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The Limits of Artistic Tolerance
| Article
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16958 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1990 |
2,986 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The discussion of the changing meaning of art in "Art for Life's Sake" by Ellen Dissanayake is perceptive and eminently sensible. Her conclusion: "Art, as the universal predilection to make important things special,…is far more…relevant than its intrinsic sanctity or freedom…" is justly proportioned. But I perceive as flawed her prior judgment: "The small proportion of offensive or poorly conceived works that are inevitable should not be the cause to hamstring or scrap the whole enterprise. (Were ours an authoritarian and elite society, then the funding [of art] should of course be restricted to officially approved and safe art.)"
The issue is not whether art or other forms of communication meet common approval but whether they transcend some line that makes them unacceptable, and, if so, in what institutional or social settings this is so. I do not approve of Gary Trudeau's half-baked cartoons, but they do not cross the line of tolerability, even if someone were so lacking in judgment as to place them in a museum of art. In 1920, blacks were often referred to in Congress as inferior. Today such a remark would be censured. But a similar remark in an ethnic bar, although regrettable, would be permissible.
Jackie Mason properly was forced off Rudolph Guiliani's campaign team during the mayoral contest in New York City last year because of his use of "schwartzer," a term that would have been acceptable in his night club act, but not in public debate. The use of code words for derogatory racial epithets by George Wallace in his 1968 presidential campaign may have been undesirable, but a cultural climate in which their hypocritical language could be replaced by plain meaning would have been far
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