Provocative Brooklyn Art to Move to College Campus

Fox News ^ | 05/06/2006

[Panerai]

Two days after city parks officials shut down a Brooklyn College exhibit that included sexually explicit images, the school said Saturday that it would move the artworks to campus, prompting objections from some of the artists.

The exhibit opened Wednesday at the city-owned Brooklyn War Memorial, displaying watercolors depicting gay sex and sculpted male genitalia illuminated in a box. Another work featured a white pet rat.

The memorial is used as gallery space by Brooklyn College, which is part of the City University of New York. The city Parks Department has said that an agreement with the college stipulated that its art exhibits at the memorial be "appropriate for families."

College Provost Roberta Matthews said in a statement that officials have decided to move the exhibit to the campus.

"Throughout, the administration of the college has supported our students' rights to freedom of artistic expression," she said.

The office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has ultimate authority over the exhibit's placement, did not immediately return calls Saturday.

Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the parks department, said Saturday, "We look forward to continuing our relationship with the college, utilizing the space as an art gallery for the public."

Marni Kotak, one of the 18 artists whose works were on display, said she and several others were "adamantly opposed" to moving the show to the campus and did not plan to cooperate with the transfer.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Whenever one sees the word "provocative" in a news headline about "art," the word that should have been is almost always "disgusting," "offensive," "degenerate" or "perverted."

[CheyennePress]

Gay sex and genitarlia ...at a war memorial? The person who authorized that needs to be fired. NOW!

[CheyennePress]

Marni Kotak's "Art"
Marni Kotak's Pleasure War! multimedia performance/installation challenges the viewer to take a stand against the repression, moral fundamentalism and war which threaten to destroy the pleasures of the body. Her videos and large scale photos depict her struggle to maintain an authentic control over her own embodied experience amidst the violent quest for imperialist gain characterizing late capitalist society. Members of the audience are encouraged to enlist in the People's Pleasure Brigade and fight alongside her in the war for pleasure.

So this anti-capitalist, hedonistic, anti-moral, and anti-war act is being performed at a war memorial? Nice.

http://www.billburg.com/artists/mkotak/1.cfm

[bdfromlv]

and they probably would not let a print of Mo (peas be upon her) be shown with them.

[NavySon]

"Throughout, the administration of the college has supported our students' rights to freedom of artistic expression," she said."

This is not "art," this is homosexual pornography in sculpture form and shouldn't be anywhere NEAR an educational facility. It shouldn't even be in a MUSEUM.

[squarebarb]

Something has to be done about colleges; they are becoming an expensive four-year trip into fantasy and drugs.

[catroina54]

I'll help them "move" their art.........

[Republicanprofessor]

the college stipulated that its art exhibits at the memorial be "appropriate for families."

"The point of having the show at this space was that there really wasn't the right kind of space on campus to do this," Kotak said.

Liberals can't even think. If there isn't an appropriate space at the college, what makes them think that a "family" place at a memorial is appropriate?

This is just more shocking stuff that is made to gain attention. Problem is that this "shock" is getting boring so it doesn't even work any more. Big yawn.

[Republicanprofessor]

Art ping.

Let Sam Cree, Woofie, or me know if you want on or off this art ping list.

[kitkat]

I can't post anything coherent. I am too disgusted with these people. We're losing our country. We're losing our young people. God help us.

[Rembrandt_fan]

Professor,

You wrote, "This is just more shocking stuff that is made to gain attention."

Blame it on Duchamp--or at least Roger Kimball does. Duchamp's concept--and one to which I give due credit--is the notion of Art As Idea. The problem with such an exciting concept is that it can quickly degenerate into the postmodernist hypercrap we're seeing today. For example, the whole 'performance piece' trend is sort of a cheap magician's trick, a kind of patter that draws attention away from the lack of technical mastery; e.g., knowledge of color, form, line, and so on, which at one time (not so long ago) defined the artist. Even more, in some cases, the things created--object or event--serve as an attempt to muddy the definition of art as the creation of an object of beauty. (One can argue the subjectivity of beauty all day, or the relativity of truth, for that matter, but 'beauty' has an agreed-upon common meaning regardless.) Bottom line, in my view: proponents of the goings-on at the Brooklyn show and elsewhere (seemingly everywhere) want very badly to be artists, but usually can't draw, can't paint, can't sculpt, can't really make anything--unlike Duchamp, who I'd like to think would recoil in horror at some of the things his ideas have wrought. What they can do, however, is play pretend and work hard to convince others that the pretense is real.

As an aside, it's reassuring to know that there is a Republican professor teaching art, Republicanprofessor. I was beginning to despair of academics altogether until you came along.

[Republicanprofessor]

I can't add to anything you said; you are absolutely right.

I try my best as a conservative professor offering an alternative point of view. I do think the new crop of students is more conservative, even in Massachusetts. I usually acknowledge that my politics are the reverse of theirs, but my classroom is not full of chanting liberal feminists, as one might expect. In fact, some complain about the rigid feminist views in one woman's studies class and are afraid to open their mouths. But they do talk in my class, and we do examine postmodern theoretical writing in some depth to see exactly what baloney it is.

I tell them that it's okay to disagree with me, and to take bits and pieces from various readings with which to agree. What they do need to do is to back up their ideas with specific examples (i.e. think through their reasoning, which I don't think liberals usually do, although I don't say that in so many words).

I am really looking forward to their final journals, and assessment of the entire century of art and art criticism, to see what they do value and why.

There are a few of us conservative professors doing battle in liberal arenas. It takes courage and tact, but maybe we'll make a difference, eventually.

Now I have to get back to grading.....

[chemicalman]

This artwork would come in useful with the energy prices as high as they are. They'll burn good in a fireplace.

[dighton]

Good night to the Session — the sculpture:
A jelly containing a clock;
Where they say, ‘From the way that you gulped you’re
Therapeutically thrilled by the shock!’
— It’s the Shock of, alas, Recognition
At what’s yearly presented as new
Since first seen at Duchamp’s exhibition
‘Des Maudits’, in Nineteen-O-Two.

— Ted Pauker, A Grouchy Good Night to the Academic Year.