Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

Analyzing and criticizing the execution, intention, and effects of an art exhibit is acceptable and sometimes even noble. What should not be on the table, however, is supporting the arrest of an artist for using the word ‘assassination’ in the title of their exhibit. Ann of Feministing writes:

The artist says he meant to be “provocative.” “It’s art,” he says. “It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.” Um, yeah. I’m sensitive to free-speech concerns, but this exhibit strikes me as way more than offensive. Assassination is a real — not a theoretical — threat. And this exhibit is seriously disturbing — on all sorts of levels.

No, you are not sensitive to free speech issues, not when you act as if presenting an art exhibit containing provocative (why is this in scare quotes? the art has certainly provoked a response) and offensive displays with the word ‘assassination’ in the title amounts to a threat that deserves legal sanction. When you speak out in such a way, you are supporting legal sanctions against thought crimes and speech crimes– unless of course you can point to a specific image or sentence specifically advocating violence in a clear and unquestionable way. “Um, yeah” does not count.

Do you not realize that by supporting police action in this case you are advocating the right of the state to be an arbiter of art? Or shall they simply go after any display that foregrounds the term ‘assassination’. Um, yeah that wouldn’t have a chilling effect on free speech at all.

Moreover, I think that the image displayed in the Feministing post shows a striking contrast between the level of racism still prevalent in society (as represented by the comments of Don Imus) and the notion of a post-racial society that many people attach to the Obama candidacy. Other parts of the exhibit may not be so successful, but it is difficult to tell from pictures on the web. This is not, however, the most important point: censorship is not an appropriate response to bad art either.

Interested readers may also want to take a look at the artist’s blog.

(via)

Just in time for Beltane, the new issue of Crossing Rivers Into Twilight featuring Bill Dunlap, Holly Anderson, Ruby Mohan, Christopher Barnes, Gerard Sarnat, and Tom Sheehan is online at www.critjournal.com/current.html.

In addition to seeking submissions for the next issue, CRIT is now looking for poetry for its first anthology ; further details can be found at www.critjournal.com/about.html.

Apparently, it is absolutely essential to discuss the shamefulness of a fifteen-year old having a body and of posing for a photograph that forces us to contemplate it in its nude state. One has to wonder, however, if those so terribly outraged about Miley Cyrus’s appearance draped only in a strategically-placed sheet find paintings by old masters in which women appear in much smaller strategic drapes or even totally nude to be offensive.

I suspect not. The difference in reaction has a lot to do with our perception that photographs are real while paintings are interpretations. Presented with a photograph of a body, we react as if we are presented with an actual body; painting, perceived as unreal, is taken as distanced. It is also significant that this distancing is most typically achieved through the device of a man’s eye and hand. The female body becomes safe and acceptable when reinterpreted and recreated by a man in a way a camera, least of all a camera operated by a woman, is incapable of.