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cattyfan
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Is It Art? It Depends on the Funding…
Recently, Christo installed his latest conceptual art piece, The Gates, in Central Park. You may have heard details on any number of newscasts, and even Rush Limbaugh spent an hour talking about this “splendid spectacle”. Christo has a history of unusual productions. He has placed hundreds of umbrellas on mountainsides, wrapped entire buildings in varying materials, and surrounded islands with pink foam pieces. He doesn’t believe in small undertakings.
“The Gates” supposedly cost millions of dollars to produce and is described by the artist as “7500 Gates, 16 feet high with a width varying from 5' 6" to 18 feet that will follow the edges of the walkways and will be perpendicular to the selected 23 miles of footpaths in Central Park. Free hanging saffron colored fabric panels suspended from the horizontal top part of the gates will come down to approximately 7 feet above the ground. The gates will be spaced at 12 foot intervals, except where low branches extend above the walkways allowing the synthetic woven panels to wave horizontally towards the next gate and be seen from far away through the leafless branches of the trees.”
Seeing the photos of this most recent “masterpiece” made me wonder if there might not be a better use for the millions Christo spent to make his vision a reality, and it also put me in mind of something from my college days…
When I was a student, the art department placed an abstract sculpture just outside their building. I passed it everyday on my way to the theatre department. The artist (and I use the term loosely,) had taken large silver metal pieces of varying shapes, all approximately 10 feet tall, and placed them upright in a cluster. His artistic achievement was entitled “So Many Friends.”
I tried the name with different inflections in an attempt to understand the point. “So many friends.” “So many friends.” “So many friends.” “So…many friends?”
The artwork didn’t move me in any way. To my unappreciative stare, it just looked like a bunch of painted scrap metal.
One night some of my friends and I decided to give the sculpture some additional color…form…texture. We went to the costume department in the theatre, seized some dyed muslin cloth, and proceeded to drape “So Many Friends” with the billowing, colorful textiles. The next day, the enraged art professors stripped the offending material from their beloved monument. Shortly thereafter, an article appeared in the school paper detailing the vandalism that had been perpetrated on this important work.
In the last fifteen years the world has seen some unique examples of artistic expression and many times it’s our pocketbook that has backed the artist’s conceptualization.
The 1990 traveling retrospective of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, entitled “The Perfect Moment,” stunned the world. The mix of graphic images was a blend of beauty and pornography, and Mapplethorpe’s work fueled a debate on what exactly qualifies as art. He happily waltzed along the sharp precipice of good taste, frequently plummeting over the edge into an area many viewed as obscenity. Standards of decency are defined by the community to which the standards will be applied, and a majority of Americans were offended. Yet the famed photographer was supported through endowments from government programs and anyone questioning the significance of the compositions was shouted down as an uneducated, unqualified rube.
A favorite defense of a controversial or offensive art show is the phrase, “Art is supposed to be disturbing,” although if you check the dictionary, the word disturbing doesn’t appear in any part of the definition of “art.” Many artistic presentations are not so much disturbing as they are disgusting, yet certain people persist in defending the intrinsic value of these works. The more repulsive or senseless it is, the more the art lemmings applaud.
Annie Sprinkle, the former x-rated movie star, reincarnated herself as a “taboo-shattering post-porn modernist performance artist.” No, really. I’m not making this up. One of her lesser known shows was titled “Suitcase,” and consisted of examining the contents likely to be found in Ms. Sprinkle’s luggage. I’ll spare you the list of items she includes, except to say I hope she doesn’t unpack in front of her mother.
Her resume’ also includes such edifying gems as "Strip Speak," “Hardcore from the Heart” (A multi-media "play",) and “An Intimate Informal Show and Tell Evening” featuring the nude performer rubbing various substances on herself while talking about her experiences in adult entertainment. Oh, and most of her funding for creating, producing, and presenting these culturally uplifting jewels came through public currency: government grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Andres Serrano delved deep into his creative well to bring us “Piss Christ,” the ingenious display of a crucifix in urine. A huge percentage of the populace was revolted. Thomas Frank, a condescending columnist and author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, wrote about the furor Serrano caused and commented on the “hicks” who were offended by the artist’s bold and brave act. The county’s sophisticates insisted objectors just weren’t educated enough to understand Serrano’s important commentary on the negativity of society’s Christian emphasis. They were proud their tax money had been used for the artist’s expression of his opinion of God (and apparently his biological needs) and couldn’t fathom why other people might not be as pleased to have paid for a guy piddling in a jar and dropping a spiritual icon into the result.
But anger over the attack on a sacred religious symbol wasn’t limited to knuckle dragging, back-water conservatives as certain columnists might like to believe, and politicians attempted to curb the NEA’s tendency to fund what narrow minded folks like me consider to be smut. In the late eighties, an addition to the NEA appropriations bill sought to remove funds appropriated by the National Endowments for the Arts or Humanities used to support “materials which in the judgment of the NEA…may be considered obscene,” including ”depictions of sadomasochism, homo-eroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or of individuals engaged in sex acts which taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” A federal court invalidated the amendment in 1990 for being “unconstitutionally vague and chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Chris Ofili is the genius behind the 1999 creation of a painting of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant feces. On purpose. Many probably remember the discussions of whether Ofili had produced a reflective repudiation of the reverence for motherhood or if Dung Flung Mary was just a piece of…well, you know. Supporters insist detractors should broaden their minds. Cynics grumble Ofili needs to go back on his meds.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau 85 % of U.S. residents claim to be Christian. They aren’t likely to be too amused by the defacing of the mother of Jesus. Odds are they’ll be even less thrilled to discover they helped fund something so abhorrent to and so completely at odds with American ideals.
Nate Simon is a Pittsburgh writer who, in his words, “specialises in metaphysics and aestetics...” I believe he means “specializes” and “aesthetics.” Apparently clever philosophical art critics don’t place a high premium on basic English spelling. On the topic of understanding artistic creation, he writes:
“The fundamental paradox of contemporary art, of modern art as such, lies in the fact that we have collectively reached as a culture a point where artistic irony begets artistic irony.
Like the omnibus, modern aesthetic theory is something that loops back in on itself, generating an infinite regress of self referentiality. We are all archetypically enslaved by universal symbols from the past which hold an almost neurotic sway over how we view art and our relation to it.”
“One of the most controversial pieces to be publicly discussed in recent years is Andres Serrano’s aptly titled work “Piss Christ” which featured a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine. Though one could say that this piece exemplifies the old adage that “sacred cows make the best hamburger”, there is something at work that is deeper then mere shock value for the bourgeois. Since the Romantic period, it has been the place of artists to disturb mainstream society out of its uncritical assumptions. This is an important task. Down through the twentieth century, the bohemian class of the avant-garde has performed this job wonderfully.”
His deconstruction of art goes on for many pages and includes such amazing insights as comparing Ofili and Serrano to German philosopher Frederic Nietzsche and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, and, of course, pointing out the need for art to disturb and provoke. Allow me to provide you with the Reader’s Digest version of the remaining umpteen pages of blather: blahblahblah self-awareness blahblahblah artists blahblahblah meta-irony blahblahblah luminescent cosmic feeling blahblahblah higher level of awareness blahblahblah. Basically Simon spends his time looking down his nose at anyone who doesn’t “understand” art, firmly convinced of his own intellectual superiority and completely entrenched in his own self-importance and self-righteousness. According to the author, he and the artist are the center of the cerebral universe and only the creative elite like himself are allowed to be in their orbit. The rest of us are only necessary to pay for their brilliance. His view is indicative of those who praise artistes such as Sprinkle, Serrano, and Ofili while simultaneously dismissing and “dissing” the rest of us.
What defines art? You would think with my fancy liberal arts book learnin’, I would easily find the answer, but all I can come up with is…money.
Consider if Annie Sprinkle had performed in a cheap hotel room for a video camera and then sold the tapes (as she did in the early years of her career.) You almost have to admire her for figuring out how to market the same “talents” as artistic instead of merely athletic. If she hadn’t managed to transition her “artistic view,” she would still be just another x-rated actress.
Andres Serrano is considered to be in the forefront of the art world…yet if he had placed his jar in a church instead of a SoHo gallery, he would have been arrested for desecrating the holy object and authorities would have called for HazMat to come remove his “art.”
And Chris Ofili. He has some issues…combining motherhood with elephant dung would have earned him a trip to a therapist in any circle other than the art world. Destroying in that fashion a painting that depicts the Virgin Mary reveals deeper psychological problems than I can diagnose.
But because someone is willing to shell out money for them, or to hand out someone else’s cash to finance them, these extraordinarily expensive creations are now “disturbing society” as a part of our artistic history instead of being considered the result of a troubled and unbalanced mind. It doesn’t matter whether or not there is any real merit to the work. What matters is the perception of the influence of the piece, the importance the artist, and the marketing of whomever is doing the publicity.
So if you travel to New York and get a chance to wander through Central Park amid the flapping yellow fabric and you find yourself thinking, “Christo really expects us to believe it took 25 years and $20 million dollars…for this?,” just remember: at least he funds it himself and it’s not obscene.
Then go buy some colorful cloth and get started on your own career…just don’t drape it over someone else’s sculpture.
--Berta Collins Eddy
copyright Almost Normal Publications 2005
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