By Scott Beaty
You can always count on feces for some good old-fashioned controversy in the world of art.
Piero Manzoni discovered this in 1961, when he canned his excrement – not in a solitary tin but rather, in a series of 90 – and sold them for their weight in gold. Literally.This raised a few eyebrows.
Chris Ofili drew more than postmodern criticism from Christians in 1999, when his collage “The Holy Virgin Mary” was displayed in Brooklyn encrusted with elephant dung.
And in Ottawa this past summer, Scatalogue: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, featured, well, 30 years of crap, and had the Canadian Alliance predictably moaning about the cash the gallery got from the government.
Now that Ottawa has finally recovered from the ensuing moral crisis and crumbling societal values that Scatalogue imposed on the city, the circus seems to have moved on to Manitoba.
An exhibition by Aliza Amihude at a Winnipeg gallery features jewelry made of mouse droppings, the artist’s toenails, pubic hair, and a few dead bugs. She received $5,000 from the Manitoba Arts Council to put on the show.
But before its doors had even opened and anyone had had a chance to glimpse the vagina shaped pubic hair necklace, many were already calling the show a waste of taxpayer’s money.
Members of the Tory opposition in Manitoba called the art offensive and questioned the grant. This is irresponsible.
Aside from scoring political points with socially conservative voters and basking in the cheap and fleeting publicity that taking such cheap shots affords, the blind condemnation of Amihude’s work is irresponsible. Blind condemnation of any art is irresponsible.
Jason St-Laurent, a co-curator of Scatalogue, experienced his share of “controversial modern art” bashing last summer during the exhibition’s five-week run at the SAW Gallery.
“All of our major critics during that exhibition period hadn’t seen the show. And I don’t know why the general public feels they can critique something without seeing it,” St-Laurent says. “I think with whatever strong subject you decide to explore in art generally. . . the funding is always put into question.”
St-Laurent says that the majority of the people who came to the exhibition expecting to hate it ended up enjoying themselves.
He admits that the subject of the show was an attention-grabber to entice the public to come to the gallery and talk about contemporary art.
One can only hope that the public will experience some satisfaction, or engaging debate, after seeing Amihude’s work.
Although not all gallery goers will find merit in Amihude’s jewelry , and keeping in mind that dissenting tastes in art are to be respected, this is not the issue.
The question of funding artists should not be automatically questioned whenever the subject clashes with the tastes of individuals in a provincial or federal legislature.