Author: Pankratz, David B.

Publication Year:

Media Type: Periodical (article)

Summary:

Abstract:

The author writes an introduction to a Symposium on Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions by Steve C. Dubin in this issue of the Journal. The book Arresting Images represents a significant attempt to place the intersections of contemporary art and public policies in broad social contexts. It offers explanations of the origins, intensification, and in some cases, resolutions of public controversies over artworks in diverse genres and settings. (p. 254)

In recent years, tensions between the art world and other segments of society have reached a breaking point. Richard Serra's Tilted Art was installed and subsequently removed amid a firestorm of public resentment and art world resistance. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fought for its very existence against charges that its grants assisted in the creation and exhibition of immoral and blasphemous works of art; works cited included Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Karen Finley's performance piece, We Keep our Victims Ready, during which she smears chocolate syrup over her naked body.

The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati and its director, Dennis Barrie, were indicted for pandering obscenity by daring to open The Perfect Moment, a show of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs that included homoerotic images and images of nude and seminude children, to public view. At the Chicago Art Institute, visitors to a student exhibition were invited to tread across an American flag spread on the floor. These are only a few highlights of the furor generated by artworks; indeed, controversial art has virtually become a categorical term.

Some tensions have eased as specific cases have been resolved. The NEA, after long and heated congressional debates, was reauthorized, and content restrictions pertaining to potentially obscene material were diluted to stipulate that the NEA chairperson consider general standards of decency when making final grant decisions. Dennis Barrie and the CAC were acquitted of all charges. Jurors interviewed later admitted they found the selected Mapplethorpe photos shown to them to be lewd and distasteful but determined that serious works of art do not have to be pretty.

The perfect moment had its final showing in Boston and is now a moment in art history. The student exhibition in Chicago has come and gone and permission to reinstall the flag piece in a subsequent exhibition was denied by school officials. Only a scar on a concrete plaza remains where Tilted Arc once stood. (p. 253-4)

[For other articles from the symposium on Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil
 Actions in this issue of The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, see
 Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions; Arresting Images: Why We
 Need to Recast the Debate; and Public Funding for the Arts: The Chill After the
 Storm.]

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Arts Education