Republicans Shoot Down Resolution on Art Funding

SACRAMENTO — After angry Republican speeches calling for its defeat, the state Senate on Thursday shot down a resolution that would have urged Congress not to cut federal funding of art deemed obscene or offensive to religious, racial or ethnic groups.

Republicans blasted the resolution by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) which would have asked Congress to review selection standards for taxpayer-supported art instead of restricting funding.

A leading opponent of the resolution, Sen. Larry Stirling (R-La Mesa), declared: “We should be financing what’s good about America, and what can be better--not the twisted, moronic, demonic, asinine, stupidity of some artist who can’t sell his works on the open market, and so (he) has to get some leftist to get the government to finance it for him.”

The measure was defeated on a 14-19 vote, with 21 votes needed for approval.

Washington Debate

In bringing up the issue, the Senate joined the debate raging in Washington over two exhibits of controversial photographs supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) proposed restrictions on art funding after outrage erupted over Andres Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine and an exhibit of homoerotic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, who recently died of AIDS.

Torres said that only a small fraction of federally funded art is as “clearly offensive” as those exhibits and that the Helms proposal could allow for censorship in virtually all areas of artistic expression.

“Under the Helms amendment, material could not be published that denigrates Satanism or witchcraft. Shall we shelve Beethoven’s . . . Ninth Symphony because it’s about war, and might offend Quakers?” Torres said.

Stirling and other Republicans said Helms’ proposal addresses the responsible spending of public money and has little to do with censorship.

“Artists can still bite the heads off chickens and all that nonsense . . . as long as they don’t do it with government money,” Stirling said.