Musings on Recent Events

As it would happen, in one of my busiest weeks of the year so far, a fair amount of important and interesting events have taken place just when I'm inundated with other priorities and unable to post frequently.

1. The Mona Lisa has moved to a new location in the Louvre. I thought this was a great excerpt and excellent first paragraph to the article (thank goodness for British journalism):

Seeing the Mona Lisa is a very intimate experience. Not intimate with the painting, which is six feet away behind a wooden barrier inside a vitrine, set into a raw sandy wall newly constructed in the Louvre's reopened Salle des Etats. No, the intimacy is with the complete strangers who press against your buttocks, yell in your face and, with a delightful lack of self-consciousness, shove you firmly aside so they can get the perfect photograph.

The nearly unbareable crowds around the Mona Lisa are nothing new, but the new space apparently does accommodate them much better than previous arrangements and is more environmentally friendly to the work itself (which is particularly important given the decline in the work's condition over the course of the last few years). Kudos for the Louvre for finally finding a solution to that problem.

2. The New York Public Library will be selling 19 works from its art collection in order to purchase more books, manuscripts, etc. as well as increase the library's endowment. There are a few points of interest here. First, the Library is just that, a library, not a museum. The works probably would be better suited in a private collection or public/private institution that is better able to care for works of art. Also, the process of selling the works is also quite a bit less complicated and controversial given its status of "library" rather than "museum." In museum terms, the process of removing a work from a permanent collection for purposes of sale or otherwise is called deaccessioning and only under very specific circumstances and for particular reasons may museums deaccession works from their collections. Any revenue generated from the sale of a deaccessioned work must be earmarked by the museum specifically for the acquisition of new works or for the direct conservation of works already existing in the museum's collection. I think the rather quiet reception of this news by the media and public is, in part, because the New York Public Library need not worry about all of these things. It is their property and they may do with it whatever they please. While the sale of these works are likely to result in many of them relocating to collections throughout the country, the Library is at least making an effort to work with other institutions in New York specifically in terms of flexible payment options if a museum were to consider acquiring one of the works for sale. What is sad about this whole thing is the lack of federal and state funding received by the Library in order to appropriately expand its collection of books, manuscripts, etc. According to the article, the Library receives 70% of its funding from private sources (not surprising), but for an institution that has no real income from the public, the exception being the probably insignificant amount of money earned from late fees, it clearly lacks the additional support that museums and other nonprofit institutions receive.

3. David Rockefeller to give MoMA $100 million donation to bolster its endowment. Rockefeller's recent promise is the largest, single cash donation in MoMA's history. Each year MoMA will receive $5 million towards its endowment until his death, at which point the Museum will receive the remainder of the money promised. Although David Rockefeller is a relatively unique case where one individual has an actual personal investment with such an organization like the Museum of Modern Art (he is the son of Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller, co-founder of the museum) and his philanthropic giving is not solely a function of his status as trustee, one can't help but wonder exactly how deep his pockets really are. I just heard that recently he's funded the creation of an aquaduct somewhere in Africa in order to bring healthy water to areas in need. David Rockefeller will probably be remembered best as a banker (the man damn-near built Chase Manhattan from the ground up), but it's his philanthropy that people will really miss when he's gone.

Hirst Show at Gagosian Shredded

Artnet is featuring a review by Jerry Saltz of Damien Hirst's most recent showing at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. I should mention early that Saltz is an art critic for the Village Voice (where the article was first published) which, for anyone not familiar with New York periodicals, is a good but rather progressive paper to put it mildly. Saltz really digs into Hirst and for good reason. Hirst's more recent work lacks any of the real creativity and daring that has given him his reputation. Perhaps most interesting is Saltz's explanation for how the currently inflated art market has resulted in all of Hirst's new work being sold:

"Every painting is sold, which isn't surprising in these times when collectors buy what other collectors buy, advisers sell art over the phone and artists wonder if their prices should be higher. Buyers get a placeholder: A painting by a big name with a big price tag that presumably will command an even higher resale value. Hirst & Co. have created a perfidious feedback loop where everyone gets to snicker at everyone else. We sneer at Hirst, his dealers and his collectors for having bad taste and bad values; they scoff at us for being old-fashioned, out-of-the-money sourpusses. We all tell ourselves what we already know. The only thing at stake is gamesmanship."

So long as the market is hot, artists will profit and we can probably expect the quality in art to slide because artists can't meet the demand of dealers and collectors. Instead of taking their time to create a few great works a year, their pumping out works as fast as they can to receive their handsome rewards. And dealers are more than happy to oblige. So who really loses? Well, the collector for one but that's their fault for buying second rate (if that) art and the art world suffers insofar as it remains stagnant and stasis is bad for art. Art should always be moving in some direction, any direction, but never standing still.

Light Posting For A Few Days

You may have noticed that there is a change to my profile. I'm in the process of moving and the academic semester is winding down so there may not be a post for a few days. In the near future I intend on having several posts dedicated to fakes and forgeries in the visual arts (the topic of my rather neglected thesis).

"Caution! Religion" Takes on New Meaning: Museum Director and Curator Convicted

The New York Times reports that director Yuri V. Samodurov and a curator of the Sakharov Museum were convicted of inciting religious hatred with an exhibition titled “Caution! Religion.” According to the ruling, the court found the exhibition “openly insulting and blasphemous,” and fined both the director and curator the equivalent of $3,600 each, although both could have been imprisoned. One artist who also faced criminal charges was acquitted.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

Aleksandr V. Chuyev, a member of the lower house of Parliament who played a role in pressing prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the museum agreed that the verdict would set a precedent, but one he considered healthy. “The people and the authorities now understand that religion and the feelings of believers should not be touched on…They should understand that their rights end where the other person’s begin.”

Interesting…let’s read on:

The exhibition had been open only four days before six men from an Orthodox church in Moscow ransacked the museum, damaging or destroying many of the 45 works on display. Criminal charges against four of the men were dropped, while two others were acquitted last year in a trial that led to the new charges against Mr. Samodurov; the museum's curator, Lyudmila V. Vasilovskaya, who was also convicted and fined on Monday; and one of the artists, Anna Mikhalchuk.

And so the hypocrisy between one person’s rights and another’s continues with religion being the defining barrier between who is protected and who is not. The religious nuts who feel that it is ok to destroy another person’s property are clearly doing the work of the Good Lord and thus their actions are justified. Unbelievable.

In a related story, an article published in the April 2005 issue of Artnews titled “The Show that Had All Buenos Aires Talking” discusses the intolerance to artistic freedom in another part of the world. The Recoleta Cultural Center held a retrospective for Argentine artist León Ferrari, whose career is heavily marked by political and anti-religious themes.

Here are some excerpts:

The retrospective centered on one such work, made to protest the Vietnam War, a figure of Christ crucified on a U.S. fighter plane; it was titled Western and Christian Civilization (1965). Several of Ferrari’s collages in the show blended religious motifs and sexually explicit images; one work included a figure of Christ being fed through a food grater.

Most of the art on display emerged from the artist’s opposition to the Christian concept of hell, which he describes to Artnews as the “belief by part of the population that others deserve to be punished simply for not sharing their beliefs. It is the mother of all discrimination.” He adds, “The heart of the issue is that the church cannot accept that part of the country does not agree with its ideas.”

Ahh…the sweet, refreshing sound of truth and reason. A judge’s ruling closed the exhibition down for 18 days although an appeal won by the cultural center, backed by city hall, re-opened the exhibition. Despite incredible success, the Recoleta closed the exhibition a month ahead of schedule with Ferrari “exhausted” by the legal wrangling.

The idea of art as contentious and offensive seems acceptable so long as the topic of religion is exempt. When "Sensation" was at the Brooklyn Museum, no other work raised hell like Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary—not Jake and Dino Chapman’s prepubescent mutant girls with penis noses in Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model or the same girls conjoined in sexually explicit poses with one another in Tragic Anatomies; not Marc Quinn’s bust of himself sculpted out of his own frozen and coagulated blood; not Marcus Harvey’s portrait of child killer Myra Hindley composed of handprints of young children (the most offensive work to British audiences). In a more recent exhibition, the Jersey City Museum recently added a warning to audiences entering their galleries to see Wei Dong’s They Can Do Anything, which depicts an Asian crucifixion scene and yes…Christ is Asian (how scandalous!).

So the question remains: What is offensive and should art that criticizes religious or political establishments be censored? I am a staunch opponent to censorship, particularly in the arts, and I think that it is a museum’s responsibility to engage in meaningful and constructive discourse about a wide range of topics, including politics and religion. Certainly they are sensitive topics and they should be handled delicately during exhibition planning. Exhibitions which include works that address such sensitive topics should be evaluated prior to their opening and throughout the course of the exhibition to gauge the effectiveness of measures instated to quell any potential offense taken by visitors. Museum’s can’t possibly satisfy every person who walks through their doors nor should they attempt to. If people are going to a museum to see art they should expect to see things they like and things they don’t, things they can relate to and things they can not, things that make sense to them and things they can not understand. Art is not always beautiful and it doesn’t always make you happy—that’s part of its greatness.

We live in a world of hypocrisy and self-righteousness, run by an increasing number of Christian fanatics attempting to limit the expression of those who hold opposing views, ideas, and values. The case against the Sakharov Museum and its employees is just the latest impact it’s had on museums and cultural institutions. You know, I can’t recall an instance where an exhibition consisting of works of a religious nature had a disclaimer outside of it that said “Warning: The Content of This Exhibition May be Offensive to Some Visitors.” It is also quite seldom that one hears of an instance where an image of violence, even in the most graphic and extreme expression, stirs a controversy as emotional as one over religion or politics. This doesn’t surprise me but it is saddening.

You know what I find offensive? Images of dead Iraqis in the streets of Baghdad or tortured detainees degraded and humiliated, breaking news interruptions to originally scheduled broadcasting to tell me the Pope has a urinary tract infection or that Michael Jackson is running late to a court date for his molestation trial, the checkout girl at the supermarket telling me to have a blessed day. But you know what? I get over it and I move on. Even now, when I look at those works by the Chapman brothers, I get a visceral response but that’s what art is supposed to do. Art isn’t always about still-lifes with sunflowers or pretty landscapes, it’s also about things that punch you in the stomach and make you feel sick, it’s about expressing emotions and not just the good ones, it’s about questioning the world we live in, how we see it, and how we experience it. If the artwork helps you make sense of it then great, if not then leave me and everyone else alone and go back to your bubble where it’s nice and safe, where no one asks questions and everyone thinks the same thing.

UPDATE: Here is a column which I found on Reason Magazine's website. It's a good article written before the conviction. And here is the story as covered by the BBC.