My book is an essay collection that covers a variety of artistic disciplines. It includes essays on photojournalism, photography, movies, music, censorship, tattooing, traditional paint-based art pieces, conformity, billboards, and poetry. Eugene Smith writes about his experiences documenting the mercury-poisoning incident in Minamata, Japan. Susan Sontag writes about the numbing effect of various kinds of photography. Robin Greely writes about the works and motivation of Frieda Kalho. Michael Meyer and George Mosse write about Hitler’s censorship of art. Jeff Chang wrote about the origins of hip-hop, the cultural war that started once it developed roots, and how it struggled to become the most popular form of music among youth. The examples noted above are only a small portion of the many essays contained in the book. Most of these essays describe how political and cultural surroundings can influence artists and their artwork, which was a prevalent theme in my Freshman Inquiry course, The Work of Art. The physical book is a combination of two paperback pamphlets our professor put together, with material covering two terms of the class. No one ever published it, and it has no title aside from the course name. I have placed the two pamphlets in a three-ring binder to ensure durability, because the original covers were flimsy pieces of colored paper, and the increased page number would give me more material to create my altered book design.
Since the pamphlet covers a broad range of artists, art mediums, and ideas, I will only focus on essays related to art censorship. As the text describes “art” in an vague sense, I will refer to “art censorship” in an equally vague manner. Censorship of movies, music, literature, and entertainment all count as “art.” These include writings by Michael Meyer and George Moss about the censorship of music and art during the Third Reich, as well as a written record of part of Hitler’s inauguration speech. I will also cover essays about American censorship, including the 1920-1930 era movie censorship guidelines imposed by rising accusations of immoral content, government measures taken against the singer Josephine Baker and her outspoken criticism of racism and discrimination, and Jeff Chang’s essay about the heated debate over rap lyrics and album censorship.
Censorship is still a relevant political issue. Both communities and governments have restricted artistic content in the past, and may continue to do so in the future. Even if the artwork is controversial, banning or restricting it is a blatant violation of freedom of expression. Censorship explicitly contradicts our country’s first constitutional amendment. Even so, people try to avoid anything that disturbs or offends them. They try to eliminate any concept or art piece that will have a negative impact on their children or their community, as was the case with pre-depression era movies and hip-hop lyrics. Censorship is often more complicated than it initially appears, because its supporters often have a reasonable motivation to censor the “offensive” piece, regardless of its medium. However, there are also people who would like to view the piece, and censorship robs people of that opportunity.
My altered book will address different issues of art censorship on separate pages, and will communicate my ideas through iconography and selections from the text. The entire altered book will be two-dimensional, more like a scrapbook than a three-dimensional paper construct. If possible, I want to make the iconography ironic and slightly humorous, so I might change things around. On one page, I will use the three wise monkeys to hint at society’s unwillingness to face objectionable or controversial content, which includes ideas presented by artwork or artists. If public controversy surrounding artwork is strong enough, community or government figures from various positions will ban it to “protect the public from indecency or bad influences.” I can communicate this by either modifying the third monkey to represent a group that stereotypically favors censorship, or communicating the “banned art” concept through a new icon. If I find new motivations for censorship during my research, I will also represent them here. After I research common motivations to censor artwork, I will dispute them all. To counter the ideas I wrote above, I will argue that censorship supporters should develop a greater tolerance to “objectionable” art, because other audience members may not share that repulsion, and deserve better than losing out because of a vocal few. It also asserts that censorship violates freedom of expression and the American Constitution, which I can express through an illustration of the constitution getting consumed by fire and revealing the word “forbidden” behind it.
Before I start the project, I will read the censorship-related essays a final time to ensure perfect comprehension. Then I will revise and expand my approach with external research, because I made several assumptions during the design stage to match the concepts in my text. For what reasons will people censor artwork? How do these reasons change from incident to incident? Who decides to censor an art piece, and does the censor also change? How can local ethics affect art censorship? Are there common themes among censored or banned art? Are there any situations similar to Josephine Baker’s where the artist incites controversy instead of the artwork? Depending on the answers I find, I may need to revise the details of my altered book.
