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The Journal of Arts

Management, Law, and Society
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Arresting Images: Impolitic Art

and Uncivil Actions
Steven C. Dubin
Published online: 15 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Steven C. Dubin (1993) Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil
Actions, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 23:3, 255-262, DOI:
10.1080/10632921.1993.9942936

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632921.1993.9942936

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 Arresting Images:
Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions
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STEVEN C. DUBIN

T he value and acceptability of art has become the subject of prolonged

and painful public debates in venues ranging from the halls of Con-
gress to television talk shows. Whether art inspires reverence and admira-
tion or provokes disdain, the reaction to it in the late twentieth century is
often a strong one.
Contemporary art challenges values and beliefs and may stun, disturb,
or even frighten some people. Examples of such reactions abound, such as
when the National Endowment for the Arts rescinded funds it had pledged
to a New York City exhibit on AIDS, the Corcoran Gallery balked at
mounting a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs, and a
music store owner and the rap music group 2 Live Crew were prosecuted
in Florida for the alleged obscenity of a record album. It is imperative to
look at the social climate in which these controversies have been generated
in the past few years to understand why art has become a target, and which
art.

THE STATE OF THE NATION

Not too far beneath the surface, a great deal of uneasiness is evident in
the land. A book about the decline of the United States in the world system
becomes a best-seller. The collapse of Communism and the loss of the
“evil empire” as a clear-cut enemy undermine several decades of moraliz-
ing and force a recasting of old geopolitical categories. Social problems

Steven C. Dubin b associate professor of sociology at the State University of New

York at Purchase. He b the author of the book Arresting Images as well as Bureau-
cratizing the Muse: Public Funds and the Culture Worker.

Fall 1993 255

 The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society

like drugs and crime overwhelm local efforts to contain them. Malfeasance
by business and government leaders has jeopardized the economy and
compromised the legitimacy of various authorities. And AIDS has exacted
a terrible human toll, stopped the sexual revolution in its tracks, and ex-
acerbated fears about the social groups in which it first appeared. These
events have all contributed to widespread feelings of anger, helplessness,
and malaise.
A seemingly trivial example reveals a tremendous amount about the
mood of the country. During the summer of 1990 Binney and Smith, man-
ufacturers of Crayola, introduced eight new colors, while “retiring” eight
more traditional ones to a Crayola Hall of Fame. The negative public reac-
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tion was immediate and intense, generating at least three grass-roots move-
ments to symbolically restore order. My personal favorite: CRAYON-
Committee to Reestablish All Your Old Norms. In capsulized form, this
acronym captures the dismay many people feel when constantly confron-
ting change and their fervent desire to return to and protect the familiar.
This rather free-floating anxiety has fixed upon particular social targets.
Not accidentally, nearly every artistic work that has been negatively thrust
into the spotlight in the recent past was either produced by and/or reflects
the concerns of women, lesbians and gays, African-Americans, and His-
panics, and records their recent advances in public influence and accep-
tance. What is at stake is the prospect of a multicultural America, as op-
posed to traditional structures and mores which proscribe many forms of
thought and action.

CONTEMPORARY ART AND ITS ENEMIES

Artists are significant symbolic deviants in our society, and their work
evokes disapproving responses from large numbers of people. The
nineteenth-century social theorist Emile Durkheim was neither surprised
nor dismayed by the presence of deviance within a society. Rather, it was
to be expected everywhere; societies constantly draw their moral lines in
the sand, and these sands, of course, shift from era to era and place to
place. And not only is deviance therefore normal according to this perspec-
tive, it also contributes to society’s flexibility and growth.
But by signaling that something is awry, deviance may unwittingly lead
to rigidity, if society successfully unites to stave off challenges to the status
quo. Deviance therefore has this dual character. It is positive yet transgres-
sive; it contains the seeds of change, but also the potential for social inflex-
ibility and stasis.
Contemporary battles over art demonstrate both these possibilities. On
the one hand, a conspicuous segment of artists has introduced social and

256 Vol. 23, No. 3

 On Arresting Images

political themes into their work in recent years. In many instances this re-
veals the self-conscious emergence of groups that were nlarginaliied pre-
viously. Whether or not one agrees with their messages, it’s difficult to
deny the passion that drives them. If this sort of art defies expectations, if
it is messy or troublesome, these attributes serve to document social
change over approximately the past three decades, to register a response to
both what has and what has not ensued, and to point the way toward an
even more inclusive and equitable future for all.
On the other hand, when groups become more visible, they also become
easy targets of hatred. Art that reflects the relatively recent empowerment
of various groups has been rejected by others as threatening, blasphemous,
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or obscene. In particular, certain religious leaders and cultural critics have

rallied to draw in the wagons around established values and around estab-
lished artistic products and technologies. Whereas the primary interest of
the orthodox is to honor and preserve traditional religious and moral
values (and the types of cultural expression that have these values as their
basis), the goal of the neoconservatives is to protect the sanctity of the ar-
tistic canon. And despite important social and cultural differences between
them, they are allied in their opposition to shifts in values and power now
occurring. They are fighting rear-guard actions, based on fear of change
and displacement from social dominion.
The battles that have raged over art during the past several years are
largely symbolic struggles. Relatively powerless people have had more suc-
cess in establishing a social beachhead in the world of making images than
in penetrating the rather unyielding realm of organizations, institutions,
and political structures. And the struggle has been engaged in the cultural
sphere by the opposition because it is somewhat more acceptable in the
1990s to assail a group’s speech or their images of themselves than to at-
tack them directly.
The assault on artists who bear new values and ideas is a classic case of
killing the messenger for the message he bears. But in this instance the mes-
senger is even more menacing because he might as likely be a she, and she
could embody diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds or sexual orienta-
tions. Even though this is largely a war of words and representations, it be-
trays profound social divisions. Significant social schisms may have been
displaced into the cultural realm, but they have merely been transformed,
not resolved.

CONTENT AND CONTEXT

The notion of “arresting images” captures the complexity of these dis-
putes. Certain images do indeed seize our attention: they grab us, hold us

Fall I993 25 7
 The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society

in check, and refuse to let go-until we are able to sort through a mixture
of emotions. Images can intensely compress complex ideas and sentiments.
They often project what Walter Benjamin called “aura,” an elusive, char-
ismatic, and sometimes haunting presence.
This type of consideration primarily falls within the domain of human-
ists, who have traditionally focused on the nature of the art object itself.
They customarily examine art in formalist terms to establish its place in the
art historical record, with an emphasis on questions largely internal to the
work.
But the reception art receives represents a different meaning inherent in
“arresting images.” For example, in May 1988, a group of Chicago alder-
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men and police seized and arrested a painting of the late Mayor Harold
Washington wearing women’s lingerie. This was an extreme reaction, to be
sure, but it demonstrates the momentous responses art can elicit. Such
counteractions are more likely to be the focus of social scientists, who have
primarily targeted social factors in outlining what they define as the “art
world,” a complex, interdependent network of participants regulated by
conventions. These social scientists have been chiefly interested in how the
production, distribution, and reception of art is structured, concerns large-
ly external to the work.
Generally these approaches have been quite separate in practice. But
both content and context must be considered when examining controver-
sial art. One cannot overlook factors such as political climate, community
tolerance levels, and the social construction of acceptability, considera-
tions that humanists would less likely be prepared or inclined to address.
And yet a social scientist who would overlook aesthetics and aura-char-
acteristics of art objects-could possibly dismiss those who react negative-
ly to art as uninformed at best, reactionaries and philistines at worst.
One of the most obvious lessons to be drawn from art controversies is
that the art world is not an insular protectorate; a mixture of approaches is
needed to fully fathom its operation. What artists do does indeed have an
impact on the wider world, and that world most certainly intrudes into it,
too. Artists are increasingly brought into contact with other social spheres
today-for example, the government (at all levels), religion, and econom-
ics. Thus to develop a comprehensive picture of what is occurring within
the art world, an investigator has to expand the focus outward as well.

THE NATURE OF THE DISTURBANCE

Contemporary artists regularly fiddle with what many people hold to be
“natural categories” such as chaste and polluted, masculine and feminine,

258 Vol. 23, N o . 3

 On Arresting Images

in and out, public and private. Andres Serrano’s infamous photograph

Pks Christ mixes sacred imagery and profane bodily waste products.
Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs disturb the peace in two regards. His
homoerotic depictions challenge the sexual hierarchy, while his portrayals
of white and black men together contest the racial hierarchy. Performance
artist Karen Finley also blends the sacred and profane, combining ritual
with vulgarities, reverence with blasphemy. She inverts the natural order
of ingestion and elimination, and makes the public private. In one of her
most notorious acts she smears yams over her buttocks, facilitating her re-
nown for rubbing food on the outside of her body rather than consuming
it. And in We Keep Our Victims Ready, she daubs her body with chocolate
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and sprinkles herself with small candies and bean sprouts. Finley’s equa-
tion of the sprouts with sperm also represents this upset order; it has been
“spilled” on the outside, its natural objective defeated.
The negative reaction to these symbolic transgression evokes Mary
Douglas’s work on moral pollution. For Douglas, dirt equals disorder in
the social world, and significant portions of social behavior are structured
to ensure that contamination does not occur. These regulations also tend
to reflect and reinforce the order of social arrangements. Any infraction
resounds throughout society, rattling the sanctity of other categories and
threatening additional distinctions as well. Controversial artists have all
committed these figurative affronts in some manner or another.
But for controversy to erupt, the sense that core categories and values
have been threatened must be combined with the mobilization of power to
do something about it. The potential for controversy will not be realized
unless both elements are present. Although critical values are assailed in
certain instances, the failure to arouse people to consolidate their resources
and take restorative action consigns some likely contentious situations to
the domain of non-events. This may be due to a paucity of leaders who
have established their credibility or amassed followings, a lack of pre-
existing organizational expertise, or community fatigue or disinterest be-
cause of other distractions. In such instances what might otherwise ex-
plode fizzles instead-for predictably good reasons.
This is precisely what transpired in Chicago in 1989 in regard to Dia-
monds Are Forever, an exhibition about baseball. A black man claimed
that one of the paintings alluded to child molestation and also alleged that
there was an underrepresentation of black artists and the black con-
tribution to the sport. Although he raised the “hot button” issues of ho-
mosexuality and race, he was not able to enlist many others in his cam-
paign to alter the display. The complainant was a virtual unknown, and
the community was exhausted from earlier battles fought over the unflat-
tering portrait of Mayor Washington and over an installation that featured

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 The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society

the American flag on the floor (both at the School of the Art Institute).
The call to censure misfired.

CYCLES OF RECEPTION AND THE SOCIAL

CONSTRUCTION OF ACCEPTABILITY
Once artists finish their work, it is largely out of their control. Or to put
it another way, artworks are never completed-they are continually
reinterpreted and reevaluated by successive publics. Acceptance and rejec-
tion alternate in cycles of reception, so that the artist’s intent is only one
factor contributing to the judgment accorded a cultural product. Wider
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cultural currents lead observers to endow works with a panoply of mean-

ings, and viewers often repudiate works they believe disguise questionable
motives.
Works of art are not inherently and inevitably scandalous: a great deal is
in the eye of the beholder. Thus critic Arthur C. Danto is mistaken when
he makes the following remark after encountering a Mapplethorpe self-
portrait that shows the photographer with a bullwhip inserted into his
anus: “It would be known in advance that such an image would challenge,
assault, provoke, dismay-with the hope that in some way consciousness
would be transformed.”’ Just how would it be known, and whose con-
sciousness is he referring to? Danto assumes a monolithic audience, nega-
tively predisposed to this type of subject matter. What he does not allow
for is that the same image could also amuse, excite, or confirm already
established identities. And for audiences in the future, who can say what
the reaction might be: boredom or aversion, curiosity or repugnance?
Danto may have recorded his own reaction accurately, but his response
hardly exhausts the possibilities.
For controversy to be activated, something must be added from outside
the representations themselves. Negative opinion is the leavening that
causes conflict to rise, and certain people are in a position to mobilize sen-
timent against particular images. Consider the case of the seven-city tour
of the Mapplethorpe exhibit The Perfect Moment (1988-9O), where differ-
ent audiences projected their distinctive concerns onto the same materirl.
As it travelled, the response varied from nonchalance and respectful criti-
cal evaluations (Philadelphia and Chicago), to outrage, a cancelled exhibi-
tion site, and an attempted obscenity prosecution (Washington, D.C. and
Cincinnati), to veneration and active defense (Boston). The work remained
the same; it was the reaction that diverged dramatically.
Groups have also mobilized to confront, and in some cases obliterate,
art they find to contain residual symbols of racism, sexism, or homo-
phobia. These actions involve an almost magical intent, as if editing out

260 Vol. 23, No. 3

 On Arresting Images

historical references to inequities will abrogate historical suffering. But de-

mands that portrayals of the past be altered generally have limited conse-
quences; they largely fail to transform the underlying forces of exploita-
tion that such symbols represent. Second, such revisionism has been defen-
sive action undertaken by the relatively powerless, sensitive to representa-
tions that contradict how they would like to see themselves presently. The
rather chimeric desire to combat archaic images underlies many art contro-
versies, particularly those initiated by constituencies that consider them-
selves to be politically progressive.

CENSORSHIP OBSERVED
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Censorship, then, is a social process whose initiation is not the exclusive

domain of either the political right or the political left. There are common-
alities among incidents where censorship is alleged that form a template,
regardless of the political orthodoxy that may underlie each attempt at
control. The most productive research strategy is to examine the degree of
control that is proposed in a particular case, by whom, why, and in reac-
tion to what type of work or creator. These features can be ferreted out of
seemingly disparate examples, demonstrating that similar reactions are
triggered whenever someone’s ox is gored.
In addition, while censors may be the enemy of art and other types of
expression, time is usually the enemy of the censor. References to censor-
ship generally freeze a moment in the ongoing struggle between pro-
ponents of license and restraint. These are episodes, not necessarily finales.
A suggestive example comes from the 1989 Academy Award winner in the
category of Best Foreign Film, Cinema Paradko. This is the sentimental
tale of the importance of a Sicilian movie theater to the local villagers and
in particular to a small boy who is befriended by the elderly projectionist.
The auditorium becomes the site where sexual and class tensions are con-
stantly played out, where people gather to be entertained both on stage and
off.
Add to this setting the parish priest, the archetype of a censor. We en-
counter him at a pre-screening where he rings a bell whenever a scene meets
his disapproval. The projectionist obligingly inserts a scrap of paper into
the film reel in response, to mark where he will excise the offending seg-
ments afterwards. The general public therefore views an expurgated ver-
sion, as dictated by the vigilance of the church.
This appears to be a classic case of censorship: it significantly alters the
artist’s vision, and adjusts what the audience may view, in accord with of-
ficial dictates. But at the movie’s end there is a revelation that demon-
strates the temporal aspect of censorship. When the old man dies, his now-

Fall 1993 261

 mature former sidekick returns to the village. Then he discovers his legacy:
the projectionist left him a can of film, a compilation of deleted kissing
scenes he spliced together in a glorious tribute to passion. The scenes out-
lived the decree that they be banned, illustrating the resilience that culture
often has.
This is not to argue that attempts to modify artists’ intentions do not
also bring creative anguish or even personal harm to them. A glut of his-
torical examples document such injuries. But those who try to quash ex-
pression are seldom completely successful. Their targets have a knack for
springing back, even though this may occur after the deaths of the creator,
the judge, or the originally intended audience. This temporal feature must
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be borne in mind, for the term “censorship” often connotes a drastic act,
good for eternity. In actuality, incidents of censorship in nontotalitarian
countries typically are emergency measures, and rarely the last word. And
as recent world events have taught us, not only do totalitarian regimes fail
to completely regulate culture, but their entire repressive apparatus can
abruptly collapse.
Political and social issues have become too integral to contemporary ar-
tistic expression for artists to abandon these themes without a struggle.
Not unlike the archaic medical practice of cupping, art controversies draw
toxins to the surface. Because these conflicts are fostered by the expression
and rejection of significant social and demographic shifts, art controver-
sies are destined to continue until these changes decelerate and their effects
can be accommodated. Yet beyond the pain these disputes cause, they also
offer the prospect of cleansing the blood of the community through the re-
sulting debate.

NOTE

1. Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Hirtorical Present ( N e w York:
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1990). p. 216, emphasis added.

262 Vot. 23, No. 3