Submitted to a Candid World

Ames is off gallivanting around Kansas City, so here with your regularly scheduled Friday post is guest blogger Matt Fairchild.

Two very different things catch my attention every day as I drive to work. The first is a daily outdoor gathering of local Christians. The second is a local art gallery owned by a prominent Dallas couple.

Hey, let’s play the Stereotype Game!

If I told you that the art gallery shows edgy, often subversive artwork by Young British Artists, would that change your expectation as you drive by? How about if I mention that the owners are gay?

As for the Christians, the group usually consists of two diminutive, elderly ladies, bowing their heads in prayer. On occasional Fridays, the group expands into a throng of teenagers, young and energetic and excited to help make the world a better place.

I ask you, gentle reader: which one of these Dallas, Texas fixtures would you expect to offend you by forcing you to look at a grotesque image?

The answer is group number 2, the docile Christians. They’re protesting an abortion clinic.

(Warning: graphic images after the jump.)

Offensive. And that’s the point.

Also offensive. Also the point.

It’s hard to tell, but the second picture is of a calf (a real, once-living calf) suspended in formaldehyde and impaled with arrows. The work is titled “Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain,” and it is by famous (and infamous) artist Damien Hirst. The first picture is… well, you know what it is. Submitted to a Candid World has discussed them before. (Note: the first picture is from a different protest, not the one in here in Dallas. The poster displayed is exactly the same.)

The Goss-Michael Foundation, owned by Kenny Goss and his partner George Michael (yes, that George Michael), has been a big player in the Dallas art scene for several years now. Its first exhibit comprised work by Tracy Emin, a notorious Young British Artist who, coincidentally, had work appear in the 1997-2000 exhibit Sensation that so bedeviled then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Dallas Morning News, in an article about the opening, quoted Goss describing the Foundation’s mission:

“We want to expose the Dallas art community to work that they’ve quite potentially never seen if they weren’t able to travel — these works that in some ways may be a little controversial for one thing, a little strong, but let’s face it, art a lot of times is about sex, love, death, loss,” Goss said.

There’s an important distinction to be made about Giuliani’s famous outrage: in the Piss Christ and Sensation exhibits, he was angered by the desecration of religious symbols. According to decisions relating to the flushing of a Koran, this is the crucial difference that marks Koran-flushing as a felony.

But the most common complaint I hear during every That’s Not Art It’s Disgusting outrage is “My kids shouldn’t be forced to look at that,” Alternatively, “how am I supposed to explain that to my kids?”

Enter the abortion protesters, who a few weekends ago blew up the photo used above, filling a four-foot poster and displaying it at every corner around the clinic. Including on the corner directly opposite the Goss-Michael Foundation. This corner is along a well-traveled road, and sits just a few hundred yards from an elementary school.

I wish I could believe the point of mangled baby pictures is to spur debate, but the images are only good for shock value. They don’t force people to sit down and say, “my god, is that what we’re doing?” Instead, it calcifies positions on both sides.

A single blog post is much too small to delve into all of the hollows of the abortion debate. But, in driving through the gauntlet of offensive imagery, I remembered an article I read in New York Times Magazine about the Goss-Michael Foundation.

From the article:

… ‘‘It’s not like we want to shove sexual work in people’s faces,’’ [Goss] explains, thinking perhaps about Emin’s sexually explicit female nudes. ‘‘If they don’t come through the door, they have the option of not looking at it!’’

I wonder if George and Goss are ever sitting inside their gallery, staring out the windows (most of them blackened to prevent casual passers-by from inadvertently getting an eye full of the avant-gard) and watch the protesters force people to look, look, look! I’m putting words in their mouths, but I bet their thoughts would be, “Been there, done that. Try something else, guys.”