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On The Arts: Dealing with power of art vs. power of symbolism
Sunday, October 03, 1999 By Mary Thomas
The difficulties inherent in creating public art within a multicultural society moved from the theoretical to the streets recently during an event on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. At issue was the power of image and how that power should be used.
Mary Thomas is the Post-Gazette art critic.
The occasion was the Jill Watson Festival Across the Arts, established four years ago to memorialize an alumna who, during her brief life, had consistently challenged constricted patterns of thinking and encouraged a broad-based approach to problem solving. Artists, performers and lecturers are chosen to appear at the festival based upon their potential to expand participants' thinking beyond traditional channels and inspire them to consider ideas that reach past the status quo.
In this spirit, the student body is invited by the festival committee to submit proposals for artworks that will be created by multidisciplinary teams and that will stimulate discussion.
One such proposal that was accepted this year was a critique of two new campus buildings -- the University Center and the Purnell Center for the Arts, the latter of which will be dedicated in the spring. The timely project seemed especially appropriate because Watson was an architect whose disappointment with the buildings' pragmatic, classically influenced design was well-known.
The controversy arose because of the form the artwork took.
Within the specific -- and perhaps elite -- professional realm of practitioners and academics who concern themselves on a daily basis with questions of architectural application, the word neo-Fascist seemed to fittingly and succinctly describe the authoritarian and non-individualistic aspects of the offending design.
Picking up on what, then, was everyday parlance within a group of like-minded individuals, the students created a work that draped the two buildings in the infamy of the reference that they'd been charged with. A series of wall-sized projections of slides of Nazi Germany repeated silently above the blood red, floodlight-torched columns of their facing facades.
The resultant artwork was well-presented, aesthetically composed and effective. The message was obvious to anyone who was "in the loop."
What was not obvious was that there were others who would see the work within a very different frame of reference and become offended by the piece.
Many Jewish members of the campus community were stunned by what they saw. One faculty member, the son of a Holocaust survivor, was so shocked by the sight that he returned to campus, after having driven home, to verify to himself what he had seen. A Jewish student registered a complaint with his student religious organization, Hillel.
When the festival committee -- on the third and last festival day -- became aware of the effect of the work on some of the community, the presiding member suggested to the young artists that they may want to omit the slide projections. However, in recognition of freedom of expression, he didn't require them to do so.
The students chose to keep the artwork intact, but also to make themselves available to discuss it with anyone who happened by to alleviate misunderstanding.
By midnight, as the life of the project was coming to a close, the artists were pleased with the dialogue that the work had sparked, and the campus was quiet. The committee hopes to sponsor a future public forum that will consider issues related to the art, including those of original verses perceived intent, and -- addressing the initial concept -- whether the building design is grave enough to warrant such condemnation.
But was the solution sufficient?
Should the administration have closed the piece down, citing that the artwork was so heinous that censorship was a valid response? Should the artists -- a societal contingent not generally characterized by compliance -- have chosen to self-censor? Should the wounded parties have simply remained mute, in effect also practicing a kind of self-censorship?
Upon reflection, none of these options are more appealing than the course of action that was taken. Then what is the lesson to apply in the future?
Is it realistic to require all artists to avoid violating any component of the myriad cultural systems that coexist in our country, and to anticipate how their expression may be misconstrued to be an insult to a specific group?
If not, who can be trusted to draw the line, in the ever-expanding sands of diversity, between sensitivity and censorship?
When issues of rights, or even of good taste, clash, how should that be handled? Determining the point at which such watchdog actions compromise the artwork, democratic debate and freedom of speech is a touchy and laborious process that has been played out in more than one courtroom.
As society strives to be inclusive, a balance must be maintained between the respect due all comers and over-scrutiny that can lead to stagnation.
The central question becomes: Who controls powerful symbols? Because someone always will.
It is illusionistic to think removing them from the public domain will do anything more than return them to use by illicit groups. Allowing them to surface in a pluralistic, public realm will subject them to the mechanisms of social evolution.
To return to the specific example of the student project, the use of images of the Third Reich in this way disenfranchises them by recasting them from symbol of power to symbol of aberrance and evil. It is one way that the larger cultural body can absorb individual wrongs and ameliorate them.
Open discussion is essential to a democracy, and the raising of issues of societal concern is a role that art can serve well. Debates sparked by artistic statements can act as social safety valves, providing occasion to vent steam, within a nation whose voices are many and diverse.
Think about that as you read of the burgeoning brouhaha in Brooklyn over artist Chris Ofili's painting, "The Holy Virgin Mary," notorious for its perceived attack on religion. You'll get your chance to judge Ofili's motivations when he joins 40 other artists in the Carnegie International next month.
Bring along an open mind.
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