Feds probe politically charged art exhibit
Secret Service focuses interest on provocative image of Bush
From MSMBC
In part: "The Associated Press
Updated: 8:38 p.m. ET April 12, 2005
CHICAGO - The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President Bush with a gun pointed at his head.
The exhibit, called “Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin,” opened last week at Columbia College in Chicago. It features stamps designed by 47 artists addressing issues such as the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal, racism and the war in Iraq.
None of the artists is tied to the college.
Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur would not say Tuesday whether the inquiry had been completed or whom the Secret Service had interviewed, but he said no artwork had been confiscated.
The investigation began after authorities received a call from a Chicago resident."
A little over the top? Maybe. Covered by the First Amendment? Definitely. I can’t believe law enforcement would pursue something like this when there are real criminals and terrorists to worry about.
I heard something very scary a few weeks ago. A poll of high-school students had been taken, and something like 2/3 of them thought free speech shouldn’t be a right.
I want more funding for the eh, “arts.” Not that care for fake stamps with guns pointing at heads. But I don’t care for people running around calling stuff garbage, either, or bantering for funding cuts for everything they don’t “know” when they “see” it. In fact, I’d prefer offensive stamps over government funding only for majority-approved seen-and-known inoffensive stuff.
The important democratic effect is that the garbage-labellers get to practice what they preach: They want freedom of speech, they can have it. Let’s put our money where our mouth is and fund “art” we don’t like. It will make us stronger as a nation.
Bad art, but art nonetheless. The guy’s a moron, but he’s got a right to make stupid art if he wants to make stupid art. I’m no fan of George Bush, but I don’t think shooting him is a viable solution to this country’s problems.
Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur would not say Tuesday whether the inquiry had been completed or whom the Secret Service had interviewed, but he said no artwork had been confiscated.
The investigation began after authorities received a call from a Chicago resident.
?We need to ensure, as best we can, that this is nothing more than artwork with a political statement,? Mazur said.
Well at least the principle that political statements are kosher,
despite the violent implications, is accepted. And you know,
we’ve had a lot of people assassinated, JFK, Bobby K,
Reagan almost (not to mention MLK, George Wallace (almost)),
and one might see this as bordering on incitement to violence.
These guy’s job is to protect the president.
But they should have left it alone. How does one ensure
that this is nothing more than artwork with a political
statement? How could it be anything more?
Rather a chilling effect on content.
Does anybody remember the joke, popular during the
Reagan Admin: ‘Lee Harvey Oswald, where are you
now that we need you?’
Talking about chilling effects, though, public funding for
arts does have its problems–If the taxpayers fund art
and the artwork is somebody peeing on the
American flag, the patron can understandably
wish to withdraw funding. If you wanto do that
sort of art, it’s prudent not to expect to do it
at taxpayer’s expense. And when the taxpayers
wish to withdraw funding, the cry ‘Censorship!’
rings hollow, IMO. Doonesbury had some good
stuff on this.
Art [n] 1. the creation of beautiful or significant things; 2. the products of human creativity; 3. a superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation; 4. photographs or other visual representations in a printed publication.
Treason [n] 1. an act of deliberate betrayal; 2. a crime that undermines the offender’s government; 3. disloyalty by virtue of subversive behavior.
Terrorism [n] the systematic use of violence as a means to intimidate or coerce societies or governments.
Guess it’s art. And begs questions such as “who’s holding the gun?” “Is Bush being coerced, and if so by whom and why, or is he about to be assassinated, and if so by whom and why?” What’s the significance between the images and the text (“Patriot Act”), and is ‘37’ a Masonic code, biblical reference, or a date?
I think it’s heartening that secret services can be inspired and so moved by art to ask such questions of themselves and others.
If someone published a picture of you with a gun to your head, would that constitute a threat to your person? I certainly would. Last I checked, making threats is a no-no.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti–no slouch himself at getting controversial art into the public mind; everybody with one of those old black and white City Lights editions of “Howl” somewhere on the bookshelf, dust it off and read the first few pages aloud at breakfast in celebration of Nat’l Poetry Month!–used to argue that independent publishers shouldn’t accept government funding, since it always carried with it at least an implied pressure to conform to acceptable standards.
That’s a reasonable debate, but I’m never sure how to respond to the “I don’t like this piece of work, therefore the government should never fund the arts” line of argument. Often these examples seem to me offered because the speaker thinks that government should, in fact, never fund the arts. Well, as a character in a William Burroughs novel says, that’s a point of view, but to my mind it’s one that leads to a real possibility of cultural impoverishment, where works of cultural value are left largely at the mercy of a marketplace that, because economies of scale are involved, is only likely to support stuff with the broadest appeal. (I’m not just talking about operas and symphonies here; check out the wonderful stuff about American folk music or the photo archives preserved and made readily available through the Library of Congress site.) If, like me, you see a good deal of good coming out of even our current very limited government arts funding, then the production of a few works that might be seen as disturbing seems less a fatal flaw than an unintended consequence.
That said, full disclosure probably means that I should say that I’m a former NEA fellow in literature, and that I’m very grateful for the assistance that grant provided in getting my second book finished.
The exhibit’s curator, Michael Hernandez de Luna, said the inquiry “frightens” him.
“It starts questioning all rights, not only my rights or the artists’ rights in this room, but questioning the rights of any artist who creates — any writer, any visual artist, any performance artist. It seems like we’re being watched,” he said.
Sounds like terrorism to me.
Last spring, Secret Service agents in Washington state questioned a high school student about antiwar drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted Bush’s head on a stick.
Government should not fund this kind of “art”. High school should have all “art” classes removed.
Two federal agents arrived at the exhibit’s opening night Thursday, took photos of some of the works and asked for the artists’ contact information
It does not give the agents the right to violate copyright law by illegally duplicating the art. Speaking of copyright, the government has been supporting all the arts with this protection for far too long. Only when there is no incentive to write offensive tunes like “I Buried My Wife and Danced on Top of Her” will they stop.
I promised myself that I would contribute nothing to this discussion and I think that I have adequately fulfilled my promise.
I’m for gov supporting arts, however I also think there
is often a tension involved in having a patron.
For me the problem isn’t that I don’t like some art–
I don’t much care about that. But I wouldn’t want to
fund racist art, for example, or art with a plainly
anti-Semitic message. It might, by the way, be
good art–as some Nazi efforts were. I also wouldn’t
want to fund art that glorifies raping women,
wonderfully executed and composed, with striking
and original use of colors.
So my feeling is that taxpayers need to be tolerant;
still I don’t see that ANYTHING should go at
taxpayer expense or that artists have a right
to expect the people who fund them to be blind to political
and social content. People have a right to paint and
write what they bloody well please, IMO, but I don’t
think they have a right to my money, and I expect
this means that we have the right to
decline to fund them if we judge the
content destructive and/or obnoxious. I
don’t know how one draws the lines, still I think
there’s a legitimate public interest. Hence
public funding involves a potentially chilling
effect which probably can’t, and I think,
shouldn’t, be eliminated. Sooner or later
he who pays the piper calls the tune.
I figure if I want to paint pictures of somebody
wiping his butt with the Constitution, it’s prudent and
considerate not to expect public funding.
I’m not sure why you’re placing so much emphasis on ‘public funding of art’ Jim, the material in the source of the thread has nothing to do with taxpayers’ money.
It would seem, from quick google for “Al Brandtner”, the artist who created the “stamp art” in question, was commissioned to produce a work depicting a view of ‘evil’. The art in question is part of a large collection used in an independent film, “Axis of Evil”, full details of which can be found here (and I think you’ll find it interesting):
The artwork in question then takes on a whole new meaning when placed in the context for which it was created… as cutaway frames for a documentary film:
“In interviews with 16 journalists, artists, scholars, and activists, including Howard Zinn, Daniel Ellsberg, Bernardine Dohrn, James Weinstein, and others, AXIS OF EVIL explores the concept of evil and how it has been used to justify political and military actions. But unlike most recent Bush-bashing documentaries, the film addresses the broad, complex, and interwoven issues of terrorism, racism, militarism, and other such social ills. It’s a reasoned discussion of evil as it truly exists in our society, rather than a polemic against the war in Iraq.”
When I look at this I feel that someone is saying that if one were a patriot, following whatever it says in the Patriot Act, one would shoot President Bush because he is bad for our country—I mean that he is speaking in a metaphor, not literally advocating it, he is being ironic, I guess to show this on a stamp something usually reserved for the most patriotic of themes like the American flag. Perhaps more leisurely contemplation would yield other interpretations.
I am surprised by how shocked I am that someone would portray the President in this way—no matter what the actual intended meaning. I hate politics, politicians and everything even remotely involved. I hate the anti-terrorist frenzy. I can’t stand George Bush, or any of the others. Can’t even listen to them, have to turn it off. But, boy, there is apparently something in me that finds it just about unbearable to have anyone show a President about to be shot. So I guess the Presidency itself has a very strong symbolic meaning in my mind, buried under all my disgust. In that way, I suppose this thing has served a purpose and provoked thought in me, although I don’t think that is the purpose its creator had in mind.
I am sure the creator is speaking metaphorically (sp) and isn’t a real threat to the President, so this investigating simply makes the government look silly.
I haven’t seen the documentary, but since the blurb speaks of the film as being about “evil”, it would seem to suggest that the artwork was commissioned and created to reflect “evil” or an ‘evil act.’
It’s clearly been taken out of context, and so an entirely different meaning can be ascribed to it or inferred from it. Just like taking a quote or sound-bite out of context can be manipulated anyway you like it.
