by lissaredshoes
“Art without free speech is simply propaganda.” — BC Civil Liberties Assn President Rob Holmes
Visual arts in Canada can be vulnerable to public outcry or laws that criminalize obscenity or pornography. Although the laws do “more or less” recognize artistic merit as a defence, the concept is vague and offers weak protection against charges of depravity.
Controversy and censorship often arise to protect ideals concerning human decency (whatever that means since its definition is a subjective conundrum). Any number of artists and cultural workers (i.e. gallery owners, publishers, etc.) walk this dangerous precipice when they engage in art works with taboo subject matter or issues challenging the status quo.
Lovers lll, Robert Markle, tempera, 1963
In 1965, the Toronto Police raided the gallery of Dorothy Cameron for hosting an exhibition called Eros 65. The “sex police” removed seven pieces from the show for their alleged obscenity, mainly pieces by Robert Markle that depicted erotic relations between women. The artist defended his work on national television, emphasizing a critical distinction between eroticism and pornography. The trial for obscenity sparked a national debate over censorship. Although Cameron contested the obscenity charges all the way to the Supreme Court, she ultimately lost the case, paid a fine and had to shut her gallery doors.
Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, by Jana Sterbak, is displayed in Paris in 2011. Sterbak is one of the 2012 winners of the Governor General’s Award for visual and media art. (Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty)
In 1987, Czech-Canadian artist, Jana Sterbak, caused a cultural flap when she exhibited her Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic. The meat dress, stitched together from 50 pounds of raw flank steaks emphasized the contrast between vanity and bodily decay. The title pronounced the fleshy gown as a modern momento mori, offering an engaging critique on the vanity and objectification of women. This absurdly raw take on sexuality and decay became a source of great offense to the public. Of her piece, Sterbak said:
“On the day of the opening, when the dress is exhibited the flesh is raw. Then the meat dries and starts to look like leather. Then everything is better, it becomes acceptable. This is also true for artists. Some curators prefer to work with dead artists because they’re less troublesome.”
Troublesome, indeed.
The show drew criticism from Members of Parliament, and the organizers of food banks and soup kitchens. Many saw her meaty gesture as a wasteful indulgence, seemly provoked by some misguided “notion that the National Gallery [was] somehow accountable for poverty and hunger in Canada.” (Art Critic Christopher Hume) In another spiteful attack, Ottawa Alderman Mark Maloney attempted to have the piece cited for health violations. Inspected on April 1, Dr. Edward Ellis of the Ottawa-Carlton Health Department issued a statement that the dress presented “no health hazard to the public at this time.” Captain Ray Braddock of the Salvation Army claimed that Sterbak’s dress was “almost criminal.” (Almost? Like in horseshoes?)
The most bizarre response, however, came in the form of a “juvenile-esque food fight” instigated by the Toronto and Ottawa Sun. Both papers printed a cartoon featuring “a curvy, spaghetti-strapped slip” made with beefy material. The editorial suggested that readers cut out the image, smear it with the foulest of organic matter, and mail it to curator, Diana Nemiroff. The gallery mailroom opened mail with gloves for weeks; one cartoon arrived smeared in feces.
Eli Langer, “Untitled,” pencil drawing, 8.5X11
In 1993, another controversy erupted when Eli Langer opened his exhibition of paintings and drawings at Toronto’s Mercer Union gallery exploring child abuse and sexuality. A negative review, Show Breaks Sex Taboo by Kate Taylor in the Globe and Mail set off a series of unprecedented events. First a citizen’s complaint to Metro Toronto police. Upon review, Officers from Project P (a hybrid police unit dealing with pornography) viewed the exhibition, issued a warrant, and seized thirty-five drawings, five paintings and a slide collection. Langer and Sharon Brooks of Mercer Union were charged with “possession of child pornography” under section 163.1.
On August 1, 1993, the Canadian Parliament passed Bill C128 into law without a single dissenting vote. The bill created the child pornography law — section 163.1 of the Criminal Code, which prohibited:
- Visual representations that show people who are or look to be under the age of 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity.
- Visual representations where the dominant characteristic is the depiction, “for a sexual purpose,” of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of eighteen.
- Written materials or visual representations that advocate or counsel sexual activity involving people under the age of eighteen.
The possession charges were dropped at a hearing in Ontario court, provincial division, on February 24. However, Crown Attorney Paul Culver applied for an order seizing Langer’s works, thus putting the art on trial instead of the artist. At the forfeiture hearing scheduled to begin September 29, 1994, Langer had to prove that his paintings and drawings were not “obscene.” Fortunately, common sense won out. Langer was acquitted on the basis that his work had artistic merit, and was therefore, a protected speech.
Cherry Ripe, 1879, John Everett Millais
In 2006, the national art magazine Blackflash, would fall under scrutiny for censoring itself over images it would use to illustrate an article on the new Child Pornography laws enacted in 2005. [Disclaimer: I was the Managing Editor of this controversial issue]. Where, before, a magazine could defend its editorial choices by citing “artistic merit,” that defence (or protection) was stripped from the law.
Ironically, The Last Taboo: Childhood Sexuality and Censorship, which questioned the effects of the new criminal statutes, opened the magazine to criminal charges, even though the images were legitimate works of art (published, collected and exhibited), or in the case of Robert Mapplethorpe’s, Rosie, successfully defended in a court of law. Instead, the magazine left blank spaces for the images along with a description of the art works and an URL.
So, what caused these changes to the Child Pornography Act?
Courtroom artist, Felicity Don
Crown vs. Robin Sharpe May 2002
Robin Sharpe viewing nude photos of boys; with crown & defense.
In March 2002, John Robin Sharpe was convicted for possession of child pornography in relation to photographs of underage boys engaged in sex but acquitted for the collection of stories he had written about the rape and torture of children. Sharpe’s lawyers argued that criminalizing stories and sketches that are purely works of the imagination amounts to declaring certain ideas “thought crimes.” The successful use of the artistic merit defence gave popular credibility to the idea that the legal system was failing to punish paedophilia and protect children. The new law has yet to be tested.
ATTILA RICHARD LUKACS: Authentic Décor, 1988, Oil, tar, enamel and varnish on canvas
In the 1990s, amidst controversy in the US over Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ and Mapplethorpe’s Rosie, Canadian gay artist icons, Evergon and Attila Richard Lukacs would face public anger and acts of censorship over their works depicting images of gay sexuality. Lukacs’s art experienced censorship in an October issue of Maclean’s magazine. Without his consent, the magazine would edit his work, Authentic Décor, by airbrushing out the genitals before sending it to press.
Evergon, “Homage to Raphael: Jupiter Kissing Cupid or The Harmony Lesson,” 2006
That same year, The Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon would come under attack from City Council and others for presenting a travelling exhibition of Evergon’s work with explicit homoerotic imagery. One city councillor was quoted as saying, “We have laws to clean up pollution in our rivers, so we should have laws to ban filth like this.” Members of the public went so far as to call for the firing of the director and cutting the gallery’s budget (neither happened). Then when American artist, Serrano attended the Art and Outrage conference on art and censorship at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1990, a city councillor referred to the artist as “a lunatic who should be in an asylum.” However, Anthropologist Carol Vance summed up both controversies well by suggesting during the conference that the “good people of Saskatoon and Winnipeg were experiencing a ‘sex panic’ and projecting upon these artists their anxieties about changes in family and gender relations, abortion, child abuse and so on.”
Whatever the reasons, it is satisfying to know that artists continue to explore the very contentious and complex issues that raise such public ire no matter the consequences. However, the cautionary tale here is that despite such bravery, the reality of possible retribution – be it criminal or loss of government support and funding – continues to pose great risks to artists and the institutions that support them. And on a broader scale, the public’s outrage and cries for censorship and criminality can only continue to hurt the very freedoms we fight for and that are protected under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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The Deathly Siluetas of Ana Mendieta
lissaredshoes is a visual artist and writer living in Canada who writes about art and the criminal justice system with a special focus on wrongful convictions and the role media and arts play in contemporary culture. She runs her own blog, My Spotted Couch, a website for her visual art, and writes occasionally for Galleries West. http://spottedcouch.wordpress.com/