Aaron post 7

Aaron Childree

When visiting the website for the National Endowment for the Arts, the first thing that stuck out to me was their slogan, “A great nation deserves great art”. If their mission is truly to help people see great art, then I don’t believe obscenity should even be a part of the discussion. Great art provokes thought, emotion, passion. It shows us beauty in a way we have never thought of it before. It is not the job of the artist to walk the passionless middle-ground so as not to offend anyone, it is his job to create great art. In order to create this kind of long-lasting and influential art, the artist must show us something unique, he must take a risk. The art he creates from this risk will be loved by some, hated by others, but most importantly, it will provoke passion.

I think this is a good time to point out the difference between something that looks good and something that is beautiful. In the court case in which the obscenity of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography (or rather a few of his photographs) was in question, Steiner says that “the jurors heard that ‘Art is not always pleasing to our eyes. Art is to tell us something about ourselves and to make us look inside ourselves and to look at the world around us.’” (Steiner, p.56). To say that something is pretty means that it pleases your sense of sight. You enjoy looking at it and find it pleasant. The concept of beauty goes much deeper than this. Webster’s Dictionary defines beauty as “qualities that give pleasure to the senses”. Therefore, beauty is by no means limited to visual pleasure. Something that is beautiful moves us in a way that is beyond the visual. Art can be beautiful without being pleasing to the eye and should not be discredited just because a few “experts” say it isn’t pretty.

According to the above definition, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography is without question art, and could easily be considered great art. The simple fact that we are still talking about these photographs today is a testament to the timelessness of the art. Mapplethorpe created formally sound photographs that provoke such extreme emotions as to cause a national controversy. Mapplethorpe took a risk, some loved it, some hated it, but there is no doubting the fact that it provoked extreme thought and emotion. The Philadelphia Inquirer put it this way, “No matter what Sen. Jesse Helms may think about Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs . . . he will have to admit one thing. People sure do want to see them.” (Steiner, p.30). Mapplethorpe himself explained his sadomasochistic photos as a way of representing a unique kind of beauty. He says, “there was a feeling I could get looking at pornographic imagery that I thought had never been apparent in art. And I thought that if I could somehow retain that feeling . . . if I could get that across and make an art statement . . . then I would be doing something that is uniquely my own” (Steiner, p.57)

I would say that the NEA was justified in funding Robert Mapplethorpe’s art because their goal is to make great art available to the public. There is a lot to be learned about the formal aspects of photography as well as about issues that surround us everyday from Mapplethorpe’s photography. It teaches us a lot about ourselves and our own desires, and that is what makes it beautiful art.

So after that lengthy explanation, you can see that of course art influences behavior. I think the question of whether or not art can change someone’s behavior is something that was answered long ago. Plato wanted to censor art in his ideal Republic for this exact reason. On the same note, why do you think Hitler was so concerned with what art people were allowed to view as “good” and “German”? Why do you think the Soviets banned abstract art? Totalitarian regimes understand better than most the affects art can have on the way people view the world they live in. That’s why they wanted to censor art, to only allow people to see positive images and therefore react to the government in only positive ways. They understood that art has the ability to move people to action and did not trust the intelligence of their subjects to decipher what ideas they should and shouldn’t act on.

This leads me to my next point, that representing something is entirely different from advocating it, and that it is up to the viewer to decipher this difference. By painting something, the artist is not necessarily implying that what he or she is painting is the best thing or the best idea. In the same way that a painting of a waterfall does not imply that that particular waterfall is the artist’s favorite landscape, a depiction of a homosexual act does not mean that the artist is advocating homosexual relationships over heterosexual ones. The artist could be advocating homosexuality or making a statement against it, it is for the viewer to decide upon viewing and possibly researching the work of art.

I think that in our current society, too much responsibility is placed on the artist, and not enough on the viewer. The artist’s job is to take what they are feeling and portray it onto whatever artistic medium they are using. This is where the responsibility of the artist should stop. Whatever crisis the art causes (Steiner mentions Salman Rushdie and the huge uprising caused by his book The Satanic Verses) is not the responsibility of the artist. It is the responsibility of the viewer to view the art and then come to his own conclusions. It should go without saying that a man is still subject to the consequences of his actions even if he claims that his actions were provoked by a work of art. Marshall Mathers states this more clearly then any scholar I have heard when he says, “They say music can alter moods and talk to you, but can it load a gun for you, and cock it to?” The same situation applies to art.

I think writing can affect people’s behavior, but not in the same way as visual art. There is something about visual art that appeals to a much deeper part of us than written text. This is because we are all searching for beauty. Almost everything we do in life is part of an ultimate quest for what is beautiful. Steiner quotes Leon Krier on this subject: “people want beauty around them. And everywhere they are denied it.” (Steiner, p.3) The objective of visual art is to try to give us a taste of the beauty that we want so bad but are denied in the world we live in, and that is why it is so influential.