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What happens when we stop asking the question; “What’s the difference?” Our summer (2004) Top Ten illustrates what happened to the art world when it became indifferent to creative differences. Andy Warhol defined art as “anything you can get away with.” Yawn. You like what you like. I like what I like. What’s the difference? Thus, today, Western culture is more indifferent about art than at any time since the “Dark Ages” (AKA, the Middle Ages). Below are ten exhibitions that induced our indifference to art. They represent only a tip of the nihilist iceberg. Since there is no vital difference between the following examples, we listed them chronologically.
1. The New York Armory Show (1913), organized by Arthur B. Davies, brought controversial European (mostly French) art trends to the United States. Inflicted upon Americans were such figures as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Gauguin and Marcel Duchamp. The “cubist” room became known as the “chamber of horrors.” Later, in 1917, Duchamp sent a work called "Fountain" to the New York "Independent Show." It was nothing but a urinal.
2. Pablo Picasso built his fame on the tidal wave of European decadence and capitalized on the rising 20th century popularity of perversity. In his portrait paintings, the more tired he grew of his latest mistress, the uglier he painted her. In 1944, he came out with a play titled “How to Catch Wishes by the Tail,” starring Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, and performed in San Trope (the South of France). Absurdity and obscenity abounded. One scene called for a woman to urinate on stage with the sound amplified. To the dismay of the producers, nobody in that 1944 French audience stirred or walked out. They were already indifferent to indecency.
3. Andres Serrano is a shock-artist who, by his own admission at a Cornell University lecture, “couldn’t paint or sculpt at all.” He broke into the art scene in 1986 with his photo of a crucifix immersed in urine (“Piss Christ,“ funded by U.S. taxpayers). He is known for his use of urine, semen and blood to create “art.” We’ll spare you the specifics.
4. In 1989, Karen Findley was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to create, “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” a performance-art piece. In it, she railed against the Catholic Church, males, Jesse Helms, males, abusers, males, religious zealots, males and, of course, Nazis. She smeared her nearly nude body with melted chocolate and alfalfa sprouts. She “got away” with it at taxpayer expense. But who cares?
5. William Pope.L, another NEA supported performance artist, stood in front of a bank nearly naked (barely covered by a few dollar bills) and covered with mayonnaise (1991). In an interview, he said he was “suspicious of things that made sense.” For this exhibition, he said, “I was interested in doing something futile.” Classic indifference.
6. In 1992, the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. held an exhibition called “Helter Skelter,“ playing off the Charles Manson murders. Newsweek said it was “filled with enough grungy sex and severed appendages to fill the notebooks of an entire study hall of bitter high school head-bangers.” Whatever.
7. The Whitney Museum of American Art had a Biennial show in 1993, featuring compacted garbage hanging from the ceiling. A lapel button given to each museum visitor (designed by Daniel J. Martinez), featured the phrase; “I Can't Imagine Ever Wanting to be White.” Indeed, his imagination left a lot to be desired.
8. The 1999 Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition entitled “Sensation: Young British Artists from the Satchi Collection,” featured a painting by Chris Ofili titled The Holy Virgin Mary. It was adorned with elephant dung and surrounded by dozens of graphic porn cutouts. The exhibition also included a copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper with a topless female in Jesus’ place, grisly formaldehyde jars with severed animals, and a large portrait of Myra Hindley, who sexually tortured and murdered children. The curators gleefully posted the following warning to visitors: “The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety. If you suffer from high blood pressure, a nervous disorder or palpitations, you should consult your doctor before viewing this exhibition.” Elsewhere, at that time, some saw a candidate's past visit to Bob Jones University as horrific anti-Catholic bigotry while they defended this desecration of the Virgin Mary (in the name of "art") as legitimate free speech. Their common sense was smothered by sensation.
9. The “National Ceramics 2000” show at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY, featured a human head with a steering wheel attached, a piece of rotten fruit covered with maggots, the severed lower torsos of a man and woman, topped with steak and chicken dinners sitting on plates, a Bozo the Clown mural adorned with toilet plunger, a bloody portrait of an abused woman crawling with lizards, a face-off between Jesus and an Indian medicine man, a pair of amputated feet hanging from an industrial chain, and a mother getting her throat cut by a baby (see “When Art Becomes Inhuman,” by Karl Zinsmeister, American Enterprise magazine, Jan/Feb. 2002). The effect of such nihilism has been a cold numbness to things aesthetic and for people in general. Jesus once said, “Because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” Matthew 24:12.
And now, my favorite:
10. In 2001, "artist" Damien Hirst (noted for grotesque dead-animal sculptures) created a masterpiece in the window of London’s Eyestorm Gallery, using ashtrays, cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, a paint smeared palette, candy wrappers, and half-full coffee cups. Tragically (tongue in cheek), the overnight janitor was not told that this was “art.“ After cleaning up the “art,” he said, “I sighed because there was so much mess. So I cleared it all in bin bags, and I dumped it.” The gallery lost an acclaimed “masterpiece” valued at a half million dollars. Too bad, so sad. At least one employee at this "art" gallery understood art.
Dishonorable Mention:
Broadway musicals. On their daughter's 17th birthday, President and Mrs. Clinton gave Chelsea a weekend whirl of Broadway shows in New York. In three top 1990s musicals, the first family saw same-sex kissing, marijuana use, heterosexual intercourse, outbursts of black rage, the use of sex toys, and masturbation. They were also mooned. This was no presidential protest. It was “art!“ See, “When Art Becomes Inhuman,” by Karl Zinsmeister (American Enterprise magazine, Jan/Feb. 2002).
At the Pepperdine Lectures (2004), the work of Professor Bob Privitt was on display. One piece, titled “Christian Ice Pick Company,” featured a three-dimensional image of an ice pick stuck in an eyeball. Another piece, “Veiled Threat,” should have been veiled. Perhaps Privitt was preaching an angry artistic sermon of sorts. In any case, his anger left me indifferent.
Finally, let us not forget all those countless masterpieces over the last half a century with the title, “Untitled.” The title speaks for itself.
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