Gregory Freeman: 'Tastefully Done' Or Not, Art Must Be Free Of Censorship. P-D 4/9/1998

Headline: `TASTEFULLY DONE' OR NOT, ART MUST BE FREE OF CENSORSHIP
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Thur., Apr. 9, 1998
Section: METRO, Page: B1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

A nude painting

My mother is an artist. Although she spent most of her professional career as a third-grade teacher, her first love is art. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute.
   There was always art in our house when I was a child. African heads, water colors and statues all were a part of the Freeman household. One statue was that of a reclining woman. The woman was nude and, although her vital parts weren't visible, her breasts clearly were.
   My mother created the statue when she was a student. She lived with her grandmother, and when her grandmother saw it, she insisted that it be covered up with a cloth. Every time my mother would remove the cloth, she'd find it back on when she returned. I used to laugh at this story when my mother would tell me it.
   What a prude, I would think. Clearly, my grandmother didn't realize the difference between art and pornography.

I guess there is a fine line between the two, and that fine line has made the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis nervous these days.
Artist Seitu James Smith has pulled his paintings from a show at the Vaughn Cultural Center after a dispute over nudity in one of them. The cultural center is operated by the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
One of Smith's paintings features a virtually nude woman. While the bottom part of her is covered up, her breasts are showing.

Urban League officials are a bit nervous about nudes. They're worried about offending people.
That's understandable, I suppose. The Urban League is a nonprofit organization. It relies on contributions from the public to keep going. If the public is offended, people might be less willing to give money.
So the Urban League doesn't want to unnecessarily ruffle any feathers.

The result: the Urban League has developed a new policy.
Under that policy, its director would call upon James Buford, the Urban League's president and chief executive, to review any art that might be questionable because of nudity. Buford says that nudity isn't the only reason paintings are questioned, noting that it has displayed artwork previously that contains nudity. His greater concern, he says, is whether the art is "tastefully done."
That's where the line gets fuzzy.

Art is sometimes controversial. If you're running an art gallery, you can expect that some of your art will be controversial, unless your gallery is, well, dull.
The Vaughn Cultural Center doesn't have a reputation for being a dull gallery. I've been there and seen some fine pieces of art, some perhaps considered controversial, some not.
But controversy, it seems to me, shouldn't be the criteria for determining whether an exhibit can be shown.

When we start censoring art, we violate the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Art most certainly is a form of speech. It's the way that some of us express ourselves. If a nude is involved in that expression, is that necessarily wrong?
It shouldn't be. If we can fully understand art, then we have to be willing to concede that almost anything can be considered artistic, including the human body.

Out of fairness, we should note that the Urban League didn't pull the exhibit. Smith chose to pull his paintings out of the exhibit rather than be reviewed by the Urban League.
   His argument is that he doesn't want to go through a censorship process.
   His point is a good one. Should the Urban League censor the paintings displayed at the center? Since what is offensive to me might not be offensive to you and vice versa, who makes that determination?
   I've seen a photograph of the painting and didn't find it particularly offensive.
   But as proof that censorship is subjective, some editors at this newspaper ran the photo of the painting with a story about the controversy in the earlier editions Wednesday and then pulled the picture in later editions, arguing that it might be offensive.

Just like my great-grandmother, the Urban League and some of my editors tried to cover up what to most would be considered art.
Unfortunately, most of those reading the story, like those visiting the Vaughn Cultural Center, never got a chance to see the painting.
That's too bad. Because art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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