Lynne A. Munson, a research associate at AEI and author of Exhibitionism: Art in an Era of Intolerance (Ivan R. Dee, 2000), delivered the third of the Institute’s 2000-2001 Bradley Lectures on November 13. Edited excerpts follow.
The art wars of the past decade have been driven by art crafted to provoke the public. The fluid in Andres Serrano’s infamous image would have been unidentifiable had the artist not gone out of his way to title the image Piss Christ. And if its pachyderm waste had not brought wrath down upon Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary, the pornographic photographs that the artist collaged over and around the icon likely would have.
Most of these artists’ defenders and critics framed their disputes in a way that was sure to generate much heat but little truth. Those disputes have accomplished nothing aside from bloating the coffers of the opposing armies and propelling the careers of the artists who started them. Least of all have they served the public.
The art wars erupted during the postmodern era. Postmodernism derives from deconstruction, the theory that what we believe to be true about past events and historical figures long considered significant or about the merit of artistic and literary treasures is actually a propagandistic illusion perpetuated by the powerful. The art wars essentially have been public protests against the effect of these postmodern ideas on art and on our art institutions.
Postmodernism was accompanied by a culture of intolerance that eventually engulfed many of the art world’s most central institutions. It is a prejudice that has operated in reverse of the established stereotype, favoring the "cutting edge" over the traditional. In art funding agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in museums, in college art history departments, and even in artists’ studios, this bias has limited the types of art that have been acceptable to fund, exhibit, study, and make.
Lowering Standards
The NEA has been the font of many of our art wars. When it opened in 1967, grants went just to painters and sculptors and only in recognition of past contributions. The NEA focused on artists working in proven mediums and on people who had worked long and hard enough to demonstrate their seriousness and earn the respect of their peers.
Small groups, mostly of artists with intimate knowledge of the serious art world, selected the grantees, which included artists working in a range of styles. No one gunned for a particular style of work or for a particular constituency—just for the best artists.
The high standard set by these early panels took much of the gamble out of the grant-making process. Rather than guessing and placing bets on artists who they hoped might pan out, the panels made sound investments in some of America’s best living artists.
In the thirty years after its founding, the endowment’s focus moved away from funding proven artists to supporting artists who self-consciously sought out the cutting edge. A number of practices encouraged favoritism, including the use of repeat panelists and the practice of giving grants to the same grantees year after year. This extremely narrowed what kind of art received NEA support.
For example, the painting fellowships panel in 1995 was chaired not by an artist, but by a curator. From the start, some panelists identified themselves as spokesmen for particular types of work. Instead of debating the merits of individual applicants’ work, these panelists used the art to conduct a debate on the validity of different ways
of working.
The 1995 NEA grantees’ work ran the gamut in terms of processes, materials, and subject matter, yet only a handful of grants went to artists primarily concerned with formal aesthetic issues. Most grantees made art to make a point about something else, most often politics.
The Test of Time
The level of seriousness displayed by NEA grantees has plummeted over the years, but the most stunning contrast is the stylistic narrowness of the art the NEA sponsored in 1995 compared to 1967. Whereas the earlier grants went to artists working in a wide range of styles, the vast majority of 1995 grantees worked within the confines of postmodern academicism, making work that, like the art that has set off the art wars, takes baiting the public as its goal.
Ultimately, the history of art is constructed from the accumulated wisdom of individuals who have stood face-to-face with art objects and measured their worth. Works that cannot withstand such scrutiny lose currency, if not in their own day then years later, when the space between a work and the viewer’s eye is cleared of contemporary commotion. As the products of the postmodern period undergo this test, the calculated misperceptions and genuine follies of our time will be undone and the truth will emerge, long after the postmodernists have left the stage.
