Brad Kurtz Writing 101 May 10, 2011 Assignment #7 Art and Obscenity

Art is in the eye of the beholder. No matter how cliche that statement would appear it is incredibly applicable, especially to the created works from the last few decades. Art has no boundaries or restrictions, which can often lead to clashes of what is acceptable to be displayed as art. An example of this repetitive theme in art are two men given a lot of media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Robert Mapplethorpe, an artist who studied and photographed the human form and what he saw as beauty, and Andres Serrano, a photographer with strong opinions on the corruption and abuses of the Catholic Church. The interpretation of their work varied largely on the refinement and literacy of the viewer, as the artistic complexities often went overlooked. Instead they were viewed as pornographic, distasteful, and obscene images. Overall both of these artists brought to light a large national controversy encompassing art, obscenity, and government funding. Andres Serrano was born in New York City in 1950, raised by his grandmother after his mother was admitted into and insane asylum almost immediately following his birth. His grandmother was a very strict Catholic woman and mandated that Serrano attend a local Catholic School. It was here that he formed his opinion that the Catholic sect of Christianity was extremely flawed, and dropped out of the school at the age of

13. It was not long after that, that Serrano enrolled at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, it is here that he discovered his love of photography. However he only attended the school for two years, after heavy involvement with drugs. When he reached 28 years of age he decided to clean up and get his life together with the mentality that if he were to continue abusing drugs he wouldn't become the artist he desired to be. One might assume that through his life experiences is how he became to think in such abstract and drawn to what some may deem as distasteful and obscene. Abandonment, drugs, and growing up seeing the underside of the Catholic church all could have easily played a role into Serranos mode of thinking and inspiration. However, no matter how a person was raised, presenting such controversial works as Serrano did is bound to cause and backlash from some people. Perhaps Serranos most famous, or infamous, works of art titled Piss Christ, was the product of his wanting to redefine and personalize [his] relationship with god. Whatever the message or ideals he had while creating this photograph, it was the final act that set off the art wars of the 1980s. Taken in 1987 Piss Christ was a small christian crucifix, often found around the necks and hung on the walls of Catholics, the crucifix was immersed in urine. To some this may seem completely disgusting, to Serrano body fluids are lifes vital fluids loaded with meaning which send off a pictorially beautiful light. Raised Catholic his entire life Serrano was confused as to why we create cheap fabrications of art. It was his belief that these novelties and gift shop items put a price on religion. Serrano himself said religion depends largely on symbols, and as an artist, my

job is to explore the possibilities in deliberate manipulation of that symbolism. Despite his intentions of spreading a positive message, his photograph resulted boiled over into a controversy over more than just art. A controversy that embodied peoples freedoms, such as freedom of speech, it also brought into debate how to go about drawing a line between obscenity and this freedom. From late May 1988 through January 1989, the photograph Piss Christ was included, along with seven of Serrano's other works and the works of nine other artists, in an exhibition sponsored by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA). The exhibit traveled to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Richmond, Va., and created no controversy. But in March, two months after it completed its circuit, the American Family Association, an organization led by the Rev. Donald Wildmon, denounced Serrano and his work in a mailing of 360,000 printed circulars. The group also spurred a letter-writing campaign that resulted in condemnation and disapproval of Serrano and his work in both houses of the United States Congress. Congress, headed by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, then went on to send letters to Hugh Southern, head of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) at the time, containing the signatures of many U.S. Senators who didnt fully understand what the real problem was and signed without really agreeing with what was written. In response to this new development Serrano stated Ive always understood the nature of a conflict and duality, so I dont have a problem with the duality of images and the fact that they can blow hot and cold or be seductive and critical at the same time.

In July, the House of Representatives voted to slash the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by $45,000. This amount represented the $15,000 that SECCA had awarded Serrano as well as an additional $30,000 that the NEA had given Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art to support a controversial show of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. The Senate affirmed the budget cut and added an amendment introduced by Senator Helms that would eliminate all public funding of SECCA and the ICA for five years. The amendment also would prohibit the NEA from supporting "obscene or indecent materials, including material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or non-religion." However, Serrano avoided focusing on the personal and financial attacks as much as possible, and evidently completely ignored it in his work in the early 1990s. In November, 1990, Serrano explored a new medium with his career. An emotional exhibition of 20 cibachrome portraits, cibachrome is a special photographic process using dyes and other chemicals to transfer images from slides into full sized prints on polyester or plastic photo bases. This gave the colors and dimensions a more interesting look. The photos were of thirteen homeless people living in New York entitled Nomads, most of whom were African-American. Also in this series are portraits of seven members of the Atlanta, Georgia, chapter of the Ku Klux Klan entitled Klansman. This presentation of extremes brought the racial issues of the time to a broader audience. The homeless became symbols of the life for people of color, while the white garbed Klansmen stood as symbols of racial hatred. Serranos goal of bringing the racial issues

to light was made clear in a country blind to them, thinking they had put those times behind them. The art wars of the late 1980s were about more than Andres Serrano, they encompassed many more artists other than him. One example of this would be the late Robert Mapplethorpe, another photographer from New York, whom photographed his opinions on beauty within the human form as well as elsewhere. Robert Mapplethorpe, born in New York City in 1946, attended the Pratt Institute, studied drawing, painting and sculpture. It was here he discovered photography as his passion and began taking photos of the things he found to be beautiful, which consisted of a few main subjects: flowers, portraits and self-portraits, statuary studies, as well as both male and female nude images. Sadly, due to his death in 1989 from AIDs, he is more known for his homoerotic portraits than of any other work he did. Mapplethorpe was highly involved in the Gay Rights Movement, and as a popular artist, took a great risk by producing and displaying these controversial images. Some may have failed to see the art in what Mapplethorpe created, however Mapplethorpe himself summed up the situation best when he said; Beauty and the devil are the same thing. One of the most touching moments in these art wars was when a show was created to display Mapplethorpes work after he had passed away. Aptly titled Perfect Moment the show consisted of a number of portraits from three separate portfolios of Mapplethorpes. The show had been conceived to honor Mapplethorpe and exhibit his work as touching gesture to his passing. The museum it was scheduled to show at

however thought it would cause problems with congress and thus hurt their funding. So the Corcoran cancelled the Mapplethorpe show, they stated that a few of his images were considered to be explicit and obscene, and with regards to the current social and governmental issue it was deemed necessary to cancel to exhibition. After the Corcoran Museums refusal to present the exhibit, another alternative gallery nearby, the Washington Project for the Arts, agreed to take on the burden. Over 50,000 people came to see the exhibit, largely due to all the publicity it was getting due to the controversies. Unfortunately congress once again did not agree with this exhibition of art they deemed to be inappropriate. House representative Sydney Yates of Illinois submitted a bill that would cease almost all grants from the NEA without first obtaining the approval of congress. This bill was later morphed into a proposed amendment by Yates that more or less stated that all art is inappropriate and states that an artist must understand the thin line when using government funds to create works. In the end the legislation did not end up passing, but before that happened it created an end to the art wars. Enraged by this development in congress, gay and lesbian rights activists began to gain more and more support. The final straw was when the Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center, mandated that only people 18 and over were allowed into the Mapplethorpe showing, as well as they doubled the price of tickets. To undermine this decision activist projected a number of Mapplethorpes images onto the side of the building. This activity was brought to the attention of the Cincinnati justice system, the hire eight jurors to decide

once and for all whether Mapplethorpes work was to be considered art, or pornography. Whiting hours the decision was made that Mapplethorpe was not guilty. Art is in the eye of the beholder. That simple, clich statement embodied the entirety of the art wars in the 1980s. It took a jury of eight people, most of whom were not educated in the arts to decide this and end the debates over what was acceptable to be called art. Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano pushed the lines to spread the messages they believed in and to show the world the beauty whiten their minds. The interpretation of their work varies largely on the refinement and literacy of the viewer, as the artistic complexities often go overlooked. Instead they are viewed as pornographic, distasteful, and obscene images and to this day are vandalized and causing controversy, however not in the scale to which they were several decades ago.

Works Cited: Community Arts, http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/shooting_the_kl.php (Accessed May 8th, 2011)

Marshall, Richard, Howard, Richard, and Sischy, Ingrid, Robert Mapplethorpe. Bulfinch Press, 1990, 1-203.

Danto, Arthur Coleman. Playing with the Edge: the Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Only Skin Deep. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003, 324-325.

Weintraub, Linda, Arthur Coleman Danto, and Thomas McEvilley. Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in Contemporary Society, 1970s-1990s. Litchfield, CT: Art Insights, 1996