Endowment, Congressmen Feud Over Provocative Art

A major show of work of the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe--due to open here July 1--was canceled Tuesday in what apparently is the latest development in an escalating political controversy that has embroiled the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cancellation of “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment” was announced as a second dispute involving the endowment--this one over the endowment’s support of a photograph of a crucifix seemingly immersed in urine--has grown in the last few days into a confrontation between the endowment and several conservative senators.

Together, the withdrawal by the Corcoran Gallery of Art from sponsorship of the Mapplethorpe exhibition and the dispute over the endowment’s support of the work of photographer Andres Serrano, who produced the crucifix image, have prompted arts observers to voice concern about a potential wave of censorship.

The two new incidents come just a few months after disputes over exhibits at California Institute of the Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago in which American flags were displayed on the floor. The Chicago incident sparked protests from conservatives and led to the threatened cutoff of Illinois state funding to the art institute.

Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS at 43 in March, was known for sexually explicit and homoerotic themes in his work. Cancellation of the show had been rumored early last week as the national endowment grappled to respond to the separate controversy over its support of Serrano’s work, in which one senator has demanded a five-year cutoff of funds to the private arts agency that organized the show under an endowment grant.

Late last week, the Corcoran reaffirmed its intention to open the show as scheduled. The exhibit was displayed at the University of Pennsylvania last year without incident and is scheduled for Hartford, Conn., Cincinnati and Boston.

In announcing the cancellation Tuesday, however, Christina Orr-Cahall, director of the Corcoran, acknowledged the decision had been taken because the issue of the endowment giving public money to support provocative artists and their work “was becoming a major political controversy.”

In its announcement, the Corcoran said it was canceling the show because the dispute forced the gallery to respond to “the political occasion--the present discussion which fundamentally rests with the endowment and Congress.” Orr-Cahall said the Corcoran’s directors had decided that “by presenting this show, we were doing so at the wrong place at the wrong time. We had the strong potential to become some persons’ political platform.”

The privately owned Corcoran receives about $300,000 a year in direct federal financial support. The endowment said it had helped fund publication of the program for the Mapplethorpe show in Philadelphia. It said that Mapplethorpe received a $15,000 government fellowship in 1984 and the endowment paid $30,000 to defer costs of the Philadelphia exhibit.

Hugh Southern, the endowment’s acting chairman, would not comment Tuesday on the Corcoran decision to cancel the Mapplethorpe show. “We have some controversy with Congress,” he said of the situation, “and we’re discussing that very intensively with colleagues on the Hill.”

The Mapplethorpe decision was the latest development in censorship disputes involving the endowment. Initially, attention was focused on the Serrano Christ image that was part of a traveling show that visited in three cities, including Los Angeles, last year.

Censorship concerns have intensified, said Anne Murphy, executive director of the Washington-based American Arts Alliance, an arts advocacy group. She contends the subject matter of the photograph and much of the body of Mapplethorpe’s work have focused the dispute on issues offensive to the right.

“If this (controversy was just about) the Serrano piece, I think people would be right to identify it as just another cycle that we go through every five years or so,” Murphy said. “But I have to say (with the addition of the decision to cancel the Mapplethorpe show), it’s not. All solutions (to the controversy over segregating federal arts funds from creative activities that could be offensive to anyone) lead you right smack into censorship.

“Somebody on the Hill said to me last week, ‘You’ve got the Exxon Valdez on your hands. What are you doing about it?’ ”

The threat to introduce legislation to ban endowment grants to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Winston-Salem, N.C., agency that oversees the Awards in the Visual Arts program of which the controversial Serrano photograph was a part, was made in a Senate speech May 31 by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.).

More than 50 members of the Senate and House signed protest letters to the national endowment. One of them was signed by 27 senators, including Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). It demanded changes in agency procedures to prevent instances in which federal money is spent on allegedly sacrilegious art.

In Illinois, the Art Institute of Chicago involved in the flag case faces a move in the Legislature to cutoff $65,000 in state grant money.

In North Carolina earlier this week, the Southeastern Center’s director said he had been told by a state legislator that conservatives may introduce legislation to terminate the center’s $75,000 state funding. The agency, with an annual budget of about $1 million, could face significant financial hardship if funding for the federal program is also cut off, he said.

But apparently ignored in the controversy over the image titled “Piss Christ” is the intent of the work. It is, said Serrano and others familiar with his work, quite opposite from what it has been taken to be by protesters.

The protest in Congress was initiated by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) who in a May 18 Senate speech noted that Serrano received a $15,000 fellowship--partly from federal funds--for the work of which the photograph in question is a part. D’Amato characterized the photo as “garbage” and a “deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity.”

Serrano, contended Helms in his own Senate statement, “is not an artist. He is a jerk. And he is taunting the American people.”

Ted Potter, the Southeastern Center’s executive director, said that a Helms aide, John Mashburn, contacted him twice after D’Amato’s Senate address. Potter said that on both occasions Mashburn suggested that the center take a role in assisting Helms to focus blame for the incident on the NEA.

Potter said the most recent call was late last week. He said the center refused to go along with the Helms plan. “We responded that we could not support or abet that,” Potter said. Potter said Mashburn told him that Helms would back Gorton’s threatened bill cutting the center off from federal funding if the center did not cooperate.

Late last week, Potter wrote Mashburn reiterating his position and asserting that Helms is attempting “to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.”

Helms did not return calls seeking comment. An aide, speaking on the condition he would not be identified, confirmed that Mashburn had called Potter and said the purpose of last week’s conversation was to demand that the center turn over a color slide of a ceramic work titled “Joseph Awaiting the Immaculate Conception,” which Helms said also might be perceivedas offensive to Christians.

The aide said it is Helms’ position that “the knee-jerk reaction would be to cut off (the center) but we felt the focus really ought to be on the National Endowment for the Arts because (the center) was the guilty conduit for the activity.”

The aide said Helms’s objective is to ensure that federal funding to arts institutions does not support arts activities “which denigrate the taxpayers themselves.” The aide said the issue of how arts institutions--which may receive federal money directly or indirectly through a wide variety of sources--could be expected to ensure that their publicly funded programs are not offensive constitutes “the questions being asked.”

The political tempest over censorship comes at a time when the national endowment is without a top officer. Southern responded to D’Amato and other congressional criticslast week, promising to consult with the appropriate congressional committees.

“Let me reiterate that the endowment would never intentionally insult or belittle the beliefs or values of our citizens,” Southern’s letter concluded, “and we deeply regret the offense that the situation in question has caused.”

Yet to be determined is whether the controversy will spill over into the national endowment’s budget deliberations. Existing federal law prohibits the agency from interfering with the content of art works it funds.

Serrano and arts experts familiar with his work said that, ironically, the image in question is not sacrilege but a protest against religious exploitation. Serrano said he considers himself a Christian. The 40-by-60-inch photograph depicts a plastic crucifix immersed in what is clearly a liquid.

“Without its title, I’m sure many people would have been seduced (by the artistic expression of the photo) and would have no problem with it,” Serrano said.

The controversy first broke out in April--four months after the show had closed--when the American Family Assn., a Tupelo, Miss., fundamentalist group headed by Rev. Donald Wildmon, demanded the firing of federal officials “responsible for” spending government money on the awards program involved.

Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, said Serrano has set out to be shocking and provocative--two functions traditionally associated with art. “Serrano’s art can be very disturbing,” Fox said. “It’s visceral. It’s cruel.

“I think it’s unfortunate and dismaying that some elements in American society have prevailed upon Congress to consider interfering with artistic expression,” Fox said.

In fact, said Fox, the aspects of “Piss Christ” that appear to most offend fundamentalists can be interpreted as commentary on the Eucharist--which itself focuses on the body and blood of Christ--and not as anti-religious. “It’s all the more unfortunate that this has happened,” said Fox, “when the artist has been so grossly misinterpreted. Not only misunderstood, but willfully misunderstood.”

Fox served on a national jury that selected work for the 1988 Awards in the Visual Arts. The program, jointly financed by the government and the Rockefeller and Equitable foundations, is designed to recognize significant artists on the cutting edge of their medium from each of 10 regions of the country. The program has a $225,000 annual budget, of which the national endowment contributes $75,000.

The show was hung at the Los Angeles County museum for two months, closing in July, 1988. Fox said the museum received “three or four” letters expressing concern at the subject matter and title of “Piss Christ.” The show also stopped at the Carnegie-Mellon University Art Gallery in Pittsburgh and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

In the controversial image, said Potter, Serrano’s position is a protest against exploitation of religious values. “In fact, in using a plastic cross as a symbol of this type of abuse and profiteering,” Potter said, “he is saying, ‘This is outrageous.’ ”

Serrano himself said the point of the image should be determined by whoever sees it. “I did have a Catholic upbringing myself,” he said. “It could mean different things to different people. I find it to be a very comforting and spiritual image. I find it visually very much in keeping with the traditional image of Christ.”