Group Ordered to Stop Using Altered Pictures : Art: A conservative sect had cropped partial images from larger compositions. It attacked government funding for sexually explicit works.

A federal judge on Monday ordered a conservative Mississippi religious group to cease publication and distribution of a brochure which used severely cropped pictures--which were represented as complete images--to support an attack on National Endowment for the Arts funding of sexually explicit works.

The ruling, directed at the American Family Assn. and its director, the Rev. Donald Wildmon, came at the conclusion of a day-long trial of a lawsuit brought by multimedia artist David Wojnarowicz.

Wojnarowicz sued after the pamphlet, using only portions of 14 larger images he created for a one-man show titled “Tongues of Flame,” was mailed to members of Congress and Christian leaders earlier this year. The excerpted images, which were not identified as having been cropped, all have strong sexual or religious overtones. Many of the fragments included depictions of homosexual intercourse.

U.S. Dist. Court Judge William C. Conner told lawyers for the organization that “the spirit of the injunction” would be violated if it issues other broadsides against artists that rely on the undisclosed use of heavily cropped reproductions of their art.

Wildmon and his group, Conner said, “are not enjoined from writing anything about Mr. Wojnarowicz’s work which is true, (but) the First Amendment does not allow libel or the reproduction of altered or mutilated copies of an artist’s work.”

Wildmon declined to comment on the ruling, though one of his lawyers, Benjamin W. Bull, characterized it as a “Pyrrhic victory,” since the Wildmon group had already stopped distributing the disputed mailing.

Wojnarowicz said Conner’s ruling “sent a clear message that their misrepresentations of the work were as we had claimed.”

The injunction order came after a day of testimony by Wildmon, Wojnarowicz and an expert art policy witness.

The Wojnarowicz show sparked controversy among conservatives because the arts endowment supported it with a $15,000 grant to Illinois State University, whose gallery organized the show and opened it several months ago.

Conner reserved judgment on the lawsuit as a whole--which includes counts alleging defamation of character, copyright infringement and violation of a New York state law that protects the integrity of artworks. But the injunction was seen as a victory for Wojnarowicz, who has AIDS and whose work often includes AIDS-related themes, sometimes with strong sexual content.