Modern art is problematic. When you see some art that looks like a pile of
manure, are you supposed to be moved? Feel the emotions of the artist? Pinch
your nose? I mean, what if the piece of art really is manure, literally?
Painter Chris Ofili won England’s 20,000-pound Turner Prize in 1998 for some
paintings spruced up with elephant dung from the London Zoo. While any
assessment I could make would be entirely subjective, to me, this seems even
more tasteless than the female stage artist who plasters her upper deck in
chocolate — not that a Hershey’s bra isn’t at least a trifle odd all by
itself.
About Mr. Ofili, Gotham Mayor Rudolph Giuliani agrees with me. According to
yesterday’s New York Times, he’s currently making himself look like a
knuckle-dragging lowbrow to the local art vultures. As it happens, Rudy has
threatened to stuff the funding for the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the can if
it refuses to put the kibosh on an exhibit that features a portrait of the
Virgin Mary decorated with a clump of Ofili’s favorite brand of excrement,
Dumbo dung. For Giuliani, the show must not go on — just go.
Not that the museum is buckling in fear. According to the Times, the museum
is simply pooh-poohing “Mr. Giuliani’s expression of outrage” and is
proceeding with the exhibit despite his ruinous threats.
Timothy Noah, writing yesterday for Slate, stands in Rudy’s corner on this.
Why, Noah wonders, “should taxpayers have to pay for a portrait of the
Virgin Mary covered by elephant s—?” He adds that it seems a bit odd that
the folks who incessantly complain “about school prayer and public-school
vouchers spent on religious education are ready to lay down their lives to
protect the government’s right to subsidize art that desecrates religious
figures in the most sophomoric way imaginable,” asking, “Whatever happened
to the separation between church and state?” Someone piled a load of
you-know-what all over it.
Other folks aren’t taking Ofili-style art so well either. In December 1998,
Reuters reported that Ray Hutchins, a “professional illustrator, has shown
the British art world what he thinks of the dried elephant dung-wielding
painter who won Britain’s top art prize,” the aforementioned Turner Prize
captured by Ofili. How did he show the world? The 66-year-old man dumped a
wheelbarrow full of bovine scat on the steps of London’s Tate Gallery, where
Ofili was then displaying his award-winning “art.”
While Hutchins, who makes his living illustrating detailed military
diagrams, is probably not taking this opportunity to branch into coproart
himself, he wanted to make a statement. A sign was planted in the mound to
announce the work’s provisional title: “Modern art is a load of bulls—.”
And leave it to gallery charlatans to conclude anything otherwise.
Many examples of modern art are a bit iffy. Jodi Kantor, also writing for
Slate, mentions a 1997 exhibit at New York’s Whitney Museum, “which
included … videos of a half-naked man dressed as Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer frolicking with nude female ‘elves’ as they defecated, stirred the
excrement up with chocolate, and ate it.” Mmm.
While to my knowledge music “composer” John Cage wasn’t a big fan of poop,
his particular spin on music was worth just about as much. As culture critic
Francis Schaeffer recounts, Cage was known to flip coins to decide how the
notes would progress. He would sometimes have two conductors conduct
simultaneously — just to confuse the orchestra. He even designed a machine
that would conduct an orchestra with entirely random motions so the
musicians wouldn’t know what was coming next. I’ve heard some of Cage’s
music in which the singer actually giggles, hiccups, and oinks like a pig.
So is Cage an artist, or just a guy who flips coins and makes noise? What
about the cellist who once played Cage’s music under water — in the nude?
Is that “performance art,” or just a ridiculous spectacle?
Jackson Pollock was famous for his “random” painting — dribbling color on
horizontal canvases by swinging cans of paint over the top of them. Hardly
seems the challenge of a creative mind. Any yutz with a canvas, a few cans
of paint and a string to swing them from can create a work as “brilliant” as
Pollock’s. Norman Rockwell once showed what he thought of Pollock’s work
when he painted a museum scene in which a man was eyeing a Pollock scatter
painting — a Pollock within a Rockwell. “Anything you can do,” he seemed to
be saying to Pollock, “I can do better.”
James Garner’s movie, “The Wheeler Dealers,” takes some great jabs at the
professional arts and pretension crowd. At one exhibition for a new artist,
a paid “crier” emotes before paintings to stir emotion in the potential
buyers. One art critic in the movie sits on a bench with a dozen worshippers
hanging on his every word, arrayed around his feet like disciples to a guru
as he utters syllable after syllable of pretentious nonsense. When Garner
overhears the conversation and tries to pass off some of this critic’s
wisdom, he inadvertently tells the painter himself, who dismisses it all as
horse huckey — or in the case of Ofili, elephant huckey. In “The Wheeler
Dealers,” Garner picks up on all the phoniness and plays right along,
becoming a wheeling, dealing buyer and seller of modern art (“fuzzy
pictures” and “scratchy pictures” as he calls them).
I recommend the same tact using Ofili’s special medium. Let’s get into this,
get our hands dirty. Remember “Piss Christ,” Andres Serrano’s crucifix
submerged in urine? I say we do a “Dungi Lama,” or maybe a “Manure
Mohammed.” What about re-sculpting famous statues? The Statue of David
could be done in dog doo. Cow dung would be good for doing Moses. The
Sistine Chapel could probably use a bit of restoration. We’ll just give
Ofili a call and see what particular excremental method he’d chose for such
a project.
Or, we could take a hint from Giuliani’s ignoramus tact and simply de-fund
garbage like this. The government shouldn’t be publicly funding art anyway.
Taking it from modern art in general to Ofili’s line of work in particular,
if private citizens want to feel “artistically lifted” by a pile of manure,
more power to ’em. But taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill. As
Noah observes, “The Times would understand this principle better if the
cause of offense were, for example, a government-funded silk screen that
said ALL NIGGERS MUST DIE or KIKES INVENTED THE HOLOCAUST.”
Offensive? Absolutely. Shocking? You bet. Art? Not a chance. In the final
analysis, it’s just a mess of government-funded manure.
Joel Miller is Assistant Editor of
WorldNetDaily.
