming it's a "sick" picture unfit for public display. Meanwhile, arts groups from coast to coast are screaming about "censorship" and claiming that Giuliani's attempts to stop the Brooklyn Museum of Art from showing "Sensation" are a violation of the First Amendment.
Both sides are equally wrong on this one. Giuliani is a grandstanding ignoramus, while the artistic community is once again thumbing its nose at the idea that it should exercise some judgment once in awhile.
Everyone's a critic
Giuliani, who hasn't even seen the exhibition, seems to think that (a) he's an art critic, and (b) the Ofili painting is, in and of itself, sufficiently offensive to justify killing the Brooklyn Museum as a whole. (I don't quite get why the "Virgin Mary" painting is so offensive, but other works in the exhibition -- which include a sliced-up cow and a sheep and tiger shark in formaldehyde -- aren't cause for official protest. But maybe that's just me.)
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is often cited as a reason for asserting that no public entity can restrict artistic expression in any way. However, I don't see anything about art in there.
For those who missed Civics 101, the First Amendment reads as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It doesn't say, "Congress shall yank no funding for the arts." Or am I missing something? When the Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers were trying to protect political and religious expression. And they were talking about the right to speak -- not about the right to get paid for it.
It's censorship when the government says, "You can't say thus-and-so." Giuliani is saying, "You can say thus-and-so -- just not on the city's nickel."
Cutting funding does not equal censorship. Rudy Giuliani may be making a fool of himself, but he's not "censoring" anyone. It's censorship when the government says, "You can't say thus-and-so." Giuliani is saying something very different: "You can say thus-and-so -- just not on the city's nickel."
This is nothing new. Back in 1989, you'll recall, there was a furor involving the National Endowment for the Arts, which had funded exhibits of some controversial works including a photograph called Piss Christ by Andres Serrano.
Serrano grew up as a Catholic. In an interview published on Screaming Hyena, an Australian literary Web site, he describes his religious background:
I stopped going to church immediately after confirmation at the age of thirteen and I didn't think about my Catholic upbringing for another twenty years, until I started to make art that drew on religion as an inspiration. [E]ven though I don't consider myself religious, I do have a Catholic obsession and certainly in my personal life I'm surrounded by objects and furniture that are collected from churches. I particularly am interested in religious woodcarvings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries... One of the things that always made me feel quite bad and took me by surprise were these charges of anti-Christianity that were leveled at me years ago. I've never seen it that way. As far as I'm concerned I have faith, I just have a certain amount of disbelief as well.
Clearly, Serrano is ambivalent about the Catholic religion, but he's hardly a heathen. The work in question, which was exactly what the title suggests, was actually a pretty good photograph. If he'd called it Christ in a Golden Light, or something like that, no one would have batted an eye. But no -- Serrano had to call it Piss Christ. And all Hell broke loose on Capitol Hill, once it was revealed that Serrano's photo was being exhibited using NEA funding.
Jesse Helms, head of the Senate committee responsible for the NEA's purse strings, was more than a little upset by the whole thing. He held some hearings and fulminated against "offensive" art until he was blue in the face. By the time he was done, the NEA was lucky to escape with its head intact.
At about the same time, gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe put together an exhibit, also with NEA money, that included some photos containing images of body parts (I assume your imagination can figure out which ones) that bothered people like Helms. I saw the pictures on WGBH TV's ten-o'clock news; they were hardly shocking material, by today's standards. But again, the artist should have known perfectly well that he was going to offend some people -- and that he was jeopardizing public arts funding in the process.
Why is it so horrible that the government might decide to pull funding from art it doesn't like? Private patrons of the arts do this all the time -- they fund art they like, and they don't fund stuff they don't like. When the same thing happens with public funds, artists and museums scream "censorship." But if they don't like to be under their patrons' control, they can always fund their artworks and exhibits themselves -- last time I checked, there was no law against that!
And how is Art?
The problem with Giuliani, Helms, and other know-nothing politicians is that they don't bother to take a look at these artworks and ask what the artist was trying to get across. All they see is Piss Christ and elephant dung -- and an opportunity to score some easy political points. Giuliani's temper tantrum against the Brooklyn Museum may prove no more effective than Helms's rants against the NEA -- Helms and Giuliani both end up looking like simpletons, while their foot-stamping serves only to draw far more attention to the "offensive" art than it would have received had they kept their mouths shut.
At the same time, though, you'd think the artistic community would have learned its lesson from the 1989 Serrano-Mapplethorpe flap. What purpose is served by deliberately provoking politicians into pulling arts funding, then screaming about "censorship?" Why call a picture Piss Christ, just for the sake of pissing people off? And why provoke Catholic politicians by displaying works like Ofili's elephant-dung painting? Even though the show was a hit in Europe, the Brooklyn museum directors can hardly claim to be surprised at the way American politicians and clergy -- neither of whom has shown any taste for art in the past -- have reacted.
Essentially, both sides are grandstanding. Giuliani is fishing for votes in next year's election, in which he's running for U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton. The museum, for its part, is trying to stir up as much of a "Sensation" as it can, to draw people in to see the exhibit -- that's how they stay in business, after all. Neither Giuliani nor the museum can really be blamed -- but they're both taking advantage of the political climate for their own short-term gains. Both political discourse and artistic expression have sunk lower and lower in recent years -- and the Rudy-vs.-Brooklyn wrestling match isn't helping.
Copyright © 1999 John J. Kafalas
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