Jesus in Art

The mere creation of a work of art does not obligate any gallery to display it or any viewer to appreciate it. Sometimes art is just bad, no matter how important or noble its intentions.

The National Portrait Gallery in DC recently found itself under fire for choosing to display a 4-minute video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz entitled “A Fire in My Belly”, which showed Jesus on the cross swarming with ants. The piece was supposedly intended to compare Jesus’ suffering on the cross with the pain of AIDS sufferers. Several religious groups and GOP leaders led by John Boehner and Eric Cantor crusaded to have the piece removed due to its inflammatory nature, citing a misuse of taxpayer funds both in creating and displaying the video. The gallery caved in, pulling the video from the exhibit after Boehner and Cantor threatened to “review the [gallery’s] funding” in a ridiculous power move more offensive than the video itself.

Maybe the video was inflammatory; maybe too it was just bad art.

Locked horns between an artist’s creation and a hostile viewing public boil down to freedom of expression. The artist is always free (and encouraged) to create controversial works that expresses personal concerns for social issues, including the impact of AIDS. No one denies that right – art history is built around controversial art, just ask anyone who has studied Picasso’s “Guernica” or Marcus Harvey’s “Myra”, a giant portrait of murderer Myra Hindley, created using children’s handprints.

A dissenting public exercises their freedom of expression by protesting a controversial piece, even demanding that it be taken down; a measure as distasteful to the artist as the piece may be to the public. The artist should not have sole domain over freedom of expression; one does not automatically override the other.

A gallery exercises its freedom by agreeing to display a work, in this case deeming “Fire in My Belly” “brave” and “important”. Thrust into the position of arbitrator and torn between protecting the artist’s freedom to express and the public’s freedom to protest, they removed Wojnarowicz’s piece, saying “. . . some reports . . . have created an impression that the video is intentionally sacrilegious. In fact, the artist’s intention was to depict the suffering of an AIDS victim. It was not the museum’s intention to offend.”

In fact, the gallery received almost no complaints about the video until an article about it showed up on CNSNews.com, a conservative news site.

There is ultimately little difference in a piece that is rejected for display by an uncomprehending judge (called “juried selection”) and one that is removed afterward by an equally uncomprehending public (called “censorship”), other than a little inflamed publicity and a possible mention on Sean Hannity. Both are judged on their fitness for exhibition, whether it’s before or after display, and the losers in both cases go into storage.

The wrench in the gearing is Christianity, which seems to be the preferred religion of ridicule in today’s media. Choosing to use the Christ figure in art work not intended as purely religious expression is a deliberate provocation, with artists certain they can wring publicity from the challenging imagery with little worries of long-term consequence. In fact, a condemnation by a religious organization or the Family Foundation can be the artists’ 15 minutes of fame.

Recently the objectionable use of Jesus in non-religious art prompted some opposing “art” of its own. In August, Enrique Chagoya’s lithograph “The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals”, depicting a Christ figure receiving oral gratification, was destroyed by a female truck driver expressing her artistic integrity with a crowbar. Was this not a performance piece of its own? Does art really just depend on “who turns over the trash can” as the late Richmond artist Gerald Donato testified in a 1980s handbill trial?

Artists and art patrons may cry “censorship!” when a gallery removes a controversial or inflammatory piece due to public outcry, but if an artist chooses to splatter a statue of the Virgin Mary in cow dung or submerge a crucifix in urine then that artist and the galleries must be prepared for the inevitable blowback that will ensue. Christian imagery and taxpayer dollars mix like oils and watercolors.

Using a Christ-centered piece within a gallery managed by the U.S. Government should also provoke cries from the Church-and-state-separation crowd, but they seem to be more interested in protecting the rights of the artist and cherry-picking constitutional law. In their world, art praising Christ should be privately funded and displayed only in church, but only art ridiculing Christ is worthy of public funding and display in museums.

And a political party that threatens a gallery’s funding due to one 4-minute video is nothing more than an insecure bully.

Secular art using religious figures then called “brave” or “important”, however, rarely is – and the usually gratuitous use of Christ and other Christian figures is the path of least resistance for igniting controversy. If Chagoya or the late Wojnarowicz wanted to truly be controversial and put their artistic sensibilities and necks on the line and draw strong reactions they should have portrayed Mohammed in their work instead of Jesus.

Now that would be brave.