But What Has Changed?
Foreword by Philip Yenawine to ART MATTERS: How the Culture Wars Changed America, 1999, NYU Press
Without question, the culture wars of the late 1980s and '90s changed the
context in which the art world operates, particularly its relationship to
government. A vocal, organized and motivated body politic, rooted in
fundamentalist religious beliefs, hauled art from the margins of culture
where it thrived, to the center stage of American culture, where it appeared
bizarre and even ludicrous. Conservative cultural critics, given an opening
by the movements religious leaders, bashed everything from elitism to
declining aesthetics standards.
As both preachers and politicians decried some art as immoral, blasphemous,
or unpatriotic, they sought to reduce or eliminate public funding for art in general.
Courts of law, including the Supreme Court, upheld laws enacted by these
politicians that allowed community standards, or broad definitions of decency,
to enter into the awarding of grant moneys to institutions and individual artists,
regardless of the vagueness and subjectivity of these concepts. And, in chronicling
the debate, the national news media did little to explain both sides of the story—
that is, to educate the American public about the arts--and more often simply
fanned the flames of controversy.
The culture wars happened in the midst of unprecedented artistic activity,
a part of which was an expanding spectrum of the artists whose work was
exhibited. New sites, new media, new venues, and new issues abounded, many
of them reacting to what had come before. Adherents of conservative but
still dominant modernism found themselves being deconstructed, subverted,
appropriated and repositioned by postmodernist visions so diverse as to defy
categorization. Alternative institutions, often explicitly critical of the
status quo, provided new venues for artists in addition to the white cubes
of the museums and commercial galleries. New publications appeared. Schools
produced record numbers of young artists, created many teaching positions,
and brought visiting artists (and thus much new information) into
communities throughout the country. New or enriched sources of funding for
making art emerged, substantially encouraged by governmental entities,
especially the National Endowment for the Arts whose mandate included the
fair representation of previously marginalized voices and visions.
Such national recognition and internal opportunity allowed the contemporary
art world a certain degree of complacency and a belief that American society
at large embraced its avant-garde viewpoints. There was a sense of viability
about the role and importance of new art, and one could imagine, therefore,
that experimentation and innovation in the art would continue to be
supported, regardless of what it said or looked like. As with modern
technology, the positive value of the "new" was regarded as a given.
This turned out to be myopic. The art world in general, especially the cult
of the new, was out of sync with the larger American culture, as it had been
since the beginning of the century.
The accusations of elitism inveighed against the art world during the early
years of the Reagan presidency had some merit. They were also a portend
of things to come. Not even New York was exempt from reaction. In 1981,
for example, shortly after a monumental steel sculpture by Richard Serra
was installed in a public plaza outside a federal office building, there was
a vehement protest from government workers and officials who objected
to the imposition of this inscrutable wall of steel that others called art.
After nine litigious years, the federally commissioned, site-specific
work was removed and destroyed.
Other trends in art, once discovered, turned out to be even more
disturbing. The advent of AIDS had prompted much new, angry, and
challenging art. And when the real world caught sight of art that
chronicled life at the receiving end of sexism, racism, and AIDS, or that
addressed sexual experience (especially homosexuality) or questioned
hallowed religious beliefs, the controversy referred to as the culture wars
began for real.
While anti-art forces attacked the visual art world with extraordinary zest
in the late 1980s, it must be said that the status of art has always been
suspect in America. As Lewis Hyde points out later in this book, most of the
nations founding fathers held an extremely skeptical view of the arts,
linking them with luxury, ostentation, and the antidemocratic prerogatives
of kings. This view of art as elitist and nonessential continues to cloud
political commentary on the subject to this day. Most politicians, when they
deal with the arts at all, are either patronizing or dismissive, helping to
account for the slow development of state and federal arts patronage. Arts
agencies came about only in the 1960s, and even then, the levels of giving
remained minimal by comparison to governments abroad.
Journalists also tend to be suspicious or openly derisive about the arts,
as Julie Aults artist project in this book demonstrates. While such views
purport to speak for the people, this assumption brings up a minor
paradox. Many surveys tell us that a majority of Americans view the arts as
important to their lives, even to the extent that most are willing to
allocate tax dollars to support them, though preferably at the local level.
If this is truly the case, then politicians and the media are out of touch
with their constituencies--a tempting deduction in the late 90s.
On the other hand, if we examine the marginal place of the arts within schools,
We see that the advocacy registered in surveys rarely translates into budgeted
mandates. This soft support for the arts and the lingering tradition of
anti-intellectualism that undergirds it makes the success of the anti-art
rhetoric of the culture wars less surprising.
The convergence of factors that fueled the culture wars also affected the
private arena and helped to determine the course of a small foundation, Art
Matters, which provides the lens through which this book examines the
period. Art Matters fellowships supported experimentation, including much
of the art found troublesome; most of the art illuminating this book is by
artists who received grants. Some of its initiatives addressed AIDS while
others were designed to counteract the effects of the culture wars on
funding and on the rights of artists. The chapters in this book deal with
art, diversity, AIDS, censorship and funding--all of the issues central to
Art Matters history, and to understanding a period not only dominated by
social challenges and controversies but also full of opportunity,
innovation, and positive action.
Private money had long been the mainstay of support for the arts in America,
and the foundation, Art Matters, is a case in point. It was the brainchild of
Laura Donnelley, heir to a fortune made in printing and a third generation
philanthropist. Laura and I met in 1978, when I was founding director of the
Aspen Center for the Visual Arts (now the Aspen Art Museum) in Colorado,
and she was on the Center's board of directors.
In the early 1980s, Laura began to think about ways she could provide support
for artists who were struggling to say something with bite and punch, who made
art that mattered. Even though the gallery world was more diverse in those days,
there was little chance for adventurous artists to gain any appreciable income
from their work. And the commercially successful artists were almost all white
males. Laura felt she could make a difference. As we talked about this together,
the shape of Art Matters coalesced.
Within a couple of years, we had done the legal work necessary, asked Mary
Beebe, Cee Brown, and Laurence Miller to join us on the board, and set up
shop in a loft in New York where I had moved in 1983 to become director of
education at The Museum of Modern Art. Our first rounds of grants were made
in 1985, totaling $160,900; by 1996, we had given almost 2000 artists over
$2 million. Donnelley provided not only all of the operating and granting
money for the first six years but also created a small endowment to continue
its operations after she refocused her giving in 1991.
The history of Art Matters mirrors in many ways the internal debates and
the external dramas of the art world during the period of the culture wars.
A good sense of the nature of the provocative discourse that drove Art
Matters can be gleaned from the comments of board members that Andrea Fraser
has excerpted from long interviews she conducted and then formed into the
artist project that appears throughout this book. There are also sidebars
that detail various specific targets of Art Matters funding.
Art Matters giving focused primarily on fellowships for artists who were
experimenting with mediums and ideas, and we attempted to allocate grants
across the country. In general, the work we supported was noncommercial and
interdisciplinary; we welcomed artists who challenged conventions. Our
attempts to remain responsive to the issues of the times focused some of our
giving on political and activist innovations in art, but we also funded many
artists and organizations whose aesthetic were not explicitly political. The
vision and efforts of these artists contributed equally to the cultural
landscape of the period, and, while not the primary focus of this book, were
an important sector of the foundation's activities.
For a number of years, before word of the foundation spread, we funded
organizations that sponsored and presented new work, usually the alternative
and (often artist-run) spaces that had cropped up in many cities. We tried to
make it easy for artists to get the money, eschewing lengthy applications or
needs statements. We made the turnaround time as short as possible.
Although it was often debated, we developed a pattern of giving fairly
small grants to many artists rather than larger ones to fewer. There was a
sense at the time that most fellowship programs recognized a certain level
of achievement and grants most often went to established artists. By
instinct, we made grants where need was simply assumed, and promise, rather
than accomplishment, was the issue. In addition, when an application was
denied, we provided feedback to the artist if requested. Occasionally we did
so even without invitation because we felt it was important for artists to
know how their work came across. When we found that slides or other
documentation that had been submitted was inadequate to determine the
quality of the work, one of us would visit the artist’s studio, or we would
supply money to improve the quality of the documentation. Sometimes, we
invited artists to come and present to us so we could see work that did not
communicate by any other means.
To very real degree, Art Matters funding was affected by a key aspect of
government giving during the late1970s and early ‘80s. In their programs for
institutions and, later, for individuals, government agencies were fairer
and more democratic in supporting aspiring artists than the art world had
been on its own. The NEA and similar state entities worked hard to allow
marginalized voices an equal opportunity at money. Art Matters adopted this
approach, as did other art funders at the time. To ensure that we had the
diversity and breadth of experience and knowledge we needed, we expanded our
board from five to thirteen people. Ironically, the drive for equitable
representation of all people and visions, which seems to be democracy at
work, was eventually cast in a negative light by critics on the Right. The
even hand of the NEA was seen as using tax money to support depravity and
blasphemy.
When conservative groups started taking pot shots at art in 1989, their
wrath was often directed toward precisely the younger, more experimental,
and more vulnerable artists that Art Matters funded. As Carole Vance and
others in this book show, many of the highly publicized battles engineered
by the right sought to use standards of decency and normality to judge
the social and political viewpoints of these artists. Much of the
controversy played out in debates regarding the NEA, even though its grants
were often tangential to the making or exhibiting of work found offensive.
Art Matters responded to the funding crisis and the growing threat of
censorship by making a particular effort to aid artists whose message was
endangered by the chilling effects of the culture wars. We also supported a
number of organized efforts that directly challenged the government’s
position on cultural funding and AIDS, including the National Campaign for
Freedom of Expression and Visual AIDS. This was, in part, an effort to defend
some of the art we had encouraged artists to create. In this way, Art Matters
became a participant in the activism of the late 1980s, supporting strong statements and actions intended to protest and to produce change.
Although Laura Donnelley understood our ardor and stood by us as we
reshaped our giving, the oppositional stance that Art Matters forged was
difficult for her. Sadly, but with great grace, she turned the foundation
over to the board, leaving us with a modest endowment to support our ongoing
work--funding aesthetically challenging art, much of it politically
motivated. Although an act of exceptional generosity, the endowment was too
small to sustain the level of funding that had been attained.
Facing the virtual elimination of governmental funding for the creation and
display of art that was socially charged, we felt that Art Matters was needed more
than ever. It was not an issue of money alone, however, because both the NEA and
Art Matters stood for something that was endangered by the culture wars. Our
advocacy of inclusiveness (almost a synonym for the voices the Right wanted
to silence) was perhaps as important as the dollars awarded.
What occurred subsequently led to the decline of the foundation, but is
worth telling as it relates to the perils of the nonprofit art world. After
Donnelley withdrew, Art Matters surveyed its grantees to see what they would
choose for us to do, given limited resources. The results were inconclusive,
but it was clear that they wanted us bigger, not smaller. We tried to
increase our capacity to give at first by a traditional approach: making
fundraising appeals to foundation colleagues, particularly our partners in
the Arts Forward Fund. We presented them with the opportunity to
use Art Matters as a conduit for making grants to individuals; most were
neither mandated nor legally structured to do it themselves, despite their
interest and concern. Taking another tack, we sought contributions from
the broad public that claimed interest in contemporary art. We initiated a
number of professional mass mailings, inviting contributions of any size to
our fund for fellowships. Returns barely covered the cost of the campaign.
Meanwhile, as government funding dwindled, only one real solution was being
proffered by the public sector to nonprofit organizations: adopt the
practices of the entrepreneurial world and pull your own freight.. After
much debate and consultation with industry experts, Art Matters decided to
give it a try. With the aid of our direct mail advisor, Sean Strub, we
invested our endowment in the creation of a mail-order catalogue of
artist-made objects. We projected that within two to three years, this
business would generate enough income for us to afford to maintain and even
expand our grants program, and at the same time support artists whose
work we sold.
Many artists willingly designed a wide range of products which Art Matters
produced. Handled impeccably by Cee Brown, the initial mailing of over
a million catalogues yielded an impressive return ($1.2 million), not to mention
garnering awards from the industry. A second edition also sold well, but
since the income was insufficient to capitalize the new business for ensuing
editions, we sought outside investors.
The business plan that Art Matters compiled was circulated widely among
individual investors, catalog entrepreneurs, banks, and foundations that
made program-related investments. Despite expressions of interest,
we were unable to raise the relatively modest amount of sustaining capital
that we sought--$1.5 million over two years--in the limited amount of time
that we had. Catalogue entrepreneurs seemed to be discouraged by the
limitations to growth; they saw artists as necessarily limited suppliers.
Other investors and banks seemed cautious and uncertain about this kind of
business in general.
The lack of support for this nonprofit, entrepreneurial model--which
others had proposed and Art Matters sought to put into practice--is also
worthy of some examination. The principal question is why did other
foundations who were also committed to helping artists make their work not
support our efforts, particularly as public funding sources were being
eliminated? There are likely many reasons, but one tempting answer lies in a
kind of conservatism within the art world, of which foundations are a part.
Art Matters was out on a limb in terms of its funding priorities. Though we
supported a wide range of artists, we were clearly identified with those
who were the most challenging, and this might have limited our options.
As Lucy Lippard shows later in this book, the official art world has
historically viewed activist or oppositional art with distaste and attempted
to distance itself from it. Art that criticizes the system, begs some kind
of change, exposes taboos, or espouses a cause has long been questioned as
art, even by many who take a liberal stance when it comes to aesthetic
issues. In defending the NEA in the culture wars, for example, many of the
agency’s apologists cited the small number of objectionable grants it had
made. It was, they inferred, only a small proportion of art that was
troublesome--that is, "unpatriotic," "blasphemous," "sexually charged," or
"descriptive of reprehensible lifestyles." In trying to save the NEA, these
art advocates tacitly granted the strongest critics the right to object to
it on these questionable grounds.
This admission was abetted by the fact that artists and arts institutions
had become so accustomed to operating by their own values and conventions
that they were caught unaware that others might not understand or approve.
When the attacks started, they were not anxious to address misunderstandings
and fears through education and open exchange of ideas. In fact, most people
in the art communities openly decried the ignorance and intolerance of those
who criticized. Museums, the one arts constituent that acknowledged some
kind of responsibility to the public, makes efforts to educate in general,
though most of their exhibits and programs deal with art of the past rather
than the confrontational art of our own times.
But given the challenge, even they failed to come forward with a concerted
effort to try to explain art’s social value, or to offer insights into why artists
did what they did, and why it was accepted, if not always relished, in the art
world itself. There was no serious attempt to build a language that might
bridge the a gap between the tiny world of high art and the confused but
enormous world of popular culture.
The 1980s might be noted for the quantity of art that was particularly
difficult to understand, both for its subject matter and its political
stances. This work ranged from Robert Mapplethorpe’s highly aestheticized
depictions of sexuality and sexual practice to Andres Serrano’s
idiosyncratic musings on Catholicism, from Karen Finley’s performances of
poetic rampages against sexism and other phobias to David Wojnarowic’s
visions of the redemptive power of sex and his rage at the treatment of
people with AIDS. Such work can be disturbing or confusing, even to the
practiced viewer and was always intended as such. If viewed superficially
or without understanding artists' motives and the context in
which they worked, it can be shocking.
Thus, when works like Mapplethorpe’s photographs of certain gay sexual
practices and naked children came to the attention of art world outsiders,
they were met with hostility. These vocal opponents already distrusted art
and, ironically, rarely saw the works they came to vilify. They just heard them
incompletely described in mailings and in the press and responded indignantly.
The point I want to make, though, is that the art world defenses against
attacks by such uncomprehending viewers were from the start halfhearted and
unconvincing. For example, when the Mapplethorpe photographs became the
centerpiece of an obscenity trial in Cincinnati in 1990, the art world could
muster only two relatively weak responses. The first was to call upon well
established art world authorities to assert the artistic merit of the images
based on their own expertise. In other words, its art because we say so.
The second defense emerged under cross-examination, when deeper explanations
Of the images was required. Here, the art world experts explained Mapplethorpe’s
photos in terms of their formal qualities and technical perfection, as if
the shocking subject matter should be overlooked in favor of Mapplethorpe’s
brilliant compositions and technique.
Jurors later confessed that they were unconvinced by the testimony but felt
unqualified to judge this specialized subject. It was simply the weight of the art
world witnesses that prevented conviction. If the prosecution had produced
even one similarly credible witness, the jurors implied, it might have won the case.
Perhaps the Mapplethorpe defense team considered it too risky in that context
to try to justify art that upsets preconceptions--and they might have been right.
It is complicated to explain art that asserts that a gay man has a right to public
autobiography just like the hetero-normal one.
It distresses me, however, that such arguments were not made, and part of this
is because art world practitioners were confused and divided themselves.
Once, also in 1990, I asked an audience of program directors and
administrators from performance spaces around the country who among them
could explain Annie Sprinkle to the skeptical public. Sprinkle had recently
been attacked for performances at an NEA-supported space that involved
ironic anatomy lessons, including opportunities to inspect her vagina. No
one took up the challenge, which, admittedly, is not an easy one. One or two
people expressed the opinion that maybe her performances weren’t art after
all.
Divided, unconvinced, and certainly unprepared to talk, we found
ourselves in a trap that might have been set by others, but was baited by
ourselves. The very definition of art during a time of change and expansion
was therefore left in the hands of those who knew far less about it. In the cases
made infamous by the culture wars, defenses of this problematic art came
from the legal community: the artists’ generalized right to freedom of speech
was argued, not the inherent value or meaning of their art. In this way, the art
world actually allowed some of the most passionate, personal and transgressive
artists of the 1980s to be demonized, protected solely by the thin veil of free
expression.
To the artists, it felt as if they were in a debilitating process in which they had
no power. Their work multiplied in meaning beyond their intent and control, and
they were seldom invited to represent or defend themselves.
As supporters rather than players, foundations can claim a lesser role in
all of this than those who present or write about art. But they make choices
about what they fund, and it is in thinking about this that one of the more
insidious effluents of the culture wars becomes a concern. From very early
in the struggle, the art stalwarts worried about a chilling effect: an
easing away from controversy by arts presenters and sponsors and perhaps by
artists, or the elimination of funding in categories where trouble might
arise.
In 1998, the latter is obvious, easy to document through the examination
of the budgets of government arts agencies. It is also possible to claim that Art
Matters was chilled out of existence. And, yet, its efforts might still resonate:
a number of forward-seeking foundations have pooled their resources recently
to create a new entity, the Creative Capital Fund, for the purpose of making
fellowships to artists. We see this as a legacy.
So, what has changed because of all of this? It seems to me rather little.
The art world still operates in its own self-involved way, fragmented though
it is. Artists still make huge range of things, and they seem to do so
whether or not they have grants or sales. If the chilling effect has sent
some artists back into the closet and created more conservative programming,
it hasn’t’ eliminated difficult art that boldly interrogates fixed ideas
about gender, sexuality, sexual behavior, race or other identity issues.
Artists like Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, and Ron Athey still talk loud and
queer in public, though silencing them remains the goal of a few.
Most arts organizations have tightened their belts but they have also found
new ways to support themselves. Encyclopedic museums run much as they mostly
have, contemporary art wedged into odd corners while historically validated
art is touted. Modern museums still juggle programs that provide historical
perspective with those that attend to new trends. Alternative spaces and
institutes of contemporary art, key targets of NEA defunding, struggle with
inadequate budgets, but attrition has been minimal despite dire predictions.
Despite all of the 1980s activism, women and artists of color still have to
fight for representation in galleries and museums. Art schools and art
history programs continue to attract large enrollments. People still tell
pollsters that they feel the arts should be supported; the position of art
in education remains minimal.
But something has changed: it is now very hard to recreate the feeling of
safety and fearless adventure that was palpable in the early 1980s. Although
AIDS is as much a reason for this as the culture wars--as David Deitcher
discusses in his essay in this book--it is also hard to recover from being
vilified. Some of the artists who told their own stories about living in
America in ways that were brilliantly insightful, no matter how negative,
no matter how stark or intimate, were irreparably wounded.
David Wojnarowicz, for example, did not have time to heal. When Reverend
Wildmon raised money by publicly labeling him a pornographer, David, who
was already very ill because of AIDS, sued him and won. But from then until
his death a year later, David’s creative output was virtually nil. And I believe that
one of the toughest of spirits had been broken.
This book is an attempt to recapture the period of the 1980s and early
'90s, a vital and engaged era when upstart organizations like Art Matters
could make a difference, but also a complicated time dominated by public
controversy. Our intent is to encapsulate the period in words and images, to
describe and examine what happened and why. We have tried to present a wide
range of perspectives, from active participants and artists to theorists and
scholars. Though we are not of one voice, we hope that what resounds is our
shared conviction that art matters.