“The Whole Purpose of Art…” 

      Recently in the news was the story of a young high school student and his family suing the school district in which they reside.  Seems the student was awarded a “zero” on his art project – a landscape that included a cross and the words “John 3:16, A Sign of Love.”  The boy was ordered by his teacher to remove the “offensive” symbol, and when he refused, the teacher gave him the failing grade.  People, naturally, are upset, but at the same time, as the teacher pointed out, the “guidelines” for art projects clearly designate that scenes of violence, sexual connotation and religion are forbidden.  The family’s attorney in the suit claims that this is an unconstitutional restriction on the right to freedom of speech and exercise of religion, and sums up his case with an interesting definition of “art”:  “The whole purpose of art is to reflect your own personal experience.”

      Is it really?  It seems to me that this very “definition” of art is at the root of the problem, for if anything can be restricted from public expression, in different times and places, certainly it would be reflections of “personal experience.”  I imagine that the art teacher herself would more or less agree to that “definition,” and that’s precisely why such things as violence, sexual connotation and religion can be excluded from the canvas of high school painters. 

      Questions immediately crop up.  It is odd that high school students are restricted from painting or sketching anything with a “sexual connotation,” when they then file into another classroom where they are instructed in “sex education,” the usual program being anything but mere “connotations,” but rather most often explicit in text, graphs, pictures and, of course, propaganda.  It seems that if the theme of a painting, or of any work of art, is going to be about the romantic love between lover and beloved, then “connotation” should be the only means allowed of expression, lest the work devolve into pornography.  Amazing that according to this secularized puritan standard, a young man would be forbidden to sketch a copy of the famous Greek sculpture of the all but nude Aphrodite, the goddess of love, or paint a copy of Florence, Italy’s sculpture of David. 

      One wonders, too, about the necessity of forbidding the copying of Rubens’ well-known The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, a painting and high work of art that would fail the grade on two counts – violence and sexual connotation.  The category of violence would also forbid the depiction of the crucifixion of Christ, whether anyone recognized it or not as a “religious” theme.  So also, a young woman art student would have to forego exploring such a scene as the last moments of the battle of Thermopolyae, that occasion of heroism of the Spartan Greeks that saved the Western world from the Persians, or the great sea battle of Lepanto, when Christians turned back the horde of invading Muslims.  All too violent.  What?  No more battle scenes, no more classic love scenes, no more of such exquisite delights as Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation (religious “symbols,” you see, are “offensive”).

      Surely, this high school teacher of “art” is not oblivious to the fact that violence, romance (and sex) and religion are three of the greatest sources of art, supremely the last one, religion.  But, me thinks, the puritan standard now ascendant in America is more important than art anyway.

      And that brings one to the most important question:  what really then is the “whole purpose of art” (the fine arts, that is)?  The answer is so simple that it shocks and even scandalizes some people.  The purpose of the fine arts is to be beautiful.  And this is not merely “in the eye of the beholder,” not, that is, merely a form of “personal expression.”  A work of fine art unleashes something real, beauty, in and of itself; otherwise, it is not art.  The purpose of art is not to preach or propagandize nor to simply decorate.  There is a world of difference between a drawing meant to depict the risqué and one meant to portray, say, the beauty of the human body.  And potential art students need to study and know that difference.  There is something beautiful about the mosaic of Alexander the Great riding into war, sword in hand, or about the painting of little David holding the severed head of Goliath, or about a gilded icon of a saint or Christ on the cross – all of which would be outlawed by an art teacher. 

      Here’s the logic:  depictions of violence, sexual love (even if only connoted), and religion (whatever these categories include) are “offensive” to some people, regardless as to whether the depiction of any one of these is real art or not.  So, then, people who are offended, even by very high art, are setting the standard for young art students.  What’s “offensive” is not allowed.  But why not the better, far better, standard of aiming for beauty?  There is a real danger in defining the limits of artistic endeavor by what is not “offensive,” just as there is a danger in reducing “art” to a reflection of one’s “personal experience.”   

      At bottom, what we have here is the insistence on a politically correct art, as “harmless” as it is shallow, close kin to that now derided category of “Soviet realism,” an “art” form deemed not to be offensive to the Communist State.  But religious symbols (especially Christian) are now offensive to certain people (usually only to the self-anointed group of pseudo-elites who run this country).  Never mind that religion, most especially the Catholic religion, has traditionally been the most powerful motive for the production of great art; for an art teacher in California has decreed that religious symbols are offensive. The barbarians are not at the gates, my boys; they are in the next classroom teaching “art.”