_Cencorship in Art _
By: Sara Barocas
Censorship is usually considered official censorship because it is action
taken by governmental institutions such as government committees, or
universities, to limit the view of a specific artwork or a group of works by
the public. However, these concrete official actions taken to limit public
view of specific artwork are only the results of the abstract censoring
attitudes of individuals or groups of individuals, encouraging the actions.
Censoring attitudes can arise from feelings of race or gender discrimination,
discrimination against the gay community, fear of taboos and controversially
issues, and assumed moral or Christian authority. It is these attitudes that
are the basis of censorship, not necessarily the artists intentions of their
artwork, because each individual viewer of the artists specific piece will
unconsciously project his/her own anxieties and fears into the artists
artwork. What drives the individual to censor the artists work is the product
of their attitudes being reflected in the subject matter of the artwork, and
the result of censorship is keeping the artists work from being exposed or
even from being createdA mutually supportive relationship between artists
and society would be the ideal under the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution. Our society would recognize and support an expanded role for
artists. Free and diverse artistic expressions are vital for challenging
people to rethink their assumptions and for educating people about past and
present issues. We should oppose censorship in the arts, and encourage
individual and social expression by artists. Only by supporting the voices and
visions of artists representing minority of the mainstream, including women,
people of color, and people of alternative sexual orientation can artists
truly express themselves. However, this is how it would be in an ideal
society. In reality, censorship is common. By examining the life works and
experiences of three artists, David Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe, and
Francisco Goya, the use of censorship and its affects can be understood.
Although modern examples of censorship concerning cultural taboos are almost
understandable because of the controversial subject matter, the censorship of
art was just as prevalent in the 1700s in Spain. Censoring was based on
protecting public morals, and it took political action in the form of Spains
Holy Inquisition. Just as the NEA is pressured to works by threat of pulling
funding, so was Franciso Goya pressured to self-censor his artwork for fear of
losing his job as a court painter. The Inquisition began with censorship of
public visual arts anonymously produced, but as Spain experienced the struggle
between the church and the Bourbon monarchy it limited all works considered
too sexual or anti-Christian. Goyas painting of Naked Maja was his way to
defy the traditional association of the female nude with evil just as modern
day artists, Mapplethorpe and Wojnarowicz fight against societys taboos with
their controversial artworks (132). By self-censoring his artwork he painted
the same female but clothed the naked female for the public to see, so his
patron, Godoy, could lift the Clothed Maja to see the Naked Maja (140).
However, in response to having to create another painting because of the
attitudes of sex held by the Spanish government, Goya made the Clothed Maja
even more seductive then the first women. We know that near the end of the
Inquisition, in 1815, Goya was brought to trail accused of painting obscene
naked women, but the results are unknown To bring the discussion of Goya up
to date, in 1991, a reproduction of Goyas Nude Maja was taken down from a
classroom wall at Penn Sate following a complaint form a woman professor that
it was a form of sexual harassment. The painting had hung in the music room on
campus for more than a decade. The president of the Student government
Association called it ludicrous censorship, but the Liaison Committee of the
Penn State Commission for Women said the female faculty found it difficult to
appear professional when forced to lecture to a class with a picture of a
female nude on the wall behind them. Four other paintings were taken down to
avoid a debate over what should and should not be displayed, proving that
censorship of Goya is still alive David Wojnarowicz is recognized as one of
the most potent voices of his generation, and his artistic achievements place
him firmly within a long-standing American tradition of the artist as
visionary, rebel and public figure. David Wojnarowiczs work emerged directly
from his life. He knew little art history, had no artistic training in high
school and he made a paint of not trolling the galleries to see what everyone
else was doing. Exposed to unusual hardship as a boy, as a sexually active
teen, and as a street person, he did not see his experiences reflected in the
popular culture of the members of the dominant white, male, heterosexual,
Christian, middle to upper class. Wojnarowicz's intention is explicitly
ideological: his aim is to affect the world at large; he attempts to create
imaginary weapons to resist established powers. Wojnarowicz creates
provocative narratives and historical allegories dealing with themes of order
and disorder, birth and death. using overlapping text, paint, collaged
elements, and photography. His source materials include comics, science
fiction, news, and mass advertising. Wojnarowicz developed a vocabulary of
symbols that took on meaning through careful combinations that played off one
another ironically and metaphorically. For example, symbols of the American
dream are used as searing comments about American capitalism and violence, and
advertisements are transformed into visions of horror, as in his supermarket
ad series Present in his art is a fusion of eroticism and death, a powerful
indication of the rage he felt at how much more attention society gave to
killing men rather than loving them. His works suggest many layers of meaning,
with implications of the loss of belief in myth, religion and history. People
who do not look deeper into his collages can not understand his complex
expression of real-world issues (339). Instead they take a symbol out of
context and get a unclear understanding of the artworks rendering them
indistinguishable from pornography(345). By labeling his art pornographic, it
becomes a target for censorship Because Wojnarowiczs artworks give a
supporting voice to the members of minorities, it is no shock that his art
strikes fears in individuals that believe they are the moral center of
society. His art is censored because of the individuals fear of taboo
subjects that are not in the mainstream: issues of homophobia and
discrimination against people with AIDS The official censorship of his art
came in charges by censorship committees against the NEA (National Endowment
for the Arts) accusing them of spending hard-earned tax dollars to fund
Wojnarowiczs pornographic and blasphemous art (335). This pressure on the
NEA caused them to drop funding for Wojnarowiczs exhibits, affecting his
ability to use his artist expression by limited its exposure to the public.
Robert Mapplethorpe is also a contemporary American artist who used his
artwork to push sexual frontiers by using his life as an active member of
the gay community in the 1970s and early 1980s, to inspire his works (366).
His art reflected his life as a gay minority before the concept of an AIDS
crisis. He challenged people to think about taboo issues of race and sex
through photographs of nudes, still lives, and celebrity portraits (367).
His more well known works are The Perfect Moment catalogue and his X, Y,
and Z portfolios portraying sadomasochistic homosexual behavior and the
sexuality of black men. Mapplethorpes photograph of black and white men
shocked, enraged, or stimulated different elements in the viewing audience.
Twenty years after he photographed some of his initial homosexual friends,
many viewers may fail to recognize how Mapplethorpe was pushing the boundaries
of sexual behavior in his time. His photography shows his exploration of
sexuality was perverse in the extreme. He enjoyed dehumanizing the human. He
continuously experimented always accepting anything in his social life, then
capturing many issues of his life on film. His photography documents a wide
range of pleasure and pain for public review and consideration As
Mapplethorpe grew in prominence through the early 80s, so did the public
controversy surrounding the rise of homosexual advocacy. The debates raging
about Mapplethorpe often reflect an undertone of these homosexual arguments.
His works are very controversial because they serve as a spring board for
cultural debates. An objective examination of many of Mapplethorpe's
photographs suggests a love of the beauty of bodies, devoid of any political
or cultural agenda When elite intellectuals use their position to convince
their peers that by not allowing public view of such controversial materials
they protect the Christian morals of the society, then censorship occurs. One
such critic was Jesse Helms, who used photographs from The Perfect Moment to
support his amendment that barred the use of federal funds to promote,
disseminate, or produce obscene or indecent materials (373). Helms did not
represent Mapplethorpes art to the conference committee as art with a deeper
meaning behind the controversial images, but presented the amendment as a
strictly pornographic issue. He made the issue seem to be a vote against or
supporting pornographic materials supported by tax money, and of course the
committee voted to pass the amendment. The result of the committee was the
Miller test that labeled art as obscene when the work, taken as a whole,
lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (378). But
according to whose values? If the jurys values differ from that of the
artist, who defiantly considers his work serious, the artist expression is
limited Another example was the criticism made by Dr. Judith Reisman who
disagreed that Mapplethorpes photographs were art because they failed to
express human emotion because of the sexual images(379). But this statement
also requires the question, by whose values? Maybe they do not show human
emotion to her because she believes only traditional beautiful things can
invoke emotion, but they may invoke emotions in other viewers, which is the
artist purpose
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