• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.4
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• pp.33-56
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• 2006

The cultural debates between conservatives and liberals at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s were termed as "culture wars." The "culture wars" involved a diverse range of controversial issues, such as the introduction of multicultural curricula in educational institutions, prayers in schools, whether to allow gays to serve openly in the military, and whether abortion should be permitted. The most heated debates of the "culture wars" regarding art raged over the NEA and the question of whether Andres Serrano's works should have been publicly funded, in addition to the exhibition "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment" which were charged as projecting "obscene" or "blasphemous" images. This paper examines the development of culture wars in art and focuses on several issues invoked by the NEA debates. However, it is not a detailed chronological investigation. Rather it pays attention to the several phases of the debates, analyzing and criticizing the clashes of the political and esthetical points of views between conservatives and liberals. How could NEA funding, a mere fraction of the federal budget, have become so critical for both sides(conservative and liberal), for politicians and artists' groups, and for academics and the general public? The art community was astounded by this chain of events; artists personally reviled, exhibitions withdrawn and under attack, the NEA budget threatened, all because of a few images. For conservative politicians, the NEA debate was not only a battle over the public funding of art, but a war over a larger social agenda, a war for "American values and cultures"based on the family, Christianity, the English language, and patriarchy. Conservative politicians argued the question was not one of "censorship" but of "sponsorship," since the NEA charter committed it to "helping museums better serve the citizens of the United States."Liberals and art communities argued that the attempt to restrict NEA funding violated the First Amendment rights of artists, namely "free speeches." "No matter how divided individuals are on matters of taste," Arthur C. Danto wrote, "freedom is in the interest of every citizen." The interesting phase is that both sides are actually borrowing one another's point of view when they are accompanied by art criticism. Kramer, representative of conservative art critic, objected the invasion of political contents or values in art, and struggled to keep art's own realm by promoting pure aesthetic values such as quality and beauty. But, when he talked about Mapplethorpe's works, he advocated political and ethical values. By contrast, art experts who argued for Mapplethorpe's works in the Cincinnati trial defended his work, ironically by ignoring its manifest sexual metaphor or content although they believed that the issues of AIDS and homosexuality in his work were to be freely expressed in the art form. They adopted a formalistic approach, for example, by comparing a child nude with putti, a traditional child-angel icon. For a while, NEA debates made art institutions, whether consciously or unconsciously, exert self-censorship, yet at the same time they were also producing positive aspects. To the majority of people, art was still regarded as belonging to the pure aesthetic realm away from political, economical, and social ones. These debates, however, were expanding the very perspective on the notion of what is art and of how art is produced, raising questions on art appreciation, representation, and power. The interesting fact remains: had the works not been swiped in NEA debates, could the Serrano's or Mapplethorpe's images gain the extent of power and acceptance that it has today?