Released April 12, 2001

Contact:
Jean Carey Bond
jeancb@worldnet.att.net

Joe Sims
jsims@dqueen.com

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has apparently decided to go down in flames. Obsessing about artistic uppitiness, as his reign draws -- mercifully -- to an end, he has established a Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission. This body is assigned to develop "decency standards" for determining how public funds should or should not be spent in support of art exhibitions that the Catholic Church or others might find offensive. The gift of decency comes after its bearer failed, under the U.S. Constitution, to take public funds away from the Brooklyn Museum as punishment for the museum's display of work that offended his religious sensibilities.

The United New York local of the Black Radical Congress is pleased to lend its voice to the chorus of denunciations that has greeted this initiative. We share the sentiment that the anti-urban, suburb-loving Mayor misses the whole point of what New York City is about: life in the forefront and on the edge. If ever a place abhorred even one itsy bitsy decency standard, this city is it. We would add that the people who have agreed to serve on the ill-conceived panel have disgraced themselves by being identified with the Mayor's foolishness.

The Black Radical Congress, however, is concerned on another level. The first work of art to incur the Mayor's wrath, when it appeared in the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum, was Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary. Ofili, an African, had included elephant dung among the materials he used to create his beautiful painting of a very African- looking mother of Christ. Ofili explained that in his culture elephant dung has deep spiritual associations and resonance. Months later, the object of the Mayor's rage was the appearance at the same institution of Renee Cox's Yo Mama's Last Supper, a large photograph in which the artist portrays herself as a nude Jesus. Queried about the startling image, Cox stated that it was not her goal as an artist to make pretty pictures for people to hang over the sofa in their living room. Cox is an African American. We note, over the years, that whenever controversies involving artistic expression erupt, the work of Black artists is always in the eye of the storm. For example, the National Coalition Against Censorship has documented numerous legal challenges around the country to the use of books in public school curricula deemed to be "racially offensive." Disproportionately represented among the defendants are works by such Black authors as Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Jesse Jackson, Walter Dean Myers and Claude Brown, among others. The works of Latino, gay and lesbian artists also stand out as frequent targets. Given the variety of stories and themes explored in the works involved, the perception, "racially offensive," can be based on only one thing: The authors and their subject matter are Black.

Art, by its very nature, is challenging. It challenges the artist to construct, refine and communicate a vision of the world and of experience. It challenges the viewer or reader to enter into, and decipher the terms of, that vision. In a racialized climate where Euro-American perceptions, interpretations, judgments and versions of history are assumed to be the only norms and standards against which all things should be measured, Black artists' expressions pose enormous challenges to the likes of Rudolph Giuliani. Failing to rise to the challenge in a constructive way, the Mayor has been inspired, instead, to create another tool for perpetuating institutional racism, as well as a tool for unwarranted government intrusion into the realms of morality and taste. Let the record show that when we call for Black liberation, the Black Radical Congress is also calling for freedom for Black artists -- and all artists -- from the narrow-minded impositions of would-be tyrants and their sycophants.

Talk show host Jay Leno, according to an April 10 report on CBS Newsradio 88, allegedly labeled the Mayor a "fascist" for establishing the decency panel, and a group called the National Ethnic Coalition is supposedly leading a letter- writing campaign to wring an apology from Leno. Since when, we would like to know, is the term fascist considered an ethnic slur? It is a legitimate, historically-based political characterization of someone who is anti-democratic, authoritarian and dictatorial. It is an apt description of a Mayor who has more than once indicated his appreciation for the use of racist police-state tactics against New Yorkers of color. As for the Mayor's assaults on New York's cultural institutions, the language and form of those assaults -- and this is what Leno most likely had in mind -- invite direct comparison with Adolf Hitler's condemnations of some of Germany's finest art and artists, culminating in the infamous "Degenerate Art" show that the Nazis staged in Berlin in 1933. Consistent with Nazism's major theme, artists of Jewish background were prominent among those whose work was stamped "degenerate."

A few years ago, at a SoHo art gallery opening, one of the featured works was supposed to include, with other elements, two live lesbians conversing and fondling one another. Just before showtime, the women slated to appear in that work backed out. Desperate but thinking quickly, the curator rushed outside to address a long line of art lovers waiting for the doors to open. "We have a problem," said the curator, "and we wonder if any of you can help." Hearing that substitutes were needed for the live exhibit, two young women stepped out of the line to volunteer their services.

Get it, Rudy? THAT'S WHY we love New York.

Black Radical Congress
National Office
Columbia University Station
P.O. Box 250791
New York, NY 10025-1509
Phone: (212) 969-0348
blackradicalcongress@email.com