Photographer Renee Cox
and NYC Mayor Giuliani's Call
for a Decency Commission

 

Renee Cox's "Yo Mama's Last Supper"
(click here to view work)

This past February, after the opening of the exhibit "Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Mayor Giuliani went another censorship rampage against one work in the show -- "Yo Mama's Last Supper" by Renee Cox. He declared that he was going to establish a Decency Commission to review art which was to be exhibited in publicly-financed institutions in New York City.

The work depicts a revised version of the Last Supper, with Renee, nude, portraying Christ at the center of the table surrounded by her disciples who are portrayed by 12 Black men, many of them noted artists and musicians.

From the NY Times, February 17:
"Yo Mama's Last Supper" has Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani squaring off against the Brooklyn Museum of Art, just as he did in 1999 when he tried unsuccessfully to shut down the "Sensation" exhibition that included a painting of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung.

Mr. Giuliani, who called for a commission to set decency standards for art on display in public museums after learning about the Brooklyn exhibition, continued to take aim at the photograph yesterday, noting that it was on display in a museum that, like virtually every other museum in New York City, receives money from City Hall

"If you want to desecrate religion in a disgusting way, if you want to promote racism, if you want to promote anti-Semitism, if you want to promote anti-Catholicism, if you want to promote anti-Islamism, then do it on your own money," the mayor said in his weekly radio program. "Do not use the taxpayers' money to do that."

From the Daily News:
"I'm going to look at what penalties are available for this," Mr. Giuliani said at a news conference in the Blue Room at City Hall. Just as in 1999, he was reacting to large headlines and pictures, without having seen the exhibition itself. He added that he and his lawyers would be investigating "a way to get this dispute to the place where I think we could win it, which would be the Supreme Court of the United States." The Supreme Court ruling that the mayor cited did not in fact set up decency standards for the exhibition of art in museums that receive public money. Instead it upheld a Congressional decency test for awarding federal arts grants· [Concerning the Brooklyn Museum,] Giuliani said: "They do it on purpose; they do it to get more attention.. The problem with it is, if you allow people to continue to do it and not react to it, then it's just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse."

The mayor's remarks were greeted with some bewilderment by other politicians in the city.

*****

On Sunday March 4, the Artists Network of Refuse & Resist!, in conjunction with Cheap Talk, held a salon discussion about the controversy. About 25-30 artists from various mediums (visual arts, theater, film, spoken word, etc.), plus a couple curators and a lawyer came (not bad considering we were under threat of the impending blizzard of the century).

At the salon, Renee talked about some of her thoughts behind creating the work: She said that she made the work as a critique of a religion that has historically done a lot of harm to Black people not to mention women. As someone who was raised in Catholic school, she was taught that 'we were all made in God's image' and that she therefore was making her own interpretation of 'Last Supper' with a strong Black woman at the head of the table.

This is what really seemed to tick off some of the "critics." She explained that she wanted to make art that expressed self-love and depicted Black women in a positive light.

On the morning of the salon, Catholic Cardinal Egan devoted a significant part of his Mass that morning to ranting against her work. The Cardinal's photo and comments turned up on the cover of the Daily News the next day..

Renee was very glad for the gathering, she said it was the first organized support from the arts community (besides her personal friends) that she had experienced. She had felt somewhat isolated since neither the Brooklyn Museum nor other institutions had said or done much in her defense. She has also been receiving threats.

In the past week, she was doing a lot of press and reaching out to other organizations. During the evening, people touched on a range of topics raised by the controversy and what to do about it. The discussion was good and quite lively.

Some of the topics: Was it good that Renee was speaking out and talking about the content of the work or would it be better for her to remain silent as some people in the art world have advised her?

Renee and most in the room felt that it was quite a positive thing that Renee is speaking out and that this makes it more difficult for people like Giuliani and Egan to define the work and set the terms of debate. It is very important to resist these censors.

"Why is this happening now?" was another theme that kept coming up. The simple answer people felt was that it's about power-- though there were differences on what that power was. Some remarked that this country has always dissed Black people and women and censored artists.

Others focused on how Renee and her piece presents a convenient target -- a kind of "package" which brings forth attacks from certain political powers at this particular moment. People mentioned that Bush has just come out with his "Faith-Based Initiative" which proposes to move billions of government dollars for social programs into the hands of evangelist preachers.

Is this bigger than Giuliani? Some put forward that he was out to further his public career next elected office or public position might be. Others argued that we are in the midst of a Cultural War and that powerful political forces, including Christian fascists, are pushing for a theocratic state with fundamentalist "traditional morality" at the core, and works like "Yo Mama's Last Supper" can not be tolerated by these forces. Especially now that the head of the Catholic Church has joined Giuliani in denouncing the work, it puts the question of religious fundamentalism at the center of this censoring attack.

We also touched on how this attack could also present an opportunity - there are good possibilities of uniting artists, including some of the well known artists (many had come out during the Sensation episode), as well as lawyers, religious leaders, etc. We talked about the possibilities for urging and assisting the Brooklyn Museum to come out more publicly in support of Renee, noting that those museum officials, like many people in our society, don't want to live in a world where artists are censored, "traditional morality" is enforced and museums have to answer to "Decency Committees."

But the BMA and other institutions need to know that there will be support among the public when they take a principled stand against the bullying of Giuliani et al. One possible action may come to pass if the mayor continues forward with plans for his decency commission: a "confession-in" at a major Catholic church, with 100 artists lining up to confess their appreciation for Renee's photograph.