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NEA's chilling effect

Support the arts: Abolish federal funding


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Performance artist Karen Finley lost her case. Hours after the Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision that the National Endowment for the Arts could consider issues of "decency" when doling out their grants, Ms. Finley retaliated by reprising her masterpiece, "The Return of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman."

Ms. Finley, with three other performance artists, had sued the NEA after congress attached stipulations in 1990 that would restrict taxpayer funding for art that failed to follow "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public." The four artists, feeling their rights to free expression were violated and fearing the "chilling effect" on the creation of great art, took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. With only Republican appointee David Souter dissenting, the justices ruled that deciding not to pay for something is not the same as censorship.

(Of course, future Karen Finleys might take hope that six of the justices would offer some protection for funding indecent art. Justices Scalia and Thomas offered a strong dissent from the ruling, arguing that Congress has every right to forbid funding of indecent art.)

In an off-off-Broadway theater in Manhattan, Ms. Finley demonstrated the great art and the great ideas that would be subject to the "chilling effect" that would turn America into a cultural wasteland. As reported by Patrick Pacheco of the Los Angeles Times, the event began with a chorus line of nine go-go dancers warming up the crowd, who were seated on plastic buckets turned upside down. Then the great artist came to the stage, topless, wearing just about nothing but a pink feather boa, screaming, "I'm a loser! I'm a [expletive] loser!"

Improvising a rant on the "chilling effect," she later raised the question, "Will having a career in the arts now mean that you have to come from money or create propaganda to support the state, or be a white straight man?"

She portrayed herself as having been "sexually abused on the Senate floor," claiming a (non-literal) "humiliating, sexually abusive" relationship with arts-funding critic Sen. Jesse Helms. "He eroticized my career, my work, my livelihood," she wailed. "I'm an abused woman on the job. As a federal employee, he harassed me."

Building up to the actual work of art, Ms. Finley re-enacted her 1990 opus that got her funding cut off. The Guggenheim award-winner and recipient of previous NEA grants rubbed chocolate all over her body. She explained to art critics who might be interested in interpreting her work that it symbolized excrement. Then she invited audience members, for a small fee of $20, to lick it off.

Her performance raises a number of questions. First, why did she need a federal grant to perform this particular work of art? How much does chocolate cost, anyway? Surely not the thousands of taxpayer dollars that constitute the typical artist's grant.

Second, doesn't Ms. Finley's performance prove that her laments about censorship, chilling effects, and restrictions on freedom of expression are not valid? The government did not stop her from smearing chocolate on herself. That would be censorship. The court simply ruled that the government was under no obligation to pay for the chocolate. Nor should taxpayers be coerced to do the licking-let those who wish to support this particular work of art cough up the $20 themselves.

But the most fundamental question has to do not with the decency provision but with a provision in the NEA guidelines that has not been in dispute: the requirement that all grants be awarded on the basis of "artistic merit."

What, exactly, is the artistic merit of "The Return of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman"? What are its aesthetic qualities? Where does it rank among the great achievements of Western art? What, exactly, does it add to America's high culture? And where is the work of art once Ms. Finley takes a shower and puts her clothes back on?

NEA panelists and apologists tend to invoke today's cliché of obligatory relativism-that art means different things to different people-but this is only a confession that they do not have any standards themselves. The fact is, those who support the arts, who want a flourishing art world and a vital, creative culture, should oppose federal subsidies for the arts.

President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation in 1965 that created the NEA, part of his grandiose vision of a welfare state. Those who think the end of subsidies would mean the demise of the arts should ask themselves a version of Ronald Reagan's question: Are the arts better off today than they were before 1965? Even the century's controversial art, from abstract expressionism to pop art, came into existence before 1965, with no federal funding. What significant artists or artistic movements have come into the culture since 1965 with the support of the NEA? Can anyone think of any?

Under the NEA, artists and arts groups submit their grant proposals for "peer review." Funding decisions are thus made by fellow artists and by critics ensconced in "the art world." Instead of creating work for an audience, artists create for each other. This system of artistic inbreeding, similar to that of the genetic kind, often gives birth to monstrosities-esoteric game-playing, academic experimentation, aesthetic-free fashion mongering, and schemes to shock or ridicule the outside world. The impact of the NEA goes far beyond its limited budget. Corporations and other patrons take NEA recognition as "a seal of approval" for their own funding and have set up peer review panels of their own, multiplying the damage.

This system insulates artists from the culture as a whole. Ordinary human beings can no longer understand the art they are unwittingly patronizing. This impoverishes both ordinary life, as it becomes more and more aesthetically drained, and the art world, which cuts itself off from cultural relevance. Now, due to congressional pressure, the NEA-whose funding was approved again by a House panel on the very day the court handed down its decency decision-no longer gives grants to individual artists, only organizations such as museums and symphonies, which are then free to pass on money to individual artists.

But subsidies are still harmful for the arts. Music lovers have been lamenting the decline of European orchestras. The same stale repertoire, half-hearted performances, and musicians who no longer practice have become hallmarks of heavily subsidized state orchestras. In America, since NEA funding has tightened, orchestras are coming alive, performing fresh, rarely heard compositions, featuring exciting new performers, and making an effort to reach out to their audiences.

Just as the competitive laws of the marketplace result in better automobiles, they result in better art. Conversely, industries and arts groups sheltered from the marketplace by the heavy hand of the government can only decline in quality. Perhaps the most farcical example of how government support can wreck a nation's art can be found in the Netherlands. The government actually buys the work of its artists. But as a result, government warehouses are filled to the brim with artworks no one knows what to do with.

Since the artists have to turn in so many paintings per year to receive their check, they give the government their most unsellable work, including minimalistic jokes-such as a table top with an X painted on it-showing their contempt for the system they are exploiting.

Now the Dutch government is facing the problem of what to do with all this art. The law forbids selling it, since that would depress the art market. Nor can it be given away, which would drive down prices even further. One partial solution is to let the paintings be checked out at public libraries, but not that many Hollanders are interested. It looks like the paintings will have to be destroyed.

Just as the welfare system harms the very people it intends to help-breeding dependency, squelching individual initiative, and institutionalizing poverty-welfare for artists saps their creativity, dragging down American art to the level of Karen Finley smearing chocolate on herself.

The art world needs to recover beauty, meaning, and the potential of art to elevate the culture. If this can happen, the art world will no longer be the subject of ridicule and contempt, and genuine artists will have all the audiences and financial support they need.

So, art lovers and all Americans who yearn for cultural renewal should indeed rally to the defense of the arts. The first step toward recovering America's artistic greatness? Abolish the NEA.


Gene Edward Veith Gene is a former WORLD culture editor.

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