No, none of what you said applies strongly to the Impressionists. I agree that the Ashcan School, with people like Henri and Hopper, got a huge amount of grief for their desire to portray unpleasant reality. But the main attack against the Impressionists was against their technique.
The “my kid can paint better than that” is not a criticism that was applied beofre the Abstract Expressionists, Pollack and his crowd. Maybe someone said that about Klimt and the Symbolists, but if they did, they were fooling themselves about their kid’s talent.
Good thanks, so you agree they’re being unreasonable, or at least ill informed?
And how is offensive defined? In this case it appears it to be blasphemy concerning the treatment of a religious icon. Are you okay with the government making decisions about what is and isn’t blasphemy? Is that healthy for a free society?
Assuming the government is not in the business of endorsing religion is there a nonreligious reason it’s anymore offensive than other depictions of a guy nailed to a cross?
But these Republicans are threatening withholding our money, not theirs. The Smithsonian sees 25 to 30 million visitors a year, The public is getting nothing from it?
No. Not everyone who disagrees with me is unreasonable. I think they’re ill-informed to the extent that I doubt they have much knowledge of or exposure to art, but that’s the risk an artist takes when accepting a patron. The Emperor can always decide that the opera has too many notes.
Your question loses an important part of this discussion. I’m fine with government deciding not to use its own speech to offend religions, yes. If government sought to prohibit speech in general on those grounds, it would not be healthy.
It seems logical to me that people should not be expected to involuntarily subsidize art which they find grossly offensive without getting to weigh in on the matter. People who find the work valuable get to express their opinions too. If supposed arty types want to display an image of Jesus covered in ants or Barney Frank covered in maggots, they should expect (and undoubtedly crave) heat.
If all that free speech is distasteful, the curators need to rely solely on private donations. They can have their displays selected by expert panels and not have nosy politicians or other arbiters of public morality looking over their shoulders.
Actually, this whole “let’s goose middle American morality and giggle at the response” meme has gotten hackneyed and boring.
Mmmm, cold cuts on a bed*. Is audience interaction allowed?
*The image of George Costanza comes to mind.
I’m sorry, which is the part that you are angry about? The part where you don’t know of any previous document where the Pope (who is not the religion) has said that commiting murder is worse than prophilactics? “Thou shalt not kill” is pretty old, but then, it wasn’t a Pope who wrote it down - and any “religious conservatives” who haven’t heard of that one need to hie themselves to a good ear doctor.
Le Petit Parisien on the paintings of Paul Cezanne: “The procedure somewhat recalls the designs that schoolchildren make by squeezing the heads of flies between the folds of a sheet of paper.”
There’s a danger, over time, though of back-door establishment, isn’t there?
If every time there is a ‘controversial’ type exhibit, Congress takes a look at the list of exhibits and runs down it… Rape Buddha - OK; Decapitated Allah - OK; Drowned Shiva - OK; Piss Christ - not OK, we’ll defund you if this is included…
Wouldn’t that create an establishment problem? And what then if they go through each time threatening defunding for all “religiously offensive” art, but not for other “offensive” works?
Telling the artist “you can have funding provided you don’t insult Christianity” strikes me as pretty close to an unconstitutional condition on Government spending.
As far as I know, up until last week the position of the church has been that condoms shouldn’t be worn for any reason. Then the pope said that if they’re used to prevent the spread of AIDS, condoms are ok. From what I heard, religious conservatives were angry about this. They may have heard “thou shalt not kill,” but apparently infecting people with AIDS isn’t enough close enough to killing that it should supersede the possibility that a baby (with AIDS) could be born.
And the vast majority of those were done long ago. These days public art tends to be some complete crap. Try and sneak a realistic statue of Washington or anyone else for that matter into a museum these days.
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It has worked VERY well for them, raised LOTS of money from folks upset about Maplethorpe and Serrano exhibits.
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I wonder how well it’s worked out for arts organizations, who should be able to rev up their funding base by highlighting supposed threats to artistic expression.
“Look! The Philistines are at the gates! Send money!!!”
Yep - this is the type of controversy that can work for both sides. They both get their base riled up, neither side actually does anything, and the cash rolls in.
A lot of the problem is that the media and the right wing complaint factory presents the offensiveness of the art without actually showing the art in context. I had always thought that the piss Christ was stupid and offensive, but I never had actually seen it until just now. I assumed it was just a picture of a cross dumped in a beaker of unrine. After reading this thread I looked it up on wikipedia and after seeing it I think its amazing, and I don’t think that the message it conveys to me would be at all offensive to Christians.
Similarly, it should be pointed out that the ant/crucifix segment was 11 seconds out of a 4 minute work, while the public may believe that the entire work is the ants crawling.
Who needs to? You want to see a heroic statue of Washington, all you have to do is walk for a few blocks, and there it is. Why do we need more of that shitty jingoistic crap, if not to prevent me from seeing any other kind of art that may offend you almost as much as the omnipresent patriotic theme offends me. Or are you the only one in this discussion who has a legitimate right to avoid seeing seeing art he considers offensive?
Does anybody think the Smithsonian would show an exhibity where the Quaran was covered in ants?
I am as liberal as they come, but I get why it is offensive and this is the NATIONAL ART GALLERY, cutting edge, controversial art should be for other museums. I realize this is not a popular opinion, but so be it. I just think it was a dumb thing for them to show, to be honest
Probably not. Does you think if it did these self same politicians would be calling for investigations into the funding of the Smithsonian, or praising it for standing up in the face of threats?