Rating: 
Summary: The Death of Art
Review: When the blasphemous manure-based exhibit, Sensation, opened at a prestigious Brooklyn Museum, indignant panjandrums were aggrieved that anybody would express outrage at this daring creation--or at least convincingly put forth that silly argument with a straight face. That oft-bellowed screed gave proof to the old adage that a lie told emphatically enough becomes truth. Obviously, excrement has no place in any valid work of art. Defaming religious symbols that have inspired for centuries debases aesthetic values. It is merely the controversy on which these modern day insurrectionists feed. Their concern for art takes a distant back seat to their lust for fame and money.Lynn Munson efficiently documents the rampant hypocrisy within the so-called artistic society today. While the loudmouthed rebels who now control most of the arts establishment perpetually invoke the shibboleth of artistic freedom, the author paints a picture of greedy complainers whose goal is glory far more than artistic merit. The National Endowment for the Arts' obsequious funding programs may have played some role in fostering this change in artisans goals because the drive for acclaim was not always the primary artistic motivator. In the late 1960's when Lyndon Johnson--unquestionably with good intentions--created the National Endowment for the Arts--most of those creative folks truly valued the beauty of their trade. As Ms. Munson says, "the kinds of artists who received early NEA grants didn't choose artmaking as a professional path...and even the best of them expected to work their lives without public acknowledgement." In an ironic aside, she explains how the NEA under Johnson advocated true art, but under the administration of the far more conservative Richard Nixon, avant-garde experimentalism became sacred and standard criteria acquired the status of passe. Regarding those self-righteous voices who declaim against censorship whenever some crackpot with a perverted mind is not readily granted a government grant, Ms. Munson notes "successive NEA chairmen recited the mantras of censorship and artistic freedom even while maintaining a panel system that discriminated against artists outside the postmodern establishment." Mentioning how real artists are now hardly given tertiary consideration by the ideologically-charged NEA, she says "how thoroughly the National Endowment for the Arts had become by 1995 at excluding precisely the caliber of artist it had rewarded in 1967, and how dimly the agency had come to be viewed by everyone but its dependents." In a further rejection of exquisite and graceful presentation, the author discusses how the modern museum has in many ways sought to eschew visual grandeur and make itself as prosaic as possible. She sites many examples of grandiose longstanding structures taking steps to shun their stimulating elegance and highlight mundane features. As insulting as it is to know the NEA is wantonly flushing taxpayer money, its weird actions are not without humor. Ms. Munson introduces Bonnie Sherk who received an NEA grant in 1975 for a project that "involved shutting herself into a cement-floored studio with a few friends and numerous animals (a sow name Pigme, two ring-necked doves, a woolly monkey, etc.); together they would engage in 'building and maintaining nests.'" Readers will be left conjuring up an image of Pigme thinking "get me out here!" A very hopeful sign concerns the change in Lynn Munson's status since the publication of eye-opening expose in 2002. She currently serves as the deputy director of National Endowment for the Humanities. So while the entire concept of federal subsidies to artsy enterprises remains dubious, if the bad policy must stay in place, it is far better to see taxpayer dollars doled out to support majestic sculptures and splendid grisailles than ordure originals.
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