Has the NEA funded art that could be considered against any religion other than Christianity (like Piss Christ)? Has there ever been a work that was funded that was considered anit-Islam, anti-Buddist, etc.?
I can’t give an answer to this question, but I’d hate to see this thread DOA.
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I only seem to hear about NEA stuff that is controversial, and all that I hear of were considered by some at least to be “anti-American” or “anti-Christian”. Are there not some Moslems, Buddhists, Shintoists, animists, Wiccans, etc out there outraged by the NEA, or are Christians the only ones?
Well, according to some authorities, Islamic law forbids artistic representations of the human form, so you could make the argument that all portraiture is ipso facto offensive to Muslims. That’s maybe a stretch, but I would argue that Serrano’s Piss Christ is not objectively anti-Christian, either. (That’s an argument for another forum, however.) Certainly, just about anyone can find any work of art offensive to them if they’re in the right frame of mind.
A bit of googling turned up nothing terribly interesting, which leads me to believe that in all the major instances of NEA-funded art offending religious groups, the offended groups in question were Christian.
Three hypotheses as to why:
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Scandals over publicly-supported art have often been incited or exacerbated by politicians–e.g., Jesse Helms’s crusade against Mapplethorpe or Serrano. I would of course never dream of impugning the motives of a statesman like Sen. Helms, but an oily and cynical person might suggest that there’s a lot more votes to be had in rattling the cages of evangelical Christians than there is in rattling the cages of, say, Theravada Buddhists.
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Christians have much more well-developed communications networks than other religions–nationwide TV networks, countless radio programs, and direct-mail lists with hundreds of thousands of names. If some well-placed person really wanted people to know about allegedly anti-Christian artwork, the message could reach a couple million people in no time.
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Many avant-garde artists are firm believers in the old slogan Epatez le bourgeois! (=“shock the bourgeois/middle-class!”) Artists tend to be anti-establishment bomb-thrower types. If the bourgeois is predominantly Christian, then one way to get some quick attention is to produce a piece of work which pisses on their collective chips.
Well, as Christ is viewed as a prophet in Islam, anything which is disrespectful of Christ is likely to be offensive to Muslims.
We can make an exception in relation to depictions of the Crucifixion, since Muslims do not believe that Christ was crucified. However anything offensive relating to any other part of Christ’s life would probably offend Muslims as well as Christians.
Similarly anything offensive relating to the Old Testament would offend Jews as well as Christians - and quite possibly Muslims also.
For the reasons pointed out by Godot22, offence given to Christians is likely to attract more attention.
How would one even go about making anti-Buddhist art?
Probably by starting here.
In a related vein, a Polish artist raised a bruhaha when he had an art exhibit that depicted a (fictional) Lego set for a Nazi Concentration Camp (Article here, with pictures). A Jewish group in Sweden mistook the art for the real thing and threatened to boycott the Lego Company, but the Jewish Museum in New York City was pleased with the exhibit and was considering buying a piece for permanent display – which might lend some credence to the theory that Christians are more thin-skinned than other groups…
(Of course, I disagree with the assumption in the OP that the NEA deliberately supports art that is insulting to religion, but that’s a different matter all together)