02/25/01
Cashing in on 'art'
Once upon a time, reporters were taught, usually by a gruff city
editor, what was news. And what wasn’t.
Reporters today are called journalists. But the lesson is the
same: It’s like this: “Kid, dog bites man is not news; man bites
dog, that’s news.”
It’s also news when the man chases down the dog and does his level
best to shove a fist in the dog’s mouth. In New York, there’s
a whole lot of biting going on.
Maybe the cash register at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which had
rung so well when an “artist” used elephant dung and pornography
to depict the Blessed Mother, was no longer chiming. Whatever
the reason, the museum decided what worked before will work again.
And it is.
Photographer Renee Cox has recreated DaVinci’s icon of Christianity
as “Yo Mama’s Last Supper.” There are still 12 “apostles” but
in the Christ position is the artist herself, nude.
As you might expect—and, I’m certain, so did the Brooklyn Museum
of Art—there have been squeals of righteous anger. Ah, but there’s
also been lots of media which will translate into—you guessed
it—cash in the museum’s coffers.
The art isn’t news. That’s dog-bites-man. A protest? That’s man-bites-dog.
The art is, quoting Brooklyn Bishop Thomas Daily, “Disgusting.”
But it is, at least in the eye of the beholder, art, and therefore
this becomes yet another First Amendment case. New York Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani, a Catholic, blew his top yet again. He asks
the right questions: What gives a museum that receives some public
money the right to be disrespectful?
Giuliani maintains that if the art were anti-Semitic, reaction
would be so fierce the museum would close the exhibit. I think
he’s wrong.
So does a friend in the Chicago Jewish community who knows about
such things. He agreed there’d be a great outcry. But, he said,
the exhibit would remain. And the cash register would ring.
Some people propose a commission to “approve” art. But it’s only
a short step—or a slippery slope—to censoring something we wouldn’t
want censored. After art comes books, then religious expression.
It’s happened before.
So, should we let Philistines poke fun at faith? Or grin and bear
it? No, protesting is correct. But it’s never a good idea to raise
such a fuss that the “art” gets more prominence than it deserves.
That’s “man-bites-dog.”
—Tom Sheridan,
Editor and General Manager
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