Sex Hysteria!

Temecula Mayor Jeff Comerchero has finally reacted to all the press coverage and controversy stemming from the removal of a painting from an exhibit in a city owned building.

According to SWRNN.com, the mayor sent a letter to artist Jeff Hebron saying:

“On behalf of the City of Temecula, I wish to apologize to you for the removal of your art work, Study No. 1, from the Visual Expressions Show 2010 at the Mercantile Building.”

In a press release the mayor also said:

“The City regrets the controversy caused by the removal of Mr. Hebron’s work from the Merc exhibit,” the statement said.

I love it when politicians publicly apologize because the carefully crafted wording always seems to say “we regret getting caught.”

“The city’s not in the censorship business,” he said. “But neither does the city want the reputation of exposing children to art that’s not appropriate.”

This rephrasing would probably have been closer to the truth:

Since we’re terrified out of our minds at the prospect of offending the public and possibly losing votes, we must, and will continue to, censor anything that we believe could evoke a controversial public reaction and when we do that, we will invariably invoke the argument that we are doing it for the children because we can get away with lots of shit when we say that.

Government support of the arts necessarily involves politics.  Artists with an appetite for government handouts in the form of exhibit space or funding, necessarily have to lick the hand that feeds them.    It is a rarity when a city really opens it’s door as wide as the First Amendment and when that happens, it always results in controversy.  So, as a result, non-provocative art is encouraged at the expense of work that challenges or offends cultural conformity.  In the end, the government is defining what constitutes real art (accepted for exhibit) versus non-art (not accepted) and most often, that line is drawn with children and votes in mind.  In response, good artists will censor themselves rather than be shut out and the net result is that artistic expression is suppressed, not encouraged.  To the extent that the art community is complicit in this arrangement, it is itself guilty of lending credibility to this process in exchange for the government subsidy.

Having said that, I was pleased at this comment by the show’s curator, Sissi Hale:

“We need a gallery that showcases art. Not all art is family friendly.”

I took that to mean she’s looking for space that permits some control over who is admitted.  I wish her luck in getting space where the city offers artists an opportunity to exhibit work that expresses views meant for grownups.  Government will unfortunately always be sensitive to political implications, but if it wants to claim that it supports the arts, then it should at least have horizons that extend beyond the G rating.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 11:05 AM and is filed under Art, Big Brother is Watching You, California, Censorship, Nudity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.