[Osx-nutters] Re: Egyptian Two-Fer: Racism and Misogyny in One Cartoon

[David Cake]

At 10:08 AM -0700 25/2/07, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>>>Now Michael Richards did argue that pointing to blacks in his 
>>>audience a shouting "there's a nigger" was really funny. At least 
>>>he did it in a private club where losing his audience ended his 
>>>career. The 'artists' actually took public funding for their work.
>>
>>	You either give people public funding for art, or you don't. 
>>You don't give public funding only for work that doesn't upset 
>>anybody.
>
>Now you are setting up a strawman. I don't have to reject public art 
>at a conceptual level to believe that academic/institutional art had 
>become largely elitist, irrelevant and just plain uncreative.

	Well, academic/institutional art has its own biases, but I 
don't find it consistently irrelevant or uncreative (though there are 
plenty of individual artists that don't do much for me) - I do find 
its tending towards being harder to understand without a background 
in previous art, which could be considered elitist, but I don't think 
that is necessarily a problem (after all, its kind of what is implied 
by the whole existence of art as an academic study), or easily 
avoidable.

>  Most people would agree, including many artists and critics who 
>work outside the public sector. The problem with your argument from 
>authority is that it works just as well when the right wing nut jobs 
>are appointing the peer  reviewers.

	The point is if politicians of any stripe appoint the peer 
reviewers, they won't be appointing actual peers - the whole point of 
peer review being that the system is made up of working artists 
assessing working artists, and those involved will generally find 
themselves part of the system. It does run the risk of it 
degenerating into a 'circle-jerk', but generally artists are pretty 
good at disagreeing amongst themselves (and pretty poor at sticking 
to political agendas).
	Its not a perfect system, but its probably the best one we 
have - you are more likely to improve it by adding some checks and 
balances to the system rather than by replacing it wholesale.

>Anybody who finds piss  christ "culturally enriching" has let their 
>enthusiasm for participating in a cultural circle jerk overwhelm any 
>taste of judgement that they might have inherently possessed.

	I think the individual work is having far more emphasis put 
on it than it deserves. I understand Serrano did a whole series of 
things immersed in bodily fluids pictures, though I haven't seen them 
myself, and I certainly don't think every photographer should have to 
justify the virtues of every individual photo when taken out of 
intended context.
	But the argument works precisely when its applied to 
Mapplethorpe, or Karen Findlay, or any other controversial artist, 
whether or not you regard their individual works as being worthwhile.

>I don't  think there actually will be anything like piss christ 
>displayed with public funds anytime soon. The theocons won that 
>battle and I'm pretty sure that nothing will be allowed that offends 
>main stream Christian values. I also think public art at the 
>municipal level is a very mixed bag with some of it being quite 
>good. But I do believe that the net result was pretty much that we 
>don't fund public art at the state and national level any more 
>except for things like displays of the 10 commandments on 
>courthouses. That doesn't feel like victory.

	Indeed.
	Which is pretty much what I was saying. Once you decide that 
public art funding should only be used to fund art that upsets 
nobody, it becomes essentially worthless.
	It doesn't feel like victory, because it was a victory for 
the other side. They don't like art, at least when it encourages 
thinking beyond a narrow range. They got what they wanted.
	I understand that the end result wasn't what you wanted 
either, but I'm surprised to find you agreeing with their initial 
premise.
	Cheers
		David