CTA to Ban Busses?
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Can CTA patrons stand to ride in the same buses with graphic depictions of homosexual kissing? We may soon find out. The latest skirmish in the public-art wars will come to a head early next month, when more than 30 works will go up on approximately 1,500 billboards, buses, and subway platforms citywide as part of the national Art Against AIDS campaign. The pieces, intended to “explore the ever-deepening concerns of contemporary artists in the face of the devastation wrought by AIDS,” were created by artists such as John Baldessari, Cindy Sherman, Ed Paschke, and the late Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe. But the work likely to attract the most attention and debate is a bus panel by Gran Fury titled Kissing Doesn’t Kill. The poster depicts three couples–man-woman, man-man, and woman-woman–kissing each other mouth-mouth. The unabashedly graphic images are presented with a tag line stating “Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do.” Early last week Annie Philbin, the New York-based director of the Art Against AIDS public exhibition, was proud to note that the Chicago Transit Authority had agreed to display the Fury poster despite its potential for controversy, “We were worried that we wouldn’t get the Fury piece up in Chicago, she said, “but in the end the transit authority decided to go ahead with it. The CTA is being very brave.”
Steppenwolf Has Seats to Fill
As the Body Politic Theatre saga continues to evolve, word comes that the company’s acting ensemble has put forth a proposal that the board of directors is seriously considering. Worried that a new artistic director might opt to dissolve the ensemble and cast each show by open call, a group of ensemble members has proposed the creation of an artistic committee of three that would work with producing director Nan Charbonneau. That committee, sources say, would comprise ensemble members James McCance, Joe Sadowski, and Donald Brearley. None of the committee members would serve in a full-time capacity, which means that much of the decision-making power would remain in Charbonneau’s hands. Sources also say that Tom Stoppard’s pretentious piece Artist Descending a Staircase is under consideration as the first play of the 1990-’91 Body Politic season. The play opened and closed quite promptly this season in New York.
