Boehner and Cantor aren't stopping a controversial artist from sucking on the public teat; they're ordering the Smithsonian to avoid displaying anything that offends the religious right's sensibilities.The 'art' in question? No, not a burning Koran or a MoToon, but (of course) an 'ant-covered Jesus'.
How avant-garde! How controversial! How shocking!
How...safe.
11 comments:
IMO attention-seeking 'art' doesn't have an automatic right of display. US taxpayers have the right to challenge an exhibition in a public museum 'which explores gay & lesbian themes'.
Besides, banning a 'work' of art no longer brings the prestige to the relevant artist that it once might have - and watching a film clip on-line rather than (say) in a museum is hardly denial of freedom of expression.
Finally, teasing Christians/Jews in the USA is safe & tame. If the curators David C. Ward and Jonathan Katz really wanted to court controversy then maybe they should have sought some portraiture featuring whole or incomplete burqas, for instance. But that would be potentially dangerous to them, the museum & the US generally.
Isn't 'controversial artist' just another way of saying it's crap?
... like that waste of space Tracey Emin and her ilk.
"Controversial artists' usually means the creator of some contrived work of 'art' that you wouldn't want in your home.
The choice of owning a painting (or sculpture) by a talented artist or having a plug ugly, upside down sawn-in-half garden shed or a pathetic 'installation' like a piece of chewing gum stuck on a wall is not difficult. It is governed by the number of brain cells.
If you have a home and take a pride in human achievement you want the former, if you are a 'progressive' with a pretend intellect and too much public money, the latter appeals.
I always thought among all art, that before one creates an artwork that takes nothing more than operating a video camera, knowing how to push the on/off button, that one first has to have been proven to have talent in the first place. If one can create true art, to begin with, has talent, knows how to paint, draw, sculpt, produce theatrical quality writings or plays, after proving that then goes one to produce something aimed specifically for political messages or shock value - then it is considered seriously controversial. But if one isn't accomplished in the first place, then it's not really anything grand or great at all.
In other words, I can't draw, I can't paint, but I can run an image through photoshop clicking all the right buttons and making it appear artsy - but it's not really great art or even art, even if I myself do deem it controversial because of subject matter.
I think there are a lot of so-called artists running around these days who thanks to electronics and computers, the video camera and knowing where the on/off switch is, doesn't make them necessarily artists or controversial.
It's just politics and nothing to do with art - propaganda really.
Why would any taxpayer funded museum need to present propaganda as if it were art, if it's not, if it's from someone unproven.
That's my take on it.
Well I for one am glad to be shocked out of my apathetic stupor by challenging controversialists of this ilk...
http://www.theonion.com/articles/performance-artist-shocks-us-out-of-apathetic-stup,251/
"How...safe."
Not really. Bound to upset the American WASPs :-)
I'll get me coat.
Quick, call the RSPCA
"Besides, banning a 'work' of art no longer brings the prestige to the relevant artist that it once might have..."
Indeed. And by the look of it, this one needs all the help he can get!
"Isn't 'controversial artist' just another way of saying it's crap?"
It's certainly my immediate mental translation...
"Why would any taxpayer funded museum need to present propaganda as if it were art, if it's not, if it's from someone unproven."
Good point. And I doubt that the sort of 'art appreciation' crowd drawn to this stuff are big spenders at the gift shop, either...
"Well I for one am glad to be shocked out of my apathetic stupor by challenging controversialists of this ilk..."
:D
"Not really. Bound to upset the American WASPs :-)"
*groan*
"Quick, call the RSPCA"
Heh!
How about Mohammed and his seven-year-old wife in a bath of pig manure?
That would be worth seeing.
The resulting carnage, I mean...
These avant-garde, progressive trendies know what their limit is - and it is the limit of their faux bravery.
'Bound to upset the American WASPs'
Not necessarily: most people by now understand 'controversial artist' as code for 'childish prat'.
It's not 1967 anymore.
Don't read too much into it, Greencoat. It was just an insect themed joke because of the ants on the Jesus. I thought it might bug them, you see. ;-)
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