Sunday, May 11, 2008
Camille Paglia rages about religion; uncovering the history of "St. James Infirmary"; what's so unique about masturbatory time travel?
Oct 13, 1999 | "Sensation" and lack of sensation
BY CAMILLE PAGLIA
(10/06/99)
Camille Paglia's column rages indignantly against the "Jewish collector and a Jewish museum director" who promoted "anti-Catholic art" in the Brooklyn Museum show "Sensation." In doing so, she has nakedly exposed the dialogue at its very essence: In an acutely Christianized America, does a Jew have the right to artistically critique, parody or satirize Christian symbolism? Of course, she thinks we Jews don't.
I want to remind Paglia that the "Jewish collector and Jewish museum director" did not create the art -- that it was created by a goy, like herself. Rather, Saatchi and Lehman defended her rights as a human being to critique or even recontextualize her own religion through art.
-- Alan Kaufman
Editor, Tattoo Jew
Camille Paglia never ceases to amaze me. As a believer in Jesus, you wouldn't think I would find her writings so refreshing. Time and time again she states the obvious truth about liberal symbolism. Her article on Al Gore and the recent art controversy in New York is right on the money. Even considering her sexual proclivities, she is not hateful towards the Catholic church and Christians, like the gay community is in general.
She is one of the few liberals to whom I can say, I respect your point of view even if I don't agree with your atheistic view of life. I know that, deep down, Paglia acknowledges worldly truth when she sees it. It pains me knowing she is a Democrat. How long can you expose the façade of truth expounded by liberals and not be rejected by them?
-- Paul Reid
I think Camille Paglia is too close to the teaching of art to fully appreciate art's role in our society. I sympathize with and understand Paglia's wonderful and utopian vision of what art could be in our society. She dreams of art appreciation propagated throughout society, art available to all -- but that is not in the interest of the those that control museums.
The elite uses art as a status display. Beyond the few that can afford to own the works of art themselves, it is the knowledge of art that shows status. If art were understandable by the masses, then knowledge of art would not serve its vital (to the elite) function of displaying that they had enough leisure to become knowledgeable.
The "Sensation" show in the Brooklyn Museum is a clear example. To appreciate it, you must have the requisite background. That some of the art is offensive to many only enhances the function of separating the elite from the masses.
-- Robert N. Newshutz
If the government can't fund a museum displaying art that might offend, how are we going to keep the libraries open? Is a controversial book that different from a painting?
How can Paglia buy the excuses of a bunch of pandering politicians? I used to think it was probably poor taste for an artist to accept public money if he were going to do something controversial. Then I got a job at the library, and I realized that I had been funding opinions that weren't my own for years, and that I liked it that way!
-- Jennifer L. Brice
Nothing Personal: The dung show
BY AMY REITER
(10/04/99)
The First Commandment is: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shall not have false gods before me." "Artistic freedom" becomes a false god, at least when it is talismanically and successfully invoked to protect obscenity and/or sacrilege, like the alleged painting of the Virgin Mary now on display in the Brooklyn Museum.
Art implies a personal, unanalyzable creative power. Drawing swastikas on synagogues is desecration, not art. Likewise, covering a representation of the Virgin Mary with anuses, vaginas and dung is sacrilege, not art.
Newsweek neglected to mention that Arnold Lehman, the director of the Brooklyn Museum responsible for the so-called "Sensation" exhibit, has a history of gross insensitivity to Catholics. When Lehman ran the taxpayer-funded Baltimore Museum, it screened "Hell's Angel," a film condemning Mother Teresa as publicity-obsessed and a "ghoul" (among other things), as part of a film series on "religious extremism."
If Lehman next presents a similar portrait of, say, Golda Meir, covered with anuses, vaginas and dung, we will know that he is not merely anti-Catholic.
-- Michael J. Gaynor
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