A bit of controversy developing in DC after the National Portrait Gallery pulled a video from an exhibit exploring sexuality, in part due to 
pressure from Bill Donohue's Catholic League.
The exhibit, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, is one of the more controversial exhibits for the Portrait Gallery, and incoming Speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner, himself Catholic, joined Donohue in criticizing the exhibit. This particular video, available on YouTube here (somewhat graphic), is called "Fire in the Belly." Created by the late David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS related causes in 1992, is intended to highlight the suffering experienced by many living with and dying of the disease in the 1980s and 90s. There is much Christian imagery in the piece, and the scene causing much of the outrage involves ants crawling over a crucifix.
There are quite a few interpretations of the video. The Catholic League calls it, "hate speech" (Donohue's full statement is here). Commentary in the Washington Post says that the video is, "Wojnarowicz's reading of his piece puts it smack in the middle of the great tradition of using images of Christ to speak about the suffering of all mankind. There is a long, respectable history of showing hideously grisly images of Jesus - 17th-century sculptures in the National Gallery's recent show of Spanish sacred art could not have been more gory or distressing - and Wojnarowicz's video is nothing more than a relatively tepid reworking of that imagery, in modern terms."
A news article in the Post suggests that the GOP controlled House may revisit federal funding of museums that sponsor controversial exhibits due to this, a discussion that both Boehner and Donohue welcome. If you watch the video, what do you see? Hate speech or suffering? Blatant disrespect of the faith or moving identification was the scourged and marginalized savior? A masterpiece or a series of disconnected images?
Interpreting Art
The latest from america
If heaven is like a wedding banquet, then purgatory may be understood as preparation for a great celebration. It is not a dreary waiting room at the D.M.V., but a place of lively hope.
The incident allegedly involved the priest touching a female student’s long hair during a presentation as he was joking with about 200 students gathered to venerate the relic.
Spanish Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, who dedicated his priestly life and ministry to building bridges between Catholics and Muslims, died in Rome Nov. 25 at the age of 72.
After another disputed election, street protests wrack Mozambique. while a northern province, Cabo Delgado, endures a deadly Islamist insurrection.
Would the art supporters here be so understanding there as they are when the Church is being accused and attacked?
What someone creates to symbolize his or her thinking on some subject does not offend me because I recognize that it is a personal expression just like the video you are describing is a personal expression coming from you. I would think that whether your video comes to public attention or not would be based on many qualities besides the subject matter and perspective you take on it.
Thus Martin Sullivan, the director of the Gallery, as quoted in the Post. He goes on to say that the idea behind removing the piece was to prevent distraction from the exhibit as a whole, but of course the catch is that the censorship of the piece is what will now attract all attention.
And it's wild that he could deny that he caved when he clearly did just that,
The thoght of somebody like Boehner policing art makes my stomach hurt. The Smithsonian receives public funds, but these special exhibits are funded privately. I hope that some of those doners raise a stink that make Sullivan long for the utterly predictable whining of someone like Donahue.
It reminds me of "piss christ" from or the madonna made with animal fesces - transgressive artisits and homosexuals desire to deconstruct and insult all that does not affirm their individual sexual whims and unlimited desires...and then they call it "art."
Here is Philip Rieff (from My life among the Death Works) on the "piss christ":
"What third culture (i.e. modern transgressives) mean by creative is the act of de-creation. That is why the connoisseurs tell me you cannot have modern Catholic art, but you can have piss christ. Piss christ is an antisacramental image. Sacrament is a fusion with the highest and the central event in the dramaturgical enactment of highest authority. The sacrament as fusion with the highest authority is inverted to the image in piss christ as a fusion with the lowest. The highest is identified down in an act of incredible crudity. It amounts to an assault that lowers the Catholic identity of Galatians 2:20 to the level of excrement. Christ is in you, and so you are piss. The excremental assault of the Jews in the middle of the twentieth century is here repeated on Catholics.
"The drowning of Christ in piss is part of the relentless assault by the abolitionist movements to make religious identity and religious faith repulsive, untenable."
I wonder if the author of the post would find a video of ants and other vermin superimposed on the piles of bodies of Jews in concentration camps art? Would he ask hypothetical questions about its decency? And of course such a thing would never be shown (rightfully so). The same goes for Muslim religious symbols - only Christians are targeted for such sacralige by the modern "artist."
Putting aside the issue of "appropriateness", I chose today instead to mediate upon tyhree different images that can be found today on separate parts of the blog:
There is an image of a crucifix amist the ruins in Haiti in this slidehow, which is well worth watching:
http://americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3613
It was interesting, at least for me, to meditate upon the two different crucifixes, the one here in Michael's article, and the one at the end of the slide show on Haiti, and to see what thoughts emerged.
More vivd and distrubing than either of these images are the photos of dead children being carried out of Our Lady of Angels School on December 1, 1958. They are, truly, images of Christ crucified:
http://olafire.com/Gallery.asp?Cat=Victims
Perhaps you will have thoughts if you look at all of these photos as a series.
bill
When you see ants crawling over something, you know it is dirty and that people thought it not worth while to take care of it. It is a repulsive image and my guess is that the artist's objective was to denigrate. I find the attempts to defend it more interesting than the art itself which was meant to be offensive. What would lead people on a Catholic site to defend this?
Is this the same Michael O'Loughlin who just a short time ago longed for the old days. Since Michael was confirmed in 2001, maybe his old days are different from the old days of others. Is he pining away for a Jesus or a crucifix in urine''
My guess is that the real body of Jesus suffered greater idignities than the touch of a few ants.
Don't you get it? Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is the cause of HIV and AIDS in America and all suffering by homosexuals. If the Chruch had only accepted homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle and praised condoms, there would be no suffering, only love.
I think the resentment of the Church stems from the fact that the Church was right all along. Sexual promiscuity, homosexual acts, and use of condoms as a means for enjoying such acts for self-gratification are not good in the eyes of God. What would be deemed to be the wrath of God in an earlier time is now instead viewed as the Church's fault, an unfortunate occurrence because the Church is so close minded. And the staff of America finds a way to defend this perspective. That fact is more disturbing than the video.
What I don't think is that I am entitled to be pleased by everything other people do, particularly not by what is produced from their innermost being. Perhaps it would be different if they came onto my property and made their offensive artistic statement, but they have the same rights that I do to make artistic statements generally. If these statements are considered significant in some way and a curator somewhere chooses to incorporated them into a coherent exhibit, this is not the same as violating my space.
I think a video of ants and other vermin superimposed on the piles of bodies of Jews in concentration camps could be an artistic statement, but it would be redundant. Perhaps, such pictures superimposed upon images from an ant farm would say more. The images from the concentration camps are not sacred to anyone in the way that the images of Jesus are sacred to us.
It is sad that Donohue and Boehner are so sensitive that they need to have everything their way. However, I know how they feel about the crucifix, as I was surprised to hear myself say to a group of parents that it would be wrong to hang a crucifix outdoors, and they agreed with me. I don't think it was simply that the thing was not made to withstand weather, but rather that we cannot help but want to protect the Jesus on it from the cold, dirt, bird poop, etc. However, I can see that even allowing this can make a statement of faith that God, even as Jesus in his dying moment, is stronger than whatever we do to Him.
I admit that I think it would be the latter in both cases, but I don't really know. Maybe it's all of the above.
In any case, what does that say about what we should see? Maybe nothing.
I'm inclined to give the artist the benefit of the doubt.
Why the crucifix? I think we all know the answer.
At any rate the point I want to make is that we need to get more into the beatitudes of Jesus than 24/7 about sex which is truly revolting. To that end we should consider that Jesus made a big deal about anger and not forgiving ones neighbor. The Catholic League and its offshoots emit anger 24/7. The reminder has to speed out that this is not the gospel of Jesus.
According to Wikipedia, the musician performing for the video, Diamanda Galas, apparently became known by her live recording of the album, "Plague Mass,"(which includes the piece used in the video) in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NY. Wiki continues:
"With it, Galás attacked the Roman Catholic Church (and society in general) for its indifference to AIDS..."
While I realize that this is not conclusive of the video artist's intended message and its use of ants on a crucifix, I don't think his choice of this music and musician was accidental.
In light of this, it seems to me that the ants on the crucifix are not so much intended as a desecration as they are representing the artist's perceived inactivity of the Church: so inactive that the ants can crawl over it like a piece of food on the sidewalk.
A few comments:
First, is this true? They are trying to get rid of denigrating images about Jesus and the Church. Maybe it is others who are seeing this?
If you follow the posts on this site, there seems to a preoccupation with sex here. Just see what gets the most posts. Condoms, homo-sexuality, AIDS, abortion (sex without consequences) and you will see there is a preoccupation with sex. The Catholic Church is about salvation. I do not see any preoccupation with salvation here, just the opposite. There is a preoccupation with making a heaven on earth on this blog. That is the main knock on the Jesuits, they are more concerned with this world then the next.
I had an ex Catholic tell me at dinner one night when discussing religion, why is there a concern about sex and religion when they are unrelated? I replied that two of the ten commandments were about sex and that the main objections to religion and Catholicism in particular have to do with issues that concern sex.
And it is the artist of the exhibit that decided to bring in a specific religion to his agony about a consequence of sex when the religion was not the cause of his condition. Why not point that out? What has religion has to do with his condition and Catholicism in particular?
When I watched the video, I did not see suffering, identification with the scourged or a masterpiece. I saw a grotesque sequence of images that seemed to have no coherence intermixed with sexual images. I understand some have tried to give coherence to the sequence including the artists. And once this coherence is given, is it any more poignant? What drove the artists to create such a sequence? Certainly not any form of faith, hope or love I see.
Now compare that to the video that Father Martin posted about World AIDS day and see which is more likely to motivate you or provide emotion for the victims of AIDS
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3603
Why pick now to air this video? Is it relevant at all to what is happening today?