Dung Deal - Brooklyn Museum of Art's "Sensation" exhibition

National Review, Oct 25, 1999 by Cristopher Rapp

'When I first saw it, it scared me because, well, it's frozen human blood, but now I think it's the most powerful piece here."

Most visitors to the Brooklyn Museum of Art's "Sensation" exhibition seemed to prefer the works of headliner Damien Hirst-the 14-foot tiger shark floating in formaldehyde, perhaps, or the pig cut in half. But Anthony, a 29-year-old photographer, was making the case for Marc Quinn's sculpture Self-a self-portrait made from eight pints of the artist's own blood.

Purplish-red, the head sits in a glass case, kept at a steady 9-below by a refrigeration unit. It looked to me like some kind of disgusting popsicle, but Anthony found it inspiring. "It speaks to the fragility of life. What if someone trips on the cord and unplugs it? It's telling me to go out and live my life and to keep going."

With a grin, he offered a final thought: "And I was born Catholic."

That biographical detail was a winking reference to the protesters from the Catholic League and other groups who were outside the museum; to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; and to the painting in the next room, Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary-one outstanding feature of which is a clump of elephant dung.

Ofili's painting and the rest of the 90 or so pieces in "Sensation" are from the collection of Charles Saatchi, the British advertising magnate.

Featuring works by young British artists, the exhibition has produced controversy-and long ticket lines-since opening at London's Royal Academy in 1997. As the title suggests, the show is deliberately provocative: The museum is selling a line of "Danger Art" souvenirs, and a poster warning that "the contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety."

Ten days prior to its opening, Giuliani pronounced the exhibit "sick" and promised to withhold the museum's $7.2 million in city funding-about a third of the Brooklyn Museum's budget-unless the show was canceled.

Giuliani didn't object to the exhibit's being seen, just to the fact that it was being paid for with tax money. "You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion," he said. Other Republicans only talk about fighting the culture war; Giuliani is actually in the trenches. Later, he said he would disband the museum's board of directors, and the city filed a lawsuit contending that the museum had violated its lease.

Now that was provocative. The New York Times editorial board objected that Giuliani's action "promises to begin a new Ice Age in New York's cultural affairs." In the space of one Times op-ed piece, playwright Jon Robin Baitz managed a trifecta-raising the specter of the Inquisition, Stalinist Russia, and Nazi Germany.

After I bade adieu to Anthony, it was time to take a look at Ofili's handiwork. The alcove containing Mary was jammed with people, as it would be all day. To safeguard against vandalism (two nights earlier a spirited protester had been caught throwing manure at the building), the museum had beefed up security: A museum guard, an armed police officer, and a Plexiglas shield kept onlookers from getting too close.

At first glance Ofili's work seems relatively unobjectionable-simply a stylized black Madonna, set off against a slightly trippy golden background. But the devil is in the details, specifically the clump of elephant dung at her right breast. Two more clumps, labeled virgin and mary, serve as supports for the painting. (Yes, it smelled.) And surrounding the figure are dozens of cut-outs from pornographic magazines- women's backsides and vaginas-a fact all but ignored by the mainstream press (and omitted entirely by the New York Times review of the exhibit).

Defenders of the exhibit took pains to point out, however, that Ofili discovered elephant waste while in Zimbabwe, where it is thought inoffensive; and that Ofili is himself a Catholic ("who attends church," added the Los Angeles Times). So what's the big deal?

"There is nothing wrong with this picture," said an elderly woman standing next to me. A snappily dressed younger woman from the front of the line told me she thought it was "painterly" and "beautiful." This was getting surreal.

I wandered on, past Ron Mueck's incredibly detailed sculpture of his deceased father, lying nude on the floor and lovingly titled "Dead Dad"; past Mona Hatoum's short movie, filmed with a fiber-optic camera, of her own esophagus; past the portrait of child-murderer Myra Hindley composed of child-sized handprints; past the table featuring fried eggs representing breasts and a meat patty representing female genitals. That, according to the artist, is how sexist male society views women.

It does seem to be how the Brooklyn Museum views women. I ended up at Jake and Dinos Chapman's display of mannequins representing little girls, nude except for matching Fila high-top sneakers. The girls stood in a circle, their torsos connected to one another like Siamese twins. This was creepy enough, but the Chapman brothers have added a special touch-some of the girls have erect penises instead of noses, anuses instead of mouths, and . . . well, you get the picture. A little later I saw two real-life girls, maybe 10 years old, walking around the mannequins and looking shell-shocked.