To the editors:
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The piece begins with Guthrie visiting the downstate printer and being troubled by the “Christian paraphernalia” around the plant. (Count Dracula had the same problem.) I presume Guthrie would feel more at ease if some other paraphernalia were evident; say, a shrunken head hanging on the typesetter’s belt. We are then treated to the non sequitur of the month: No, this isn’t Pornography, everything here has been shown in museums. Apparently contact with Official Art sanctifies even the slimiest material: if Mapplethorpe’s photo “Honey” were displayed on the racks at Uncle Nasty’s adult bookstore, a gang of feminists would be burning the place down. Yet a whiff of Art incense and the same image becomes downright angelic.
The recent failure of the censorship case against the Cleveland museum showing the infamous Mapplethorpe photos is not a triumph for the Art mafia, but a source of shame. The jurors said the pictures must be Art because the defense trotted up some Art professors who said they were. The jurors thought they were just disgusting, but since none of them had been in a museum in years they listened to the professors and acquitted.
PS: Guthrie would be on slightly better moral ground if she hadn’t tried to stiff the printer for $35,000. Maybe she can get a grant.
