Island
Living 23: Local Community Standards, Again
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
(In last month’s column, I spoke about a
large photography show I’d curated almost
two decades ago, in 1980, for the Newhouse
Gallery at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center;
titled "Silver Sensibilities," it included
work by Roy DeCarava, Allen A. Dutton, Richard
Kirstel, Michael Martone, and Julio Mitchel. One
Islander raised objections to the show’s
content in a letter to the Harbor’s then-Director,
which was included in the preceding column. He
asked me to reply to her concerns; what follows
is the letter I wrote for that purpose.)
*
Dear Mr. S--:
As curator of
the "Silver Sensibilities" photography
exhibit currently at the Newhouse Gallery, I'd like
to respond to the recent letter about this show
from Ms. Kathleen G--.
It is of course
difficult to reply directly to a statement as full
of vague descriptions and emotion-laden value judgments
as hers. "Decent," "low-class view
of life," "degrading," and "outright
pornography" are terms which require definition
if we're going to argue meaningfully about specific
pictures.
From her letter,
I would guess that the work in the show which disturbed
her was that of Allen A. Dutton and Michael Martone.
As indicated in my wall label, Dutton's imagery
is a suite of collage fantasies depicting an exclusively
female world. Since the women in these images engage
in no sexual activity of any kind, I can only assume
that Ms. G-- finds female nudity itself (or a humorous
portrayal of it) to be offensive. That saddens me,
for her sake, but hardly makes the imagery either
"degrading" or "outright pornography."
The piece by
Michael Martone which may have upset her is a rephotographed
image from a brochure advertising erotic literature,
across which the photographer has laid a light bulb.
The resulting print is captioned "We Are the
Lightbulb." This image is part of an excerpt
on exhibit from a book-in-progress titled Notes
from a Moving Ambulance. In the context of this
excerpt -- which is a sequence concerning the author's
adolescence and young manhood -- this image is positioned
between a self-portrait and a portrait of the photographer's
mother. It is clearly intended to express an adolescent's
shock at the discovery of the rawness of human sexuality.
Anyone who took the trouble to read Martone's extensive
accompanying text, or to scrutinize the sequence
as a whole, can see that this image is hardly intended
to titillate the viewer, and is integral to the
work's overall purpose.
I say this to
explain these images, not to defend them. They need
no defense. This exhibit is, so far as I can determine,
the most important show of contemporary photography
ever presented on Staten Island. It includes work
by five of today's major photographers. Their stature
in their own field is apparent from their extensive
national and international exhibitions and publications,
their inclusion in major museum collections, and
their positions on the faculties of respected art
institutes and colleges. They are demonstrably serious
artists, prominent in their own field. And, like
all artists, prominent or not, and like all citizens
of this country, they share the right of freedom
of expression.
This is not
to say that Ms. G-- (or anyone else) is obligated
to like the work of any or all of them. But let
us keep in mind that it's not the job of the Newhouse
Gallery to present only work that everyone will
like (since no such work exists), nor even work
that everyone will find inoffensive.
Contrary to
Ms. G--'s claim, Staten Island does not need yet
another museum or gallery "for the whole family."
If you're looking for someplace where you can take
unsophisticated children and conservatively-minded
adults without disturbing their preconceptions or
confronting them with provocative contemporary art,
Staten Island offers you a wide variety of publicly-supported
choices: The Staten Island Institute of Arts and
Sciences, the Tibetan Museum, High Rock Conservation
Center, Richmondtown and the Richmondtown Museum
-- and, of course, the Children's Museum in Stapleton.
Additionally, there are many sections of the Snug
Harbor Cultural Center itself which provide what
we might call "family fare."
But what Staten
Island needs desperately, and has not had until
now, is a gallery with the courage and conviction
to support and display the more difficult, challenging,
adventurous and experimental kinds of contemporary
art. I think it is to the credit of the Newhouse
Gallery (and its director, Daniel Werner), and to
the credit of the Cultural Center as a whole, that
work of an intellectually and emotionally provocative
nature is sponsored there on occasion. The audience
for such work on Staten Island is sizeable, and
forms a real part of the Cultural Center's constituency;
that audience also has rights, which should not
be denied.
I would suggest
to Ms. G-- that she should exercise the same precautions
in recommending the Newhouse Gallery to children
as she would in recommending the movie house: read
the reviews and, if in doubt, preview the work.
As she herself points out, there is much at the
gallery of a milder nature. She cites the John Noble
show, but fails to mention that, concurrent with
"Silver Sensibilities," Gallery 3 is showing
an unusually safe set of paintings which would only
offend someone who believes that art should be more
than a repetition of clichés. I shudder to
think of the gallery's future if we demand that
it exhibit nothing that could be unsettling to an
eight-year-old mind. Like our libraries, our art
institutions are charged with the awesome responsibility
of preserving, protecting, and making available
the full range of adult experience and creative
expression -- to which, judiciously, the young may
be allowed the privilege of access.
The gallery,
it should be noted, did post a notice suggesting
that parents preview the exhibit. That, by the way,
is a precaution the Museum of Modern Art did not
feel was necessary for its recent Picasso extravaganza,
which was visited by several hundred thousand children.
The very first room of that exhibit contained Picasso's
early sketches of oral sex in Barcelona; the exhibit
as a whole contained a variety of nudes (many in
fantasized situations) and much explicit erotica.
To the best of my knowledge, no one was scandalized
by this.
What is most
depressing about Ms. G--'s letter is that the work
in question is not only fine and moving but is,
by comparison with much other current art work in
all media, conservative in both style and content.
Nothing in this show would raise an eyebrow at any
gallery or art museum in Manhattan. If the Newhouse
Gallery is to fulfill its mandate to bring the best
of contemporary art to Staten Island, then Staten
Islanders will have to be ready to accept an education
in what constitutes the full range of ideas under
exploration by these artists. We are very close
in time to the twenty-first century. It is long
past time for Staten Islanders to realize that we
cannot continue to pretend that we live in the nineteenth.
Yours truly,
/s/ A. D. Coleman
(Continued from
previous issue.)
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©
Copyright 1999 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
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