Is it Art?

December 4, 2010 at 10:08 A.M. "Errors" inserted will now be corrected. Only one letter was deleted overnight. On the whole, this is less violation of the text than I expected. Come on, Cubanazos. Don't let me down. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

At 11:39 A.M. the following advertisement was attached to my blogs, without my consent and against my will -- as a death threat, I believe:

"The 9mm is No Defense. Discover What Self-Defense Masters & the Army Don't Want You to Know. http://www.closecombattraining.com/ "

December 2, 2010 at 9:38 A.M. Efforts to prevent or obstruct posting of this essay have made it difficult to write this morning. Censorship is usually the weapon of brutal and stupid people. I believe that I understand what Mr. Wojnarowicz would have felt had he lived to see the reaction to his work. I greatly fear that more efforts will be made to deface or damage this text in order to hurt me. I will continue to write. ("What is it like to be censored in America?" and "How Censorship Works in America.")

Primary Sources:

Kate Taylor, "Foundation Says It's Ending Smithsonian Support," in The New York Times, December 14, 2010, at p. C2.
Dave Itzikoff, "Video Deemed Offensive Pulled by Portrait Gallery," in The New York Times, December 2, 2010, at p. C3.
Edward Caird, Hegel (London: William Blackwood & Sons., 1883), pp. 45-65. ("Hegel and Schelling.")
Hegel: On the Arts (Delaware: The Bagehot Council, 2001), edited and selected by Henry Paolucci and Anne Paolucci. (See especially, pp. 1-62.)
Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), pp. 3-15, pp. 211-218.
Thomas Merton: Selections (Illinois: Templegate, 1988), edited by Aileen Taylor with an Introduction by Merton biographer Monica Furlong.

Secondary Sources:

Kenneth Clark, Leonardo Da Vinci (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), pp. 112-113. ("To Leonardo, a landscape -- like a human being -- was part of a vast machine, to be understood part by part, and, if possible, in the whole." See "Is this atheism's moment?")
Oswald Hanfling, "The Problem of Definition," in Philosophical Aesthetics: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 1-37. (" ... 'What is art?' is of immediate practical concern, unlike some of the other questions of definition.")
Walter Pater, Selected Writings of Walter Pater (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp. 144-149. ("The faculty for truth is recognized in the power of distinguishing and fixing delicate and fugitive detail.")
George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory (New York: Scribner & Sons., 1896), pp. 37-40. ("The influence of passion on the idea of beauty.")
Elizabeth Schellenkens, Aesthetics & Morality (New York & London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 131-145. ("Beauty and the virtue of the soul.")
Roger Scruton, The Aesthetic Understanding (New York & London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 102-138. ("The eye of the camera.")
George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicafo, 1989), pp. 137-232. ("God is in reality but another artist," quoting Pablo Picasso.)
Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (New York: Random House, 1969), pp. 235-255. ("Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.")

"The National Portrait Gallery in Washington has removed a video from an exhibition and apologized for its contents after the video was criticized by the Catholic League and members of the House of Representatives for being offensive to Christians."

"The video called, 'A Fire in My Belly,' was created by David Wojnarowicz and was part of an exhibition called 'Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.' The exhibition, which opened on Oct. 30, bills itself as 'the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture,' according to the web site of the gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution."

"Mr. Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992, made the video in the 1980s. Among the imagery used to depict the suffering of an AIDS patient is a scene of ants crawling on a crucifix."

"In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, an advocacy group said 'A Fire in My Belly' was a form of hate speech."

" ... 'It would jump out at people if they had ants crawling all over the body of Muhammad,' said Mr. Donohue, who has criticized the Smithsonian for displaying works by other artists he considered anti-Catholic, 'except that they wouldn't do it, of course, for obvious reasons.' ..."

I find this newspaper story disturbing and difficult to come to terms with as a reader educated in a Catholic social context. At the level of principle, I am against all government censorship of works of art made available to adults in a free society. This gallery is sufficiently associated with the state -- due to its affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution -- that the action of removing a work of art because it "offends" some viewers constitutes a kind of government or state censorship which is profoundly "offensive" to the Consitution. Like all videos, this particular tape was composed of still photos or images. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")

Similar to Salman Rushdie who was attacked for creating a literary work which was a deep and complex reflection on Islam and not intended as a slur or insult to Muslims, I am sure that Mr. Wojnarowicz has been misunderstood by Christians as an opponent of Catholicism or Christianity.

What strikes me in the description of this photograph or video is the artist's identification with suffering and corruption as defining of the human condition in Christian terms. Rather than feeling superior or aloof, the artist identifies with or embraces this suffering. A similar journey is made by Thomas Merton, a monk drawn to mysticism and love expressed in a life of poverty and devotion who, nevertheless, remained an "elite" poet and essayist:

"At the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers." ("'The Reader': A Movie Review" and "'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")

The legal offensiveness in this censorship is multiple and lethal: 1) There is a genuine "freedom of expression" issue for the artist and other artists whose works are similarly situated in that they may generate offensiveness as distinct from harm in viewers "encountering" these works; and 2) there is an "establishment clause" issue because the state is protecting or preferring one religious view (namely, the so-called Catholic or Christian view) of opponents of this art work as against other non-religious views, or other religious (Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist) views of this same work; as well as 3) "free exercise of religion" concerns since Mr. Wojnarowicz is depicting a religious view concerning a personal crisis of meaning that may be expressive of his own spirituality and faith. Ideas and theological insights may be conveyed, equally, by images in art or expository prose. Indeed, this notion of ideas in aesthetic works is central to Hegel's understanding of genuine art:

"Hegel, with characteristic profundity, spoke of beautiful art as the Idea [Christ] given sensuous embodiment. As a start, this gives us the rudiments of a philosophical concept of art, and a first stab at a theory of criticism: the critic must identify the idea embodied in the work and assess the adequacy of its embodiment. 'Embodiment' is a difficult concept, and here is not the place to deal with it directly, but it helps to draw a distinction between expression and the embodiment of an idea. Perhaps every meaningful sentence expresses an idea, true or false, which is its thought or meaning. But language achieves the status of art when our sentences [or pictorial form?] embody the ideas they express, as if displaying what the sentences are about. A picture becomes art when, beyond representing its idea, properties of itself become salient in the work of embodiment. Rembrandt's paintings embody and do not merely show light." (Danto, pp. 8-9, emphasis added.) ("Metaphor is Mystery" and "'Inception': A Movie Review.")

Mr. Wojnarowicz is not telling us what self-disgust and suffering "feels" like. He is depicting these emotions and insights in Christian terms or imagery by showing us what he has become as he nears death. The title of this work may be: "This is what we are." We are suffering, dying creatures, who must love one another. Clearly, the artist is identifying himself with the dying Christ and not rejecting Christianity. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "The Allegory of the Cave.")

I believe that this image of ants crawling over a crucifix which disturbs Catholics and Christians is, in fact, a "profession of the faith." The work is a profound meditation on the meaning of suffering within Christianity which is transformed into a kind of grace or moral beauty. Unlike Robert Maplethorpe's photograph of a crucifix dipped in urine -- which I interpret as a denial of Catholicism or Christianity -- Mr. Wojnarowicz is offering viewers a work of theological reflection on the human condition and "arguing" for the meaning of pain or mortality within Christianity. The artist is a "defender of the faith." ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

John Stuart Mill famously distinguished between offensiveness and harm in his great essay "On Liberty." Mill suggested that the state may only legitimately regulate art where there is harm caused by some artifact -- for example, a work of art that is radioactive -- never because an art object is deemed offensive by some viewers. Censorship may be the most offensive response to the work of others. I expect continuation of the defacements of this essay on the part of fascistic Cuban-Americans and/or their mafia friends in New Jersey.

Everything from the "Mona Lisa" to Beethoven's music when they first appeared was judged offensive and "obscene." Disturbing music or images will be offensive to persons who are anxious to be offended in order to display their moral superiority to others who are not offended. "Manohla Dargis?" "Decency" is a word that often serves to convey the fallacy that "I have more money than you therefore I must have superior taste." Oscar Wilde warns us of persons who "know the price of everything and the value of nothing." ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")

Michelangelo's nudes were "offensive" to some of the first viewers of his works causing the male nudes in the Last Judgment to be defaced with painted loincloths, for example, which led the artist to weep in consternation. Having seen those paintings, I agree with Michelangelo. Happily, the loincloths have been removed since the Renaissance. Rarely, is the all-male establishment in the Vatican disturbed by representations of female nudity.

This work of art by Mr. Wojnarowicz is no doubt "offensive" to many viewers -- partly through misunderstanding -- because, as an image, it is hardly likely to cause actual harm to viewers or to a religious faith that has endured for centuries. The Catholic faith is concerned precisely with the very issues examined in this provocative image or set of images.

What is beauty? Is it the representation of a physically beautiful person or landscape alone that is beautiful? Or is it the artist's moral beauty in sensitivity to the pains of others in which we share that is also "aesthetic" or beautiful? Mr. Wojnarowicz has provided us with a self-portrait that is also a portrait of the viewer of his work. This mirror quality in the photos may be the most disturbing aspect of the "picture" or video for those who are, allegedly, offended. All good art should disturb you. ("Beauty and the Beast" and "Is Humanism Still Possible?")

A man dying of AIDS at a time when there were few means of limiting his suffering with medication looks to the essential Western image of human suffering -- a crucifix -- to represent his feeling not only of horror and revulsion at what he was undergoing, but also at the knowledge that he was ostracized as a moral leper in his society because of his calling to love erotically persons of his own gender or sex. ("Is there a gay marriage right?")

Mr. Wojnarowicz's work may be seen as a depiction of tragedy and nobility in human acceptance of pain, love as redemption, even of what is horrifying and repellent to others ("Prelude to a Kiss"), and devotion to this absolute love (Christ) that shares all horrors with us. "Christ," Oscar Wilde reminds us, "understands the blindness of the blind and the leprosy of the leper." ("'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review" and "Pieta.")

Christ is with us even in our pain and solitude -- especially at such moments -- as the love which willingly takes part in our subjectivity as our very own flesh and spirit. These are metaphors, like all art. This is the "community of the faith" or "unity of the Holy Spirit." This is the "Law" in Judaism. This is the true "Jihad" in Islam. In the worst horrors of history, among the most outcast and afflicted human beings, persons who are despised by others, vilified and spit-upon -- there is Christ. If Iran plans to stone a woman for adultery, then I (in Christian ethical terms) ask only that he or she "who is without sin cast the first stone."

Symbolism and "imagist iconography" (T.E. Hulme) are obvious aspects of this video that was deemed offensive by the very people who should applaud its message. During the Medieval period horrifying images of Christ suffering from bubonic plague were common in churches. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

Mr. Wojnarowicz has left us with a powerful image of Christian devotion as his final gesture of affirmation of life amidst tragedy and death. This is not a work of art to which Christians should object or that they should seek to censor. ("Master and Commander.")