“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-boeskool/when-youre-accustomed-to-privilege_b_9460662.html The test for obscenity is "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest."
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 . Pp. 191-195. (1957) MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN, concurring in the result.
...
“The history of the application of laws designed to suppress the obscene demonstrates convincingly that the power of government can be invoked under them against great art or literature, scientific treatises, or works exciting social controversy. Mistakes of the past prove that there is a strong countervailing interest to be considered in the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 . Pp. 191-195.
"I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence."
Robert Mapplethorpe
“Since the work is about abstraction, I was also amazed and pleased that the fluids had a life of their own and I had no control over the final image... Since I had been doing religious imagery before the fluids, I thought nothing of combining the tow directions in my work in one image. This is called Piss Christ from 1987. People ask why I use fluids. First of all, I feel I’m painting with light, and the fluids, besides being symbolic of life’s vital fluids, loaded with meaning-- also give me beautiful light.”
Andres Serrano
“NEA Four”
Karen Finley John Fleck Holly Hughes Tim Miller Four NEA grants were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June,1990 singling out four controversial performance artists because of the artists' sexual preferences and political discourses. The grants were vetoed after having been recommended for awards by the NEA peer review panel.
Three of the rejected artists are gay and deal with homosexual issues in their work; the fourth, Karen Finley, is an outspoken feminist. The endowment had been under attack since 1989 for funding supposedly "lewd" work. The four rejected artists have continually been singled out by conservatives in the past. The National Campaign for Freedom of Expression along with other groups have rerouted NEA funds and other money to help support and fight for the artists. A spokesperson for the NEA said this would be a direct violation of grant regulations.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT [June 25, 1998]
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. The National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, as amended in 1990, requires the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to ensure that “artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which [grant] applications are judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.” 20 U. S. C. ¤954(d)(1). In this case, we review the Court of Appeals’ determination that ¤954(d)(1), on its face, impermissibly discriminates on the basis of viewpoint and is void for vagueness under the First and Fifth Amendments. We conclude that ¤954(d)(1) is facially valid, as it neither inherently interferes with First Amendment rights nor violates constitutional vagueness principles. “Congress also enacted an amendment providing that no NEA funds ‘may be used to promoted, disseminate, or produce materials which in the judgment of [the NEA] may be considered obscene, including but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as whole, do have serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.’”
Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1990, Publ. L. 101-121, 103 Stat. 738, 738-742, quoted in the Supreme Court decision of
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS et al. v. FINLEY et al. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT No. 97—371. Argued March 31, 1998–Decided June 25, 1998 “Reality is always more shocking than art. I think that shock in art is followed by some kind of transformation that happens because of the artist. I mean, you could say that Second Street between Avenues A and B is an artwork, and that's not so. It's not enough just to have the shocking thing, disassociated from everything. The artist frames or mirrors it with brilliance or timeliness. I don't know that there's a clear line between what is an atrocity and what's art, I do know that when Chris Burden shot himself in the arm it was art, but when my father shot himself it wasn't.”
Karen Finley (1988)