Increasingly as media progresses (television, Internet, and even newspapers) social media creates faster paths of communication and and perceived incidence(s) of censorship of the visual arts comes with a heightened awareness. Cartoons and art sometimes contain (to some) problematic subject matter (some times subject to interpretation or misinterpretation) and this is an age-old issue. Your professor was censored and asked to pick up a piece from a show in Philadelphia. According to the director: “It poses a threat to some of our more sensitive patients.” (It was for a show in a hospital’s gallery and later a patient sought me out to buy the piece because it was meaningful and full of life: Irony at its best.
In “I Love Lucy” the couple’s beds were separate and her “with child” announcement could not include the word pregnant and was brilliantly integrated into one of her husband’s musical shows. Naturally television and motion pictures have come a long way. Television and movies more closely parallel with social progression and artistic freedoms but fine art (including art with text) seems to be lagging far behind.
Famous photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s work nearly closed a museum (chronicled in the great film Dirty Pictures) and numerous arts hows have been picketed or threatened with reduction of state funding. Art shows have been closed or works removed from exhibitions so as not to offend, cause tension, create negative press or protest. Such questionable art has been fodder for programs like 60 Minutes or the evening news cast. Often in exhibitions artists are asked NOT to show works that could be considered offensive and nudity is often not permitted in community art spaces. In fact, the most common request is that artists not show artwork of nude subject matter. All of these controversies become disseminated in television and Internet-based news media but are they reasonable?
Since the book addresses photography and its controversies on page 211 which inspired the film Dirty Pictures, it might be an interesting diversion to discuss art not intended to offend (but it did) but either intended to express or educate:
Here are some links about artworks censored and removed from shows due to subject matter that was violent or threatening (implied, perceived or overt):
Alaska High School Controversy
Here is a link from Stephen Colbert who pushes the censors to their limits with this little 6 minute piece. Watch the whole thing:
Stephen Colbert’s “Is It Porn?”
From Everyone Loves Raymond, a segment from when Ray’s mom makes an inappropriate sculpture (sorry for the film quality – Warner Brothers had YouTube remove the original footage):
Marie’s Sculpture (Segment from Everyone Loves Raymond)