In the Matter of Mapplethorpe

It has the weary quality of a sophomore debate exercise, this controversy over the inclusion of a few vulgar photographs in two exhibits funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Resolved: Federal support for the arts should be free of political interference.

On the face of it, that proposition would seem self-evidently true. The facts of the current situation indicate otherwise. One of the exhibitions at issue is a traveling retrospective of work by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died not long ago of AIDS. Some of the images he made are homoerotic; others are overtly sadomasochistic. The other exhibit, a group show mounted in North Carolina, included a crudely titled photo by Andres Serrano depicting what the artist said was a crucifix dipped in his own urine.

When a few noisy congressmen and senators raised a fuss over the expenditure of even a few taxpayer dollars to display such art, Washington’s Corcoran Gallery decided that, rather than risk their displeasure, it would not hang the Mapplethorpe exhibit. Intent on supporting the endowment, but unwilling to risk an all-out fight with the lawmakers-turned-critics, a majority of their congressional colleagues joined in voting a small, token cut in the endowment’s budget.

In such piecemeal fashion do affairs of this kind transform themselves from minor annoyances into dangerous problems.

The dissidents’ point is a simple, superficially compelling one: Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize art that affronts their moral or religious convictions. Confronted with this objection, it probably will not suffice to say that art is inherently undemocratic. Its essence is the singularity of its creator’s vision. When it argues at all, art argues from the particular to the general. Nor is good art necessarily moral. Richard Wagner and D. W. Griffith held reprehensible views, but no worthwhile opera or film program can neglect their contributions. Nor is the securing of popular consent any guarantee that art will, in fact, be moral. Network television’s entertainment programming with its obsessive preoccupation with ratings is probably history’s greatest experiment in democratically determined aesthetics. It is many things, but a school for values it is not.

But since the congressional critics have framed their reproach in political terms, it probably ought to answered in that fashion. Congress frequently appropriates money for a generally desired end that is offensive to some among us. Christian Scientists might object to the funding of medical research, the Amish to expenditures on weapons and Roman Catholics to spending on family planning. Our system demands that their views be given a respectful hearing, but not that they be decisive.

The National Endowment for the Arts was conceived for the purpose of securing the benefits of elite culture for Americans of all backgrounds and incomes. Within the limits of its rather meager budget, it has succeeded precisely because it has given the American people the same right formerly reserved for the wealthy and the privileged, which is the right to enjoy art of all sorts according to their personal taste.

There is no evidence that public morals face any grave threat from the tragic Mr. Mapplethorpe’s slick exhibitionism. Similarly, the cross, having survived appropriation by promoters of crusades, pogroms and racial hatred, probably will survive the childish Mr. Serrano’s rough attentions. But unless a decent respect for artistic integrity and public intelligence prevails, the National Endowment for the Arts may not--at least not in its present form.

Like electricity, Schopenhauer once said, vulgarity is easily distributed. That is as true for vulgar politics as it is for vulgar art.