The Art of Dung
New Yorkers are having a tiff over a museum that likes a work of what they call art that features a black Madonna made of cut-outs of dirty pictures and lumps of elephant dung. Mayor Rudolph Guiliani says he’s not giving the museum $7-million in city funds because he finds the piece distasteful. Ole Rudy may be running for US Senate, by the way, on the Republican ticket.
Bill Clinton’s wife is maybe gonna run for that same Senate seat on the Democratic side, and she has weighed in on the matter saying Guiliani should fork over the seven mil and butt out of the art issue. It’s freedom of expression, she says.
So does the ACLU. But the Catholic church and others side with Mayor Guiliani.
And as much as I don’t usually align myself with organized religion in general and the Catholic church in particular, I gotta say that Guiliani is right. Actually, I’m not supporting the church’s complaint because it is the Madonna that’s depicted. Rather, I’m supporting Guiliani’s decision to withdraw community support for wasting money on a group that can’t tell the difference between art and garbage.
This freedom of expression argument is just so much elephant dung. We have become confused about what is art, and one thing art isn’t is simply anyone expressing anything. Relieving oneself on a stage is not art. Elephant dung on a collage of pornographic cut-outs is not art. Not even close.
What art is, and you might want to write this down for future reference...art is reaching beyond the horizon of the known and familiar, tapping into the well of creativity where new ideas come from, and offering what is discovered there in a translation for the rest of us. It is not the specific purpose of art to offend or to stretch limits of taste. Art must have some intrinsic value before it has a right to alarm or disgust.
We seem confused on this point, and I lay that off on the multi-culturalists who say everything everyone does is expression and must be protected. These dogmatists haven’t a clue about social structure, beauty, or form. They use false issues to celebrate the depravity of pseudo-artists who are just looking for money and recognition.
Every community has its own standards and mores. New York City is one of the most tolerant communities on the planet. There is little that you can’t find in New York. And that’s great. But there is a difference between having garbage accessible and supporting it with public funds.
Let Hillary Clinton buy the piece and hang it in her living room. A dung-bespattered pornographic Madonna — how appropriate.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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