ORANGE COUNTY VOICES ARTS FUNDING : For Taxpayers, Not a Pretty Picture : Setting reasonable selection standards is the least that should be done to cure ills of the federal arts endowment process.

The U.S. House of Representatives has begun the reauthorization process for the National Endowment for the Arts. As this process continues through the spring and summer, the taxpayers have good reason to ask tough questions as to the legitimacy of this agency and its decision making process.

The issue of arts funding came to the fore last year when working Americans discovered to their dismay that they were subsidizing through their taxes such so-called art as “Piss-Christ,” depicting a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine, as explicit and bizarre photographs featuring nude children, acts of sodomy and sadomasochistic sex. This is not a debate over artistic nudes.

Contrary to what is said by defenders of the NEA, who repeatedly told us that only two of the thousands of grants are questionable, new examples are emerging. Recently, a series of live performances by porno queen Annie Sprinkle at the Kitchen Theater in New York City was indirectly subsidized by the NEA. An exhibit which just ended at Illinois State University by David Wojnarowizc certainly is in this category. In the catalogue that accompanied this taxpayer-financed show was a depiction of Jesus Christ as a heroin addict, complete with a rubber tourniquet and syringe stuck in his arm.

In times when we are hard pressed to find funds for health care for our elderly, prenatal care for poor women and school lunch programs, spending tax dollars on art is questionable, at best. Spending our tax dollars on trashy art is outrageous.

As one might predict, the artist community’s reaction to attempts to set standards is to cry “censorship.” Who’s kidding whom? We are not debating whether the federal government ought to pay for artistic folly, no matter how much it may offend the morals of taxpayers or denigrates. No one debates America’s artists’ self-proclaimed rights to photograph and urinate on whatever they wish--as long as it’s on their own time and on their own dime. The idea that any “artist” has a right, on the basis of the First Amendment protection of free speech, to collect our tax dollars for sleaze is ridiculous.

If the U.S. government is going to underwrite art, choices must be made about where to spend those tax dollars. Of course, as far as I’m concerned the federal government should be out of the arts altogether. And I am somewhat surprised by the reaction of some artists who argue for such government involvement in the artistic realm. History teaches us that when the government gets its hands on the arts, like in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany, freedom, creativity and the search for truth and beauty suffer.

So why do many artists insist on a federal subsidy program? It seems to me many recipients of NEA funds would be hard-pressed to attract customers or voluntary support. These questionable artists are more confident of support from the avant-garde art elite in the peer-review panels of the NEA, people who are not investing their own money. And don’t let NEA Director John Frohnmeyer convince you these panels, like the legal jury system, are imperfect but the best we can do. If similar peer-review system were followed in American courtrooms, we would only have lawyers on juries.

In fact, if Frohnmeyer is so big on having the peer-review panels modeled on juries, then non-artist, non-arts professionals, everyday working Americans ought to be asked to sit on NEA panels and make the decisions about art funding. I can guarantee the decisions would be far different from what they are now.

If one wants to see censorship in the arts, one need only see how the NEA excludes beautiful, more traditional art. Realistic art or pro-religious art suffers even as weird, freak art triumphs. This seems so systematic that several realist artists are planning to sue the NEA. The NEA clique’s rule has had a powerful and negative influence on art in America, according to several prominent art critics.

Short of abolishing this Soviet-style committee system, Sen. Jesse Helms and I propose that the NEA director and the peer review groups--the same people who already make decisions about what art to fund--operate with certain standards of decency in making their decisions. In other words, we’re asking them to come to their own conclusions about whether a project in question is obscene, indecent, anti-religious or racist; and if the answer is “yes,” don’t subsidize it with our tax dollars.

At this time, such criteria are not part of the process. The NEA decision makers are totally unaccountable to the moral standards of the people forced to pay the bill, and that’s the way they want it to stay.

The dollars spent on art are far better left in the individuals’ pockets for them to spend on the art they appreciate. But, if Uncle Sam insists on making artistic decisions for us, the least we should do is set some reasonable standards on how our taxes are spent. One doesn’t have to be a prude or a puritan to see that the federal government shouldn’t be spending our tax dollars on some of the trash the NEA calls art.