Clear It with Sid! by Michael Dorf

Author:Michael Dorf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

9

THREE YEARS OF THE CULTURE WARS

June 1989. The two 8x10 glossy photographs, reproductions of recently exhibited works of art, lay side by side on the round, leather-inlaid conference table in Yates's personal office. The one on the left seemed innocent enough. A blurred image of the Crucifixion, with Christ suffused with an orange light, his pierced body illuminated in yellow as if by a sunbeam from heaven. If it weren't for the title of the work, Piss Christ, or the fact that its creator, Andres Serrano, had explained that he had submerged a thirteen-inch crucifix into a container of his own urine to get the right effect for the camera, it could have been displayed on the wall of any parochial school classroom. The black-and-white picture on the right, Jim and Tom, Sausalito, photographed by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, was less subject to multiple interpretations. A lanky bare-chested man, wearing a leather hood secured by a metal-studded leather collar and chain, stood on one side, holding his exposed penis in his leather gloved right-hand, urinating into the unresisting open mouth of a kneeling, bearded second man.

Yates hunched over the table and sighed. He was turning eighty later that summer, and for a brief moment, he felt his age. “Jesus, Sid,” said Bain, looking at the photos over his shoulder. “How the hell are you going to defend the Endowment on this one?” Call slips from angry members, goaded by a morality campaign instigated by the American Family Association, were already piling up. The National Endowment for the Arts, whose appropriations came from the subcommittee that Yates chaired, had awarded $15,000 to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which used it to exhibit Piss Christ and works by nine other artists in an exhibition. The NEA also had given a $30,000 grant to the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, which used it to organize a Mapplethorpe show, including Jim and Tom, Sausalito. Even supporters of the NEA were calling Yates, some looking for cover, others demanding that the chairman go on the attack.

Yates smiled at his assistant's remark. “Pretty impressive,” he said, pointing at the exposed genitalia. “I've seen better,” Bain retorted. She was seventy-eight, and after working with “the Boss” for more than forty years, knew she could say anything she pleased. “We'd better start calling the troops,” Yates said. They would have to go to the defense of the NEA once again. It was not the first time. It would not be the last.

The NEA had started in the early ’60s with a legendary entrepreneur, Roger L. Stevens. Almost every mention of Stevens referred to him as “the man who once owned the Empire State Building,” as if that, more than anything, set him apart from other people. He was also a highly successful theatrical producer, bringing now-legendary productions such as Bus Stop, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and West Side Story to Broadway. But what brought him to the attention of President John F.

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