NCJ Number
139345
Date Published
1992
Length
384 pages
Annotation
Based upon extensive interviews, a broad sampling of media accounts, legal documents, and the author's own observation of pertinent events, this book examines the opposing artistic, cultural, political, and social issues exposed by public and official responses to controversial visual art, photography, film, video, and performance art.
Abstract
The first chapter surveys significant social, political, and cultural trends in the late 1980's and early 1990's, since this was the context that spawned art controversies. These disputes are deemed by the author to be diversionary moves calculated to deflect attention from such broader conditions. Chapter two is a case study of the reception critics and defenders accorded a scornful portrait of Mayor Washington in Chicago. The author examines this event in detail to demonstrate the fundamentals of the book's approach to its discussion of "arresting images." The next four chapters focus on the themes of race, religion, patriotism, and sex in art, all of which are significant factors in arousing conflict. The following two chapters expand the exploration of sex as a "hot button" as they examine homosexuality and AIDS. Two chapters describe the moral entrepreneurs who orchestrated the reactions to the art at issue and the subsequent reactions of the involved artists. Remaining chapters explore the history and contemporary status of the National Endowment for the Arts, the key battle site during the period examined; tribalism; identity politics and the pervasiveness of intergroup conflict; and their relation to clashes over freedom of expression. One of the central themes of the book is that a combination of two critical elements is required for art controversies to erupt: there must be a sense that values have been threatened, and power must be mobilized to address the threat. 27 plates, chapter notes, and subject index