Debate Over Censorship of the Arts

I am getting sick and tired of reading about Karen Finley’s supposedly shocking use of melted chocolate on her “semi-nude body” (“Bucks for Beethoven Not the Bizarre,” by Charles Krauthammer, Commentary, Aug. 27). Big deal! I smeared orange-colored shaving cream on my totally nude body and sprinkled myself with pumpkin seeds in a 1980 performance, yet I was still funded by the NEA this year. (I rejected the money because of the obscenity clause.) Why should Finley be seen as more obscene than I? (She was defunded by Chairman John Frohnmayer.) Is chocolate more obscene than shaving cream? Is brown more obscene than orange? Shouldn’t we then ban all brown paintings and sculptures?

The appropriation of non-traditional materials in collage, assemblage, painting and sculpture has been prevalent since Picasso incorporated newspaper clippings and Braque used sand in their early Cubist works.

Dyes for colors come from organic sources, but of course the “scandal” inherent in Finley’s use of chocolate lies not in the contact of a foreign substance to human skin, but in the meaning underlying her act. She is protesting the demeaning of women in our society. The graphic use--a visual metaphor for denigration and humiliation--offends those who prefer their brains tickled, with their senses unassailed.

I wish this whole debate addressed the real matter at hand: the still-powerful and pervasive puritanical hold on our society by the old, white, male, deeply sexist Establishment with its myopic vision and understanding of human life, and its agenda of total control of our society.

RACHEL ROSENTHAL

Los Angeles