When you think about it
something is always getting banned, mostly because it threatens the
conservative way of life. So it comes to no surprise that there is censorship
of LGBTQ Art for being obscene, vulgar, offensive, lurid, degenerate, and the
list could go on and on. We talked about the Corocoran gallery and the NEA.
These photos were seen as nothing better than pornographic images. “The Perfect
Moment” was not a well-liked gallery and to put it shortly Helms used his
political influence to bully Corcoran into cancelling the show.
It’s been this way for years;
LGBTQ art is not “mainstream” and therefore is deemed to be some kind of
degenerate art. Censorship didn’t stop just at banning, but people would go as
far to vandalize artwork, in fact art has been destroyed even after
installation. This kind of attack on anyone’s art is enough to make some
artists run away. They would go back into the closet and set their own work
aflame. This was in order to have some semblance of control where at least the
destruction of the art was in a way to respect their pieces. However this self-censorship
was perhaps even more deadly than the government enforced one. Either an artist
stopped all together or they steadily avoided anything that could be perceived
as homosexual subject matter.
It was argued that it wasn't
censored because of the homosexual content but of the pornographic content. But
artists who refused to be held back because of prohibitions were censored even
if it was just sympathetically or positive art of LGBTQ people and culture. Censorship
is a mostly horrible act, especially to those whose creativity is suddenly
contained and ridiculed. However, in some instances there is a positive
backlash to this.
Prohibition causes the object
of censorship to attract wider attraction and all together encourages the
censored object. The prohibition of alcohol merely led to more people getting
drunk and you know the rise of organized crime. Speakeasies became a thing and
moonshine was a thriving business. We have at least one popular HBO show and
Lawless the movie to show just how well that one went.
(Boardwalk Empire)
And now there is Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian
Art in New York City.
They took the censorship of
Mappkethrope’s art and counter it exhibiting images that were considered too
obscene by conservatives. This exhibition is titled “Irreverent: A Celebration
of Censorship.”
“The exhibition draws inspiration from the
innovative responses to watershed moments in the history of censoring LGBTQ art
in Canada, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, and
the United States," exhibition curator Jennifer Tyburczy explained in a
press release. "In concept, the show is principally drawn from two events:
the censorship of Robert Mapplethorpe’s art in the 1980s and 1990s and the more
recent withdrawal of David Wojnarowicz’s 'A Fire in My Belly' from the National
Portrait Gallery in 2010. In practice, it seizes on the international fame of
these controversies to delve deeper into the many ways that censorship
functions in queer artistic life.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/02/irreverent-a-celebration-of-censorship_n_6566530.html)
Woodson, Jason, This Kid -
20 Years On - A Tribute to David Wojnarowicz' Untitled - This Kid, 2010, framed
giclee print, 23.386 x 33.110 in. Collection of Jason C. Woodson
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