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Where Chris Ofili has gone about his
work with his own hatred for some religious themes clearly
on view, another artist, Howard Cruse, has found meaning in
a compassionate treatment of religious themes that in the
end is liberating not only for him, but for people like
myself who find his work both engaging and innocent. The
boundaries of art are a legitimate concern of editorial
inquiry because 'Good Order' and the well-being of society
at large can sometimes go awry in the presence of desecrated
symbols.
Special & Exclusive to USAfrica The Newspaper
and USAfricaonline.com
By JOE SHEA
HOLLYWOOD, California -- I was asked by the Founder
& Publisher of USAfricaonline.com, Chido Nwangwu, to
write on the desecration of the image of the Virgin Mary by
a London-based, African-born artist named Chris Ofili -- and
awful offal he is -- I was inspired to search the World Wide
Web for a treatment of religious issues that was both
controversial and yet inoffensive to those of opposing
beliefs.
Serendipity drew me to the work of an artist named Howard
Cruse and his comic-book take on homosexuality and a
minister named Jerry Mack
and another -- with some extraordinary verse -- on an
unlikely lad named Penceworth
who emulates Hitler as a child and grows up to hate gay
people. The relevance to the show at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art is in its successful inversion of accepted values to
achieve a liberated voice in defense of gay rights and in
opposition to hatred based on religious or gender
preference.
Where Ofili has gone about his work with his own hatred
for some religious themes clearly on view, Cruse has found
meaning in a compassionate treatment of religious themes
that in the end is liberating not only for him, but for
straight people like myself who find his work both engaing
and innocent. The boundaries of art are a legitimate concern
of editorial inquiry because 'Good Order' and the well-being
of society at large can sometimes go awry in the presence of
desecrated symbols. Let me illustrate this concept with an
extended and fictional metaphor. Suppose that in a town like
Monroe, New York, where I grew up, a Jewish congregation has
its temple near a forward-thinking Episcopal church. In the
ordinary course of business, let us imagine, the church
decides to cover one wall of its white frame Colonial facade
with a mural, and offers a prize for artists who contribute
the winning concept.
Most of the muralists work in spray paint, and they have
outrageously strange ideas of beauty. But one has the idea
of bringing Jews and Christians together by re-imagining the
hated Nazi symbol (which 1,200 years ago was a Buddhist
symbol) in such a way that it infuses the symbol not only
with some of the original Buddhist meaning but a fresh
Christian perspective that intends to declare that God's
mercy is such that even suffering can be made beautiful.
The artist produces the most lovely and colorful swastika
ever drawn. Flowers and grape leaves, the faces of children
and the soaring of larks infuse the artist's spirit in the
work, which surprisingly is a genuine and sensitive work of
art. So the artist wins the prize and the mural goes up on
the side of the Grace Episcopal Church, just up North Main
Street from the Monroe Temple of Liberal Judaism. Among the
members of the first congregation are many believers in free
speech and free expression; there are even more of them in
the Jewish congregation, but among them are also survivors,
and the children and grandchildren of survivors, of the
Holocaust.
A work of art that offends a substantial number of people
is divisive in any community. But is divisiveness a quality
that should be suppressed at the price of free expression?
Let's visit my metaphor again.
Back in Monroe, even its harshest critics are willing to
admit that there is beauty both in the concept and the
execution of the mural. But the survivors and their families
are devastated by the public display of a hated symbol,
however transformed into one newly beloved of their
Christian neighbors. Reluctantly, because they believe very
deeply in free expression, the Jewish congregation organizes
demonstrations, newspaper ads and letter-writing campaigns.
Those efforts prove fruitless against the arguments of the
church'es pro-expression leadership, and time only
exacerbates the growing anger.
As tempers rise, prominent members of the Episcopal
church who work for Jewish-owned businesses in town are
threatened with firing if the mural is not removed. A young
and attractive Jewish lawyer gains financial backing to
oppose the town's popular Epsicopal mayor. Then the anger
spills out into the open; opponents of the mural deface the
church; angry defenders paint their lesser versions of the
mural on sidealks and walls.
Tensions rise extremely high, and sothe press takes an
active interest. The networks report on it, and newspapers
write editorials. The Jewish Defense League (JDL) vows to
come to town and paint over the mural, and The mayor vows to
stop any act of "vandalism" against the church.
On the appointed day, members of extremist organizations
like The Order and the Klu Klux Klan also show up to face
off with the angry soldiers of the JDL. In an act of what he
calls Christian comparison for the peace and safety of all
the people of the town, the minister of the Episcopal church
decides the mural will be removed. That, however, angers
some of the strangers that have come into town, though, as
well as some of the Episcopalian defenders of the mural;
there is fighting, and in the melee, someone is stabbed.
Police bust heads and break up the riot with difficulty. The
town's name is disgraced. In communities across the country,
police chiefs and mayors nod sagely at each other and say,
"We don't want another Monroe around here."
The moral of this story: no artist in the world can
transform a symbol of hatred into a universally-admired pece
of art -- there can be no such thing as a beautiful swastika
-- but any artist can exploit both dormant and active social
faultlines. In our fictional Monroe metaphor, there was a
fundamental misapprehension of the sensitivities of ordinary
people on the part of the artist and the church, and it
produced violence in a peaceful place.
In the case of the "Sensations" exhibit at the Brooklyn
Museum, an artist whose actual name suggested both dung
(offal) and unartistic work (awful) took a sacred symbol --
that of the Virgin Mary -- and desecrated it in what he
thought was a meaningful way. The anger of ordinary and
not-so-ordinary Catholics that erupted in response was
predictable, and inversely, so was his work. Ever since
Andrea Serrano's "Piss Christ," art that offends the
religious has been a fairly sure route to fame. I have a
profound belief in the ability of healthy democracies to
work through divisions among people and to permit all of
them, ultimately, free expression without incurring violence
or stirring hatred in return.
Unfortunately, only a few democracies are at that stage.
That New York City avoided violence over the Sensations
exhibit is a testament to the strength that can be found in
diversity when it is joined to respect for the law. That
happy condition, however, is still far away for many places
in this country, and still further for nations like Serbia
and Kosovo, where a Serb-speaking U.N. worker this week was
killed by angry Kosovo Albanians only because of his use of
the language. No one paints smiling murals of Slobodan
Milosevic on the walls over there, and for at least a
century, no one will.
In New York, it was the museum's directors' and the
artist's lack of compassion for human sensitivities that
failed; to the city's great credit, respect for the law
survived. Yet there is one more important point to make: all
transformation -- religious, political and cultural -- is
prefigured in art. However bad it may be, to suppress it is
to halt the historical momentum of liberation that I believe
will ultimately bring us all closer to God.
Shea is editor-in-chief of The American Reporter, and was
the named plaintiff in the landmark First Amendment case
Shea v. Reno, which got the Communications Decency Act
declared unconstitutional in Manhattan Federal Court in
1996.
A different view on this issue,
'The best show in town:
Art
vs Politics.'
By Dr.
Rufus G.W. Sanders
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ART
AND VALUES
