Smithsonian Has A Christmas Ant Problem

The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution is largely federally funded. It has occasionally gone off the rails, but art is in the eye of the beholder. However, this time they went off the rails and into a cesspool. The Christmas exhibit, mostly paid for by you and me, belongs in a sleazy Castro District back room in San Francisco, not at a museum that is a national icon.

Let's first establish that I'm not a protector of the public morals. I haven't lived a cloistered life, and spending my college years in Berkeley in the 60s followed by the single life in San Francisco and New York City before getting married is not exactly the life of a monk. This is all by way of saying that it's nearly impossible to shock me. Disgust, yes. Shock, no. I'm disgusted with the Smithsonian, and I admit, almost shocked. The Institution has put together a Christmas-time exhibit that rivals the piss Christ and elephant dung Virgin Mary exhibits elsewhere, as well as those of the pornographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Among the works of high art for the Christmas crowds at the Gallery are a portrait of nude brothers kissing (above photo), male genitalia, Ellen DeGeneres in mime whiteface cupping her breasts, and multiple homoerotic photos and portraits. But the piece de resistance was a continuous loop video featuring a crucified Christ covered by crawling ants. The exhibit is called "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." Why does crap always have a lofty title? Gay porn is gay porn, no matter how lofty the title.

As the art connoisseur enters the exhibit, he is greeted with the following plaque: "The National Portrait Gallery is committed to showing how a major theme in American history has been the struggle for justice so that people and groups can claim their full inheritance in America's promise of equality, inclusion, and social dignity (and I thought I wrote run-on sentences). As America's museum of national biography, the NPG is also vitally interested in the art of portrayal and how portraiture reflects our ideas about ourselves and others." That mission statement is high-fallutin' prose for "we'll show any damned offensive thing we choose to show."

Although the exhibit has multiple private sponsors, the Gallery is a federal taxpayer-funded location. In response to an outpouring of indignation from various Christian groups, the Gallery has removed the highly-offensive ant-covered Jesus video. Too bad the "artist" didn't represent a naked Mohammed covered in pig fat and ants. That would have eliminated any need for civilized formal complaints. All the rest remains, including graphic sado-masochistic representations of men in chains, and whole or partial nude bodies that look like the aftermath of major surgery.

Most of the "art" is so homoerotic or irreligious that it should be given an X rating. So bring the kids to the Smithsonian for Christmas. And speaking of Mapplethorpe, get a load of this description of a photo of his that appears in the exhibition: "In this playful inversion of the classic family photograph, leather-clad Brian Ridley sits in an ornate wingback chair, chained and shackled to his dominant, horsewhip-wielding partner, Lyle Heeter." Well, isn't that special? Frankly, I don't know whether to laugh or puke.

The Ellen DeGenerate photo by famed Annie Leibovitz had the legend: "Amid the madcap mugging in the photograph, notice the aggressive presentation of the breasts versus the exposed boxer shorts. De Generes's mimelike mask both reveals and hides, and the cigarette gives her a tough-guy look." WTF? Yeah, and it'll give her cancer, too. I haven't read that much flowery wording and lengthy verbiage since the last time I wrote the article descriptions for the Boys and Girls Club Auction catalog. Of course, those items were much tamer. My thought upon seeing the photo was "now there's a woman who knows nothing about makeup, and can't accessorize worth a damn." Did she miss every episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?

I checked out the reaction of the Washington Post to the removal of the video (no mention of the retention of the rest of the garbage). The supporters of the video had the standard arguments, so the WaPo merely went along with them. Naturally, there was the auto-pilot argument that anyone who would want that video removed would want da Vinci's and Michaelangelo's nudes suppressed. Yep, male kitten with a whip is pretty much the same thing as Moses and David. Says another, "I believe that, instead, it means that all of us need to take a deep breath when we feel put upon by art we dislike. For the good of all of us, all of us might sometimes need to bear with the occasional offense." I can put up with an occasional offense, but an entire gallery exhibition that is wall-to-wall offense might just be a different thing--particularly on my dime. And while you're at it, tell that to Mohamud Ahmed Mohamud when you want to offend Muslims.

After patronizing a commenter who asked about the offensive "blatant defamation of a symbol of their Savior, Best Friend and reason for living," Post writer Blake Glopnik responded: "I can also see how an artist, witnessing the hideous, heart-rending loss of a loved one to AIDS (ah, the magic word against which there is no defense), might choose to express his feelings by showing an effigy of Jesus crawling with ants--a young man abject and miserable, defeated and cast in the dirt, without the strength even to defend himself from the tiniest of insects." Boy, is that a purple-prose stretch. The blasphemy aside, is this art or public indecent exposure? Or maybe group therapy?

Glopnik goes on to talk about the "many devout, traditional Protestants who would object to seeing their Saviour (yeah, he spelled it that way) depicted in any way, shape or form, and might prefer that even the most precious Renaissance paintings of him be taken down." Well, that certainly came out of left field. In my six decades, and my travels from coast to coast and border to border, I never met one of those Protestants. Maybe there's a small congregation in backwoods Kentucky which thinks that, but I doubt they're planning on spending a lot of time at the National Portrait Gallery.

And at long last, Glopnik admits "I can even entertain the possibility that an artist might, for any number of personal, political, theological or historical reasons--well-founded or not--be so disgusted by Christianity that he'd want to cast one of its central symbols in the dirt." I liked his "well-founded or not," allowing us rubes the benefit of the doubt. In any case, that's the "art as protest" argument that has nothing to do with art and everything to do with protest. There are plenty of places that "artists" can feature their "art," but I still haven't heard a good reason for why sick protest art has to be at the tax-funded Smithsonian.

Says Glopnik: "Generally speaking, the more shocking a piece of art is, the harder it has to work to get beyond its superficial shock value--the shock drowns out any other point the artist might be trying to make." That's the "cutting-edge avant garde" argument most often used to cover for the really lousy nature of the so-called art. You don't dislike the art because it's worthless and offensive. You dislike it because you're a backward, primitive boob who is too far behind the times to recognize the next big thing. I know I'd like it a lot better if it were properly displayed in a back-alley porn shop than in a gallery that I help to pay for.