discovery:“Was this the best choice? What was the worst choice? What was the
other choice? All of us have that moment where puttin’the shit on us is the best
choice we have.”At the end of the piece, after smearing herself with feces-
symbolic chocolate, Finley covers herself with tinsel because, she says,“no matter
how bad a woman is treated, she still knows how to get dressed for dinner.”^4
Finley, Hughes, Miller, and Fleck–the so-called NEA Four–sued the NEA
for unconstitutionally restricting their freedom of speech. In 1996 the United
States Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit ruled that the phrase“decency
and respect for the diverse beliefs and values”was unconstitutionally vague.
The Justice Department then appealed the case to the Supreme Court. In an
8-to-1 decision, the court ruled to uphold the statute.^5
What are we to make of these cases? Do the works of Mapplethorpe and
Serrano and of the NEA Four contribute to moral understanding? They each
seem designed to make some point about values; they are not only exercises in
decoration or form, even where formal arrangement is a consideration in the
work. But how, then, are they works of art and different from theoretical moral
argument? Or are they, as detractors urged and as Frohnmayer apparently
agreed, indecent polemics that do not deserve government support? Perhaps
artistsshouldevenbeprohibitedfromexhibitingworkthat–so it is argued–
undermines“public morality.”Should such works be defended–if one is
inclined to defend them–by establishing that they instead offer genuine moral
or political insight, on the one hand, or by establishing that they are, as art,
“above morality,”in having autonomous and independent artistic value, on the
other? What, if anything, does art have to do with morality?
These works are the most widely discussed ones in the art and morality
controversy, but the controversy itself is far from new. Plato urged that
artists should be prohibited from producing or performing work that under-
mined public order and the stability of the ideally just government, if it
should ever come to exist. Tolstoy admitted that any works that are emotion-
ally infectious by means of color, line, and form count as art but held that the
very best works must also express“the religious perception of our time,”^6(^4) Finley discussed her piece in a lecture at Harvard, reported in the Harvard Gazette and
archived at http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/02.14/06-finley.html
(^5) Information on the court cases is archived at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/
524/569
(^6) Tolstoy,What is Art?, p. 145.
226 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art