Censorship In Art Essay Research Paper Censorship

Censorship In Art Essay, Research Paper

Censorship is usually considered “official” censorship because it is action taken by governmental institutions such as government committees, or universities, to limit the view of a specific artwork or a group of works by the public. However, these concrete official actions taken to limit public view of specific artwork are only the results of the abstract “censoring attitudes” of individuals or groups of individuals, encouraging the actions. Censoring attitudes can arise from feelings of race or gender discrimination, discrimination against the gay community, fear of taboos and controversially issues, and assumed moral or Christian authority. It is these attitudes that are the basis of censorship, not necessarily the artist’s intentions of their artwork, because each individual viewer of the artist’s specific piece will unconsciously project his/her own anxieties and fears into the artist’s artwork. What drives the individual to censor the artist’s work is the product of their attitudes being reflected in the subject matter of the artwork, and the result of censorship is keeping the artist’s work from being exposed or even from being created.

A mutually supportive relationship between artists and society would be the ideal under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Our society would recognize and support an expanded role for artists. Free and diverse artistic expressions are vital for challenging people to rethink their assumptions and for educating people about past and present issues. We should oppose censorship in the arts, and encourage individual and social expression by artists. Only by supporting the voices and visions of artists representing minority of the mainstream, including women, people of color, and people of alternative sexual orientation can artists truly express themselves. However, this is how it would be in an ideal society. In reality, censorship is common. By examining the life works and experiences of three artists, David Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Francisco Goya, the use of censorship and its affects can be understood.

Although modern examples of censorship concerning cultural taboos are almost understandable because of the controversial subject matter, the censorship of art was just as prevalent in the 1700’s in Spain. Censoring was based on protecting public morals, and it took political action in the form of Spain’s Holy Inquisition. Just as the NEA is pressured to works by threat of pulling funding, so was Franciso Goya pressured to self-censor his artwork for fear of losing his job as a court painter. The Inquisition began with censorship of public visual arts anonymously produced, but as Spain experienced the struggle between the church and the Bourbon monarchy it limited all works considered too sexual or anti-Christian. Goya’s painting of “Naked Maja” was his way to “defy the traditional association of the female nude with evil” just as modern day artists, Mapplethorpe and Wojnarowicz fight against society’s taboos with their controversial artworks (132). By self-censoring his artwork he painted the same female but clothed the naked female for the public to see, so his patron, Godoy, could lift the “Clothed Maja” to see the “Naked Maja” (140). However, in response to having to create another painting because of the attitudes of sex held by the Spanish government, Goya made the “Clothed Maja” even more seductive then the first women. We know that near the end of the Inquisition, in 1815, Goya was brought to trail accused of painting obscene naked women, but the results are unknown.

To bring the discussion of Goya up to date, in 1991, a reproduction of Goya’s “Nude Maja” was taken down from a classroom wall at Penn Sate following a complaint form a woman professor that it was a form of sexual harassment. The painting had hung in the music room on campus for more than a decade. The president of the Student government Association called it “ludicrous censorship,” but the Liaison Committee of the Penn State Commission for Women said the female faculty “found it difficult to appear professional when forced to lecture to a class with a picture of a female nude on the wall behind them.” Four other paintings were taken down to avoid a debate over what should and should not be displayed, proving that censorship of Goya is still alive.

David Wojnarowicz is recognized as one of the most potent voices of his generation, and his artistic achievements place him firmly within a long-standing American tradition of the artist as visionary, rebel and public figure. David Wojnarowicz’s work emerged directly from his life. He knew little art history, had no artistic training in high school and he made a paint of not trolling the galleries to see what everyone else was doing. Exposed to unusual hardship as a boy, as a sexually active teen, and as a street person, he did not see his experiences reflected in the popular culture of the members of the dominant white, male, heterosexual, Christian, middle to upper class. Wojnarowicz’s intention is explicitly ideological: his aim is to affect the world at large; he attempts to create imaginary weapons to resist established powers. Wojnarowicz creates provocative narratives and historical allegories dealing with themes of order and disorder, birth and death. using overlapping text, paint, collaged elements, and photography.