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LESSONS
FROM THE How many art exhibitions are accompanied by a "Health Warning"? Visitors to the Brooklyn Museum’s recent "Sensation" show were told: "The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety. If you suffer from high blood pressure, a nervous disorder, or palpitations, you should consult your doctor before viewing this exhibition." Those brave (and hip) enough to enter were exposed to paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations by a group called The Young British Artists. The works that had the best chance of causing shock and vomiting included Marcus Harvey’s portrait of the child-killer Myra Hindley, painted with real children’s handprints; Damien Hirst’s "A Thousand Years," composed of a decaying cow’s head with live flies and maggots; and Chris Ofili’s "Holy Virgin Mary," which incorporates elephant dung and photographs of genitalia. As the predictable uproar about the exhibition erupted, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to slash the Museum’s funding. He claimed that the decision not to admit unaccompanied children to "Sensation" put the Museum in violation of its city lease and subjected it to eviction. He also argued that the government may not finance blasphemous art, because to do so breaches the separation of church and state. These arguments were rejected in federal court; the city was compelled to refund the money it had withheld. The Mayor did score points, however, by alleging (with some plausibility) that "Sensation" was a "scam": a conspiracy involving Christie’s auction house, the Brooklyn Museum, and the owner of the art, Charles Saatchi, to raise the market value of his collection. Meanwhile, the Mayor’s opponents accused him of using a cultural controversy to score points with conservative voters as he prepared to compete with Hillary Clinton for New York’s open Senate seat. Behind all the ritualistic name-calling and litigation was a serious issue: the relationship between art and democracy. This relationship has been troubled and unproductive for several decades. I think that politicians and artists must share the blame. Imagine that we were debating welfare reform or zoning instead of elephant dung on "The Holy Virgin Mary." In these more ordinary cases, we would want elected officials to supervise decisions that involved public money, but we would expect them to act only after reasonable public deliberation. We would ask everyone involved to heed multiple perspectives, respect facts, achieve as much common ground as possible, and examine arguments rather than assault their opponents’ characters. This is the deliberative approach to democratic politics. I will argue that artists and politicians ought to behave more deliberatively than they have in their recent skirmishes. But deliberation is only relevant if arts policy belongs within the normal give-and-take of politics. Both sides in the Brooklyn Museum controversy claimed—in contrast—that a high constitutional principle settled the question of arts funding. If they were right, then neither the public nor elected officials had any business deliberating about particular works of art or about arts policy in general. Charges of "Censorship" One group, civil libertarians, detected unconstitutional censorship in New York City’s treatment of the Brooklyn Museum. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Museum was an institution "devoted to discourse and expression." Once the government had decided to fund such an institution, it could not use its money to influence decisions about what images were exhibited. According to the ACLU:
In its brief, the ACLU explicitly charged the Mayor with censorship. Some people have gone further and seen a reduction in the overall level of government support for the arts as "a de facto form of censorship." U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon resolved the case in the Museum’s favor but on narrower grounds, concluding that:
With this ruling, civil libertarians won a battle in the war over arts policy. But the Constitution cannot compel governments to subsidize art in the first place. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that individual artists may not be denied federal grants because of the content of their work, Congress simply canceled all support for individual artists. If democratic leaders are given the choice either to fund everything that curators call "art," or to support no exhibitions at all, many will choose the latter option. In New York City, museums are powerful and will probably continue to receive tax money no matter what the Mayor thinks. (However, some observers fear that he will punish the particular institutions that sued him.) In other communities where the arts have far less political clout, complete denial of funding is a likely response to adverse court rulings. I am not arguing that courts should never strike down state arts policies that violate the First Amendment. For example, the City of New York probably acted unconstitutionally when it made an unrestricted grant to a museum and then withdrew the money ex post facto because of the content of the exhibited art. How much flexibility the government enjoys under the First Amendment is a matter of ongoing legal controversy. But regardless of the proper answer to this question, broader issues remain that will never be settled in court, because only the public has the right to decide them. Do the arts need and deserve public subsidies? If so, what are the best priorities for our arts budget? For instance, should more money go to museums, schools, or artists? Should the public fund amateurs, students, or professionals? Should we subsidize big-city artists, or regional institutions? Should we exhibit contemporary works, or Old Masters? Should our arts budget promote video installations, or novels, or public monuments? These matters should not and will not be settled by judges. Before the larger jury of public opinion, the avant-garde may have a difficult case to make, but it cannot hide behind charges of "censorship." Arts programs and subsidies are never entirely different from appropriations for schools or homeless shelters; inevitably, they are matters to be settled by some combination of majority rule, horse-trading, delegation to professional experts, and (if we’re lucky) constructive public deliberation. Sinful and Tyrannical Subsidies? In court, Mayor Giuliani argued just the reverse of the civil libertarian position. Whereas the Museum’s lawyers wanted to prevent elected officials from refusing to fund controversial art under almost any circumstances, the Mayor claimed that the state may never support such expression. It is always wrong, he said, to use public money to finance "vicious attacks on religion." But if the state must be neutral about matters of faith, then it cannot discriminate against irreligious expression. (This has been the Supreme Court’s view since a 1952 case, Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v Wilson.) Perhaps the Mayor’s real position was that public funds should never support anything that causes very deep offense to some. "If you are a government subsidized enterprise," he said, "then you can’t do things that desecrate the most deeply held and personal views of the people in society." In the preamble to the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." Although this "Jeffersonian Principle" is not explicit in the US Constitution, it is often invoked in First Amendment cases. For example, some people argue that it precludes unions from lobbying the government with their members’ dues, student governments from using mandatory activity fees for controversial purposes, and Congress from funding political campaigns with tax money. The Jeffersonian Principle has something going for it. The fact that some citizens "abhor" the Confederate flag seems a sufficient reason not to fly it over a statehouse, because doing so expresses official disrespect for their views. However, if we apply the Jeffersonian Principle literally and comprehensively, there can be no democracy. As the Supreme Court noted in 1984, "virtually every congressional appropriation will to some extent involve a use of public money … to which some taxpayers may object." This applies to state acts of expression as well as to other governmental activities. For instance, the Secretary of State’s latest pronouncements on Africa may enrage me, yet I have helped to pay her salary. Every day, public school teachers propound before tender ears ideas that would make some of us cringe. For that matter, think of the portraits in City Hall’s Blue Room, where the Mayor meets the press. They show an array of dead white males, including Jefferson (who owned slaves) and Edward Livingston (who served as an antebellum Louisiana senator after leaving New York in a hurry). I happen to think that Jefferson’s portrait is a worthy symbol, but not everyone would agree. As Hugh Field, a freshman at Pratt Institute, told The New York Times, "I find the Mayor offensive, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop paying my taxes." It seems to me that citizens and elected officials ought to pay some attention to the Jeffersonian Principle and try to avoid decisions that will offend people’s deepest convictions. But sometimes offense should be given—either because those who take umbrage are morally wrong, or because discord is the price we must pay for having a robust, diverse, and equitable public debate. Mayor Giuliani claimed that the offense taken by some Catholics automatically made "Sensation" an inappropriate use of tax money. He thereby sought to end (or circumvent) the public debate about the particular works exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum—just as civil libertarians hoped to evade the debate by charging "censorship" in federal court. A More Constructive Approach Let’s assume, instead, that democratic institutions may and will decide whether to fund art. It would be useful for the public and elected leaders to deliberate, rather than leave the results to brute majority rule or logrolling. In deliberation, a wide range of relevant considerations can be aired, stereotypes and hasty judgments can be debunked, and satisfactory compromises can be devised . In debates about arts policy, deliberation has a further advantage. Whether the state chooses to fund controversial art or to shun it, some are offended by what the government seems to be expressing on their behalf and with their money. It is a consolation to be able to articulate the contrary view during a public debate. In Democracy and Disagreement, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson set high (and perhaps unrealistic) standards for "deliberation." Every argument must appeal to reasons or principles that could be accepted by other people who are also deliberating. Every empirical claim must be testable by reliable, non-private methods. All reasons and arguments must be offered in public. All participants (including ordinary citizens) owe explanations to everyone else whom their decisions may affect. As they deliberate, they are supposed to be open-minded, to acknowledge that their opponents’ positions are also motivated by moral beliefs, and to explain their views in terms that minimize their disapproval of others. By the Gutmann-and-Thompson standard, the public debate about "Sensation" was not deliberative. Many in the Art World (a loose network of established artists, agents, curators, critics, and patrons) attacked Mayor Giuliani’s allegedly selfish motivations. But even if his only goal was to gain votes, his position could still be correct, his judgment sound. The lowest personal insult was delivered by Glenn Scott Wright, Chris Ofili’s London agent. Wright told The Washington Post that Mayor Giuliani’s behavior "is both totalitarian and fascist, a reprisal of the Nazi regime’s censorship." This kind of remark makes a decaying cow’s head look like a subtle and perceptive statement. A half dozen editorials implied that it was a mistake for the public to deliberate about whether to support contemporary art. Even the most offensive works might later turn out to be great— weren’t Shakespeare and Joyce controversial in their times? According to these observers, the public was not entitled to make the critical judgment that some work is bad. The controversial art itself had an in-your-face, shock-the-bourgeoisie attitude; it was not calculated to persuade people on the other side of a cultural debate. Ofili told The New York Times: "I don’t feel as though I have to defend [my work].You never know what’s going to offend people, and I don’t feel it’s my place to say any more." Maybe it’s not a painter’s job to justify his art in words. But if the Brooklyn curators had expected their show to provoke careful thought and dialogue, then they wouldn’t have boasted that the "contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion." Still, the art in "Sensation" can be defended. The New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman praised Ofili’s "lightness of spirit." In the Nation, Arthur Danto argued that the elephant dung on the Virgin couldn’t be derogatory, because Ofili (who was born in Nigeria) used the same material in Afrobluff, an image of African slaves. This is the kind of relevant fact that surfaces when people deliberate. Indeed, Danto’s review of "Sensation" was packed with arguments that could persuade open-minded readers to support the show. For instance, against those who claim that any fool can submerge a shark in formaldehyde, Danto insisted:
Deliberation and the Avant-Garde Danto’s review exemplifies deliberation; but how deliberative must critics, artists, curators, patrons, and agents be? All of Gutmann and Thompson’s examples involve matters that public officials debate: laws, appropriations, court rulings, and administrative decisions. It seems philistine and misguided to ask artists and their interpreters to become policy analysts. Nevertheless, I believe that avant-garde artists can and should pay more attention to deliberative values than they do. Consider an example of politically motivated or engagé art that fails as rhetoric because the artist does not know how to persuade average Americans who disagree with him. On the wall of the Whitney Museum, Hans Haacke has printed Mayor Giuliani’s remarks about the "Sensation" show in Fraktur, Hitler’s preferred script. The sound of marching boots emerges from nearby trash cans, while newspaper clippings and the text of the First Amendment lie on the floor, apparently ready to be trampled. This installation, entitled "Sanitation," criticizes a public policy (the revocation of the Brooklyn Museum’s funding). It offers reasons for its conclusion and may promote serious thinking—although perhaps not exactly the thoughts that Haacke had intended. On these grounds, "Sanitation" qualifies as an exercise in deliberation, but it is an extremely clumsy example. It invites the response that its artist has trivialized the Holocaust and misunderstood the present political situation. Rudy Giuliani is no Adolf Hitler; besides, the Mayor’s office lacks dictatorial powers. Perhaps Haacke feels that he dwells among the complacent subjects of a police state, so that he must issue shocking statements in order to provoke dialogue and resistance. However, this view is false. The fact that "Sanitation" poses as "art" is no excuse for its bad arguments and ad hominem attacks. Unlike Haacke’s "Sanitation," the works in "Sensation" do not directly engage policy questions. Often they challenge the traditional limits of art by combining a cool, museum-style presentation with appalling materials, such as human blood. But even these works can be germane to policy decisions. The public (and public officials) must consider the definitions, purposes, and limits of "art" whenever the question of cultural subsidies arises. If post-modern artists successfully undermine the distinction between art and despised objects such as cows’ heads, then the case for arts subsidies will weaken. More generally, shocking the bourgeoisie is no way to persuade them to pay for art. Representative [to be gender neutral] Brian Bilbray is a moderate California Republican who votes to fund the National Endowment for the Arts. "You can’t expect public funds to be used on the cutting edge," he told the San Diego Union-Tribune, "because artists have to be responsible to the people who pay the bills, just like Michelangelo had to answer to the pope." Another class of works in "Sensation" invites us to change our ways of observing other people, perhaps for moral reasons. For instance, Danto argues that Jenny Saville’s cropped painting of a naked woman with contour lines like those in a topographical map ("Trace") challenges our tendency to objectify the female body. Saville is heir to a long tradition of artists who seek to shock us out of our visual habits and assumptions. Consider a famously controversial American work, Andres Serrano’s photograph of an old woman with withered breasts about to perform oral sex on a young man ("The Kiss," 1996). The purpose of this image is surely to make men question their desire for images of nubile female bodies. In principle, such works could change social norms for the better, with implications for public policy. But it is unlikely that many men who happily employ the "male gaze" when they look at real women are going to view images by Saville and Serrano. Except when there is a controversy about public money, the Art World mostly talks to itself. Avant-garde artists could once command a large audience merely by crossing boundaries of taste and propriety, but now the public is not so easily shocked, and only pop culture frequently achieves succès de scandale. The Daily News’ Michael Daly wrote: "As viewed in the catalogue, ‘Sensation’ is now about as sensational as Beanie Babies." Ofili’s "Holy Virgin Mary" still managed to attract headlines by appalling the Catholic Church, but the only people who seemed to notice Jenny Saville’s paintings were respectful art critics who already opposed sexism and the male gaze. Therefore, instead of trying to astound the bourgeoisie, engagé artists might employ more deliberative techniques. It need not be burdensome to have to persuade average citizens by using reasons that they can share and by listening carefully to their responses. These are democratic skills that can inspire the fine arts, as the long tradition of American public art testifies. One high point was the New Deal, when artists employed by the Works Progress (later Projects) Administration's Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) generated hundreds of thousands of murals, posters, and statues in consultation with "co-operating sponsors"—usually local governments. Even today, Christo saves all the correspondence, plans, environmental-impact statements, and petitions that he needs before he gets permission to "wrap" a building. These objects (which are often beautiful) become part of the art; they celebrate his respectful engagement with democratic communities. To engage the public in dialogue does not require behaving in the civil, courteous, and reasonable fashion that we would prefer in the U.S. Senate or the Supreme Court. When the circumstances demand it, the artist and philosopher Adrian Piper distributes small cards with the following text: "Dear Friend. I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark." This is effective political performance art. It challenges not only the recipient but also Piper’s whole audience to examine their consciences in ways that could change social norms and ultimately affect public policy decisions. Perhaps Piper’s cards do not exemplify "deliberation," as Gutmann and Thompson define it. For example, when she appears to acknowledge the good faith of others ("Dear Friend, I’m sure you did not realize …"), she may be bitingly sarcastic rather than sincere. But an artist can contribute to an important democratic conversation even if her rhetoric is not itself civil. The Politics of Art More so than artists, elected officials and political commentators have a duty both to deliberate and to foster reasonable public discussion. To be sure, politicians sometimes face a dilemma. If they behave civilly and thoughtfully, they may lose elections to opponents who hold what they consider pernicious views and methods. The competitive nature of politics excuses some lapses from the Gutmann-and-Thompson norms. But that does not mean that everything that powerful politicians say is acceptable from the public’s point of view. Similarly, newspapers must sell copies in a competitive marketplace. But they do not have to discard civility and reasonableness in order to capture market share. During the "Sensation" debate, New York City looked for technical excuses to penalize the Museum, rather than advance a cogent critique of the art. (I leave aside the conflict-of-interest allegation, which raised important but complex questions about museum practices generally.) The Mayor never addressed the arguments that Danto and others made in defense of the Young British Artists; indeed, he never attended the show. Meanwhile, in the New York Post, columnist Rod Dreher called the exhibition’s organizers "Prospect Park Poo Peddlers" and accused them of "intellectual mountebankery and self-righteous leftie mewling." This was extreme, but more respectable voices repeatedly accused Ofili of being an anti-Catholic bigot, even though the artist denied the charge and explained that his use of elephant dung symbolized "regeneration." Mike Barnicle of the New York Daily News presented a particularly caustic analogy:
Liberal museum goers, Barnicle concluded, would be the first to demand that "Kelly’s" work be banned. But it’s hard to see how the wicked and cartoonish painting in Barnicle’s story could resemble "The Blessed Virgin Mary." The Mayor denounced any and all art that (as a factual matter) offends some citizens. Instead, he could have explained why the particular works in dispute were not worth exhibiting and then listened to any serious replies. At the same time, he could have considered his own authority to evaluate works of art. As a general rule, should elected officials intervene in specific decisions by museums, or should they give curators (or public administrators, or independent experts, or committees of artists) a free hand to decide what works to exhibit? Under what circumstances is political intervention appropriate? A well-organized debate about arts funding would open with such procedural questions. One of the worst effects of the "wars" over arts funding is that we have not been able to deliberate about such issues as a public or in Congress. We might also ask: Is the occasional scandal a necessary price to pay for subsidizing art that is mostly innocuous? Can we avoid such scandals through skilful vetting procedures? Or should we actually be happiest when tax money pays for unpopular ideas, thereby broadening the debate? In general, is state support for the arts necessary, or would the private sector finance art adequately? Would a different system for paying artists produce better or worse works? What kind of art do we need, anyway? In this discussion, it is worth considering the WPA example, which shows that state support can encourage artists to begin constructive dialogues with the broad public without sacrificing their independence. In contrast, the Young British Artists got their start in the late 1980’s, when state funding was at its low ebb in Britain. They began making scandalous artistic "statements" partly in order to attract attention and sales, since there were few grants to be had. All the works in "Sensation" are now owned by Margaret Thatcher’s former advertising guru, an entrepreneur who has made considerable profit in the art business. In this case, at least, the market rewarded scandal. The best way to encourage more responsible art may be to subsidize it publicly, but that’s not going to happen if elected leaders feel they must second-guess each curator’s decision. It seems to me that if you dislike the values that are reflected in contemporary art, then you should make overtures to artists, not just threaten to cut off their financing. For their part, artists who dislike conventional beliefs and values need ways to communicate with average Americans, not just other members of the Art World. But the encounter between politics and art is not likely to be illuminating until we have a different kind of political leadership—and a different avant-garde. Peter Levine Sources: Brooklyn Museum of Art web site at www.brooklynart.org (visited in September 99); David M. Herszenhorn, "Brooklyn Museum Accused of Trying to Lift Art Value," The New York Times (September 30, 1999); Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences v. Giuliani, Memorandum of Law Submitted on Behalf of the New York Civil Liberties Union, et al. as amicus curiae, 64 F. Supp.2d 184 (1999); Tim Miller paraphrased in Joe Williams, "Performance Artist Miller Just Can't Stop Acting Up," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (November 20, 1998); The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences v. The City of New York, 64 F. Supp. 2d 184 (1999); David M. Herszenhorn, "With Art Battle in Spotlight, Mayor Revels in the Glare," The New York Times (October 4, 1999); Dan Barry and Carol Vogel, "Giuliani Vows To Cut Subsidy Over ‘Sick’ Art," The New York Times (September 23, 1999); Thomas Jefferson, preamble to a (A?) Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, reproduced in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, 1950); Federal Communications Commission v. League of Women Voters of California, 468 U.S. 364 (1984); David M. Herszenhorn, "Giuliani’s Threats to Museum Make Exhibit a Hot Topic," The New York Times (September 27, 1999); Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Harvard, 1996); Terry Teachout, "That Empty, Queasy "Sensation"; Brooklyn Show Isn't Worth Such a Fuss," The Washington Post (October 2, 1999); Carol Vogel, "Holding Fast to His Inspiration," The New York Times (September 28, 1999); Michael Kimmelman, "After All That Yelling, Time to Think," The New York Times (October 1, 1999); Arthur C. Danto, "’Sensation’" in Brooklyn," The Nation (November 1, 1999); Welton Jones, "Pro-NEA Bilbray Got What He Lobbied For," The San Diego Union-Tribune (July 28, 1998); Michael Daly, "Rudy’s Making Real Sensation," New York Daily News (September 26, 1999) (www.nydailynews.com); Adrian Piper’s business-card sized pieces are entitled Angry Art, (self-published, 1985). To read the full text of Piper’s "I am black…" card and for a discussion of the work in historical context, see www.vsw.org/afterimage/25year/cauley.html; Rod Dreher, "Leftist Loonies in Comedy of Manures," New York Post (September 30, 1999) (www.nypost.com); Mike Barnicle, "Museum’s Dung Show Turns Us All into Losers," New York Daily News (October 3, 1999) (www.nydailynews.com). |
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