Take it Down: a Review of Controversial Religious Art
A bright elephant-ear pink fills the magazine cover, a backlight illuminating the picture and caption. At the top left corner, a bold all-caps title - “MAHOMET DEBORDE PAR LES INTEGRISTES” (“MOHAMMED OVERWHELMED BY THE FUNDAMENTALISTS”) - presides over a simple cartoon of the black-robed Prophet Mohammed crying into his hands, his face redder than the background. The stark white of a small speech bubble beside his face catches the eye: “C’est dur d’etre aime par des cons…” or “It is hard to be loved by idiots…” (Cabut). The Muslim community’s reaction to Jean Cabut’s cartoon was, to say the least, quite negative, spurring a lawsuit from the French Council for the Muslim Faith in 2006 (Ward). Thickly outlined and brightly colored, childlike in its unrefined simplicity, the cartoon’s style inevitably mocks its subject, embodying the pointedly harsh tone for which the French left-wing political satire magazine Charlie Hebdo is known. Even more, Hebdo is well aware of the inflammatory nature of its work, once publishing a picture of a rabbi, a pope, and a Muslim man all shouting, “Charlie Hebdo must be veiled!” (Taibi). Outside of the lawsuit, Hebdo has endured fire bombings, computer hackings, and most recently an attack by two Islamist gunmen, leaving twelve employees dead at the magazine’s France headquarters. Few believe that Hebdo’s employees deserved such a tragedy, yet the magazine’s offensive nature was called into question after the incident. While some protested against Hebdo’s consistently harsh caricatures of modern Islam and other religions, others adopted the phrase “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) to show their support for Hebdo’s right to free speech. Fellow political cartoonists banded together in solidarity to draw cartoons supporting Hebdo’s work. The incident over the artwork has only further expanded the ambiguous definition of what’s “politically correct”, and if that label should even be applied to art in the first place.
Take the chunnel north, and you could have found another piece of artwork that has sparked an incredible reaction from its audience. Life-size in its stature, the painting portrays a cartoonish black woman in sky blue robes, her facial features exaggerated to the point of racial caricature: bugging eyes, a largely rounded nose, and bulbous scarlett lips. Her loose clothing and flowing hair are reminiscent of something divine yet primal. Trailing down, her cloak opens to reveal her breast, rising from the canvas of the painting with - what is that, dirt? No, according to the descriptive caption, it is elephant dung. At the canvas’ bottom corners, two more small mounds of the feces match the sculpted material on her breast, supporting the painting’s frame. Surrounding the woman, what appear to be misshaped butterflies flutter in the air. One step closer, and their identity is revealed - cut-out photos of female genitalia, specifically butts, floating in a most sun-like yellow that fills the canvas. With a bright halo emitting around the woman’s head, it finally becomes clear what this painting might depict - a most untraditional, primeval Madonna. Yet Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary is perhaps known more for its negative reception rather than its artistic interpretation.
Originally part of the highly controversial Sensations exhibit (a collection of art pieces all owned by Charles Saatchi), the painting premiered in 1997 at the London Royal Academy of Art. While Virgin Mary initially encountered some backlash, the British audience held a fraction of the contempt that American audiences soon had for an elephant-dunged Madonna. Just as with Hebdo, politics unavoidably diffused into the debate over Virgin Mary. Following the exhibit’s move to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999, Mayor Rudy Guiliani pushed to close the “city-funded institution on the grounds that this artwork was offensive to religious viewers” (Young). Although the museum agreed to eventually remove the painting, tensions from visitors still grew; one visitor even “smeared white paint” over the artwork, labeling it “blasphemous” (Young, BBC).When Guiliani took the case to court, citing that government funding should have no part in “desecrating someone else’s religion”, the federal judge ruled in favor of the Brooklyn museum (Harris). A ripple effect ensued - the next Sensation exhibition in Australia was canceled as the issue escalated into a national dispute: does reputedly blasphemous art (particularly in a public institution) cross a legal or moral line? Moreover, does Virgin Mary even insult Catholicism in the first place? Concurrently in the case of Hebdo, must a large-scale satirical publication refrain from potentially offending its viewer’s religious beliefs? The museum and editors may have found worth in Ofili’s and Hebdo’s work, but the existence of an artistic duty to respect all religious beliefs remains in question. Can the religious mix limitlessly with the artistic or do certain boundaries exist?
Privately, Ofili and Hebdo have the right to create what they wish and a private gallery has the right to hang whatever art it chooses. However, the public element of both Holy Virgin Mary and Charlie Hebdo is the true root of the conflict, testing where the spheres of art and public service collide. If Jean Cabut or Ofili had only shown their drawings to a few friends, the attack on their work would most likely have not happened - ignorance, after all, is bliss, and a selected audience is easier to control. Yet whether private or public, the art can be considered First-Amendment-protected “speech”, deserving its existence as the personal expression of their respective creators. Free speech, however, has its limits, even in America and France - the discriminatory and the slanderous are prohibited. Thus, we must ask ourselves if perceived religious blasphemy goes beyond the protection of legal “free speech”. Before the 2015 attack, Hebdo founder Stephane Charbonnier defended the magazine’s right to satirize all subjects, stating “...we do caricatures of everyone…when we do it with the Prophet, it’s called provocation….When you start saying that you can’t create such drawings, then the same thing will soon apply to other, more harmless representations …” (Simons). The slippery slope of censorship appears hard to avoid. It seems that the religious can not be purely exempt from unfavored art if we don’t want all content to abide by the same audience-controlled restrictions. Still, the potential to cast a derogatory shadow on a particular group of people can lie within certain artworks, sparking unnecessary bigotry.
According to Mary Devereaux’s essay “Protected Space”, in the gradual “politicization” of art, the artist has usually been blamed for any sort of negative reaction evoked by the artwork, rather than the audience committing the reaction itself. Hebdo’s attackers certainly expressed this sentiment, enforcing that either the art should change or the artist should never work again. As seen with both Hebdo and Ofili’s work, the “growing number of court cases directed at artists, museum directors, and...distributors of art” show an increase in the public’s hostility towards the art that offends (209). With a growing media that universalizes political agendas, the world of politics has seeped more into the world of art, changing general artistic critique from a “formalistic” lens (purely form-driven and unconcerned with any political message) to a “political conception” (inevitably tying all art with political views). Devereaux supposes that this politicization forces artists to lose their “independence”, looking to appease as many people as possible rather than exhibit integrity (212-3). However, Devereaux argues that art functions as an important “litmus test of beliefs….a battleground on which competing groups fight to define (or redefine) America’s view of itself as a nation” - or any nation or culture. (208). If one of art’s many roles is to act as a springboard for any sort of debate, then art should not be censored to quiet even the most appalling opinion. Artists, like Hebdo and Ofili, deserve their “protected space”, a right to free expression that all French and American citizens possess (213). The right, although not the moral impetus, to produce these artworks is clear enough. Still, following the acceptance of such artwork’s legality, the definition of what’s morally appropriate remains unclear. When patrons hold more sway in determining art’s acceptability than ever before, we must evaluate how this power should unfold.
Offended audiences might argue that the art’s message be presented in a less provocative way, changing the form to cushion the content. But perhaps banning the offensive or provocative quality of this art dissolves its original purpose. Writer Richard Shusterman similarly argues for the necessity of art’s partnered content and form in his essay “Aesthetic Censorship”, writing that “...even if an artistic truth were to some degree expressible in another form, its artistic formulation might be so much more powerful and convincing that to deny its expression in art might entail failure to recognize its truth” (174). While Hebdo could have simply written a column elaborating their cartoon’s critique of Muslim radicals, the crude and succinct quality of Hebdo’s drawing greater conveyed their satire. Ofili could have simply painted elephant dung figures on the black Madonna, but the visceral elemetns of his painting formed his personal take on Christianity. The form, it seems, is intrinsic to the content. Still, perhaps there is a line that can not be crossed - a line that divides the artistically critical or reinventive from the harmful and prejudiced. Intent can often mark this line, requiring an audience to be aware of the artist’s own creative process. Depending on one’s interpretation of artistic intent, this line may separate Ofili from Hebdo.
Chris Ofili’s artistic intent was often reduced by the public to “blasphemy” - but surprisingly, the painter of The Holy Virgin Mary was Roman Catholic himself (Young). As Columbia University Professor Carol Becker justifies, Ofili’s Mary is not blasphemous, but “defiant of tradition”, challenging America’s white-centric view of the Bible (Becker). While many Americans saw the elephant dung and pornographic images as obscene, Ofili claims that his interpretation of the Virgin Mary is simply a “hip-hop” version of the Caucasian and “sexually charged” Madonna people usually see (Young). The dung is not sacrilege, but “...Nigerian iconography, symbolizing fecundity, fertility, and godliness”, meant to give “folkloric” earthiness to the Madonna (Becker). The female genitalia are not meant to provoke indecency but reveal Mary’s humanity, showing the flip-side of absolute purity (Becker). To Ofili, Virgin Mary had little to do with debasing Christianity and all to do with personal spirituality within his own religion. Even more, Ofili’s experience as a black Catholic gives a certain ethos to his work, supplying a level of knowledge and experience to the topic he portrays. In contrast, neither cartoonist Cabut or any writer on Hebdo’s staff were Muslim. Unfortunately, few probably bothered to learn the symbolic significance behind Ofili’s artistic choices, leading to such cries of sacrilege - Mayor Guiliani did not even see the painting for himself. Context, it seems, is key to unearthing the morality of Ofili’s Virgin Mary.
Now, take the context surrounding Hebdo - their cartoons obviously look to poke where it hurts, digging into controversies. With this intent, we have to question whether Hebdo’s art truly satirizes the violence of radical Islam or overly portrays all Muslims as inherently immoral. Hedbo has a long history of satirizing Islam and all other religions, particularly undermining modern Islam within its cover page cartoons – other examples would be a homoerotic cartoon of Mohammad kissing a man wearing a Charlie Hedbo shirt and two cartoons sexually portraying Mohammed as a porn star (Taibi). While recognizing the cartoons’ usual political acuteness, readers can easily interpret Hebdo as reaching for, at the very least, shock value. Journalist and writer Jordan Weissmann notes that a grand majority of Hebdo’s cartoons “simply rendered Islam’s founder as a hook-nosed wretch...seemingly for no purpose beyond antagonizing Muslims,” (Weissman). And particularly in France, Muslims are treated as a “poor and harassed minority” with a dismissal of religious rights that borders on “xenophobia” - the French government has banned women from wearing headscarves and burqas, a common Islamic custom (Weissmann). France may uphold similar free speech rights as America, and Weissman agrees that in the idealization of free speech, one has to follow through by consistently supporting its practice. Nonetheless, supporting free speech requires us to “...acknowledge when work is hateful or idiotic, and can’t be defended on its own terms” (Weissman). There’s a huge difference in purpose between Hebdo criticizing violent Islamic Fundamentalists and Hebdo jokingly drawing the Prophet Mohammed naked. The solution, it seems, is to “condemn obvious racism as loudly as we defend the right to engage in it” (Weissman). We must differentiate between offensive art which acts as a conversation springboard for its content, and art which merely demonizes its content at the expense of other people. In the end, an important part of erasing the intentionally demeaning is not only to prevent bigoted artwork from distribution, but to change how the viewer perceives such art.
Innovative or blasphemous, satirical or offensive, free speech or discrimination - dualities seem to comprise the debate over provocative religious art. Yet to fairly assess these works, we must find a balance between our perception and the art’s context, bridging the artist and the audience. See The Holy Virgin Mary not only for its shockingly unusual portrayal of Madonna, but for the meaning behind its elephant dung and sexuality, its creator’s personal touch as a member of the religion he portrays. Look at Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons and assess not only the crude qualities of their drawings, but also the significance of non-Muslims publicly disgracing Mohammed in a largely islamophobic country. Of course, a Christian can consider Ofili’s work as sacrilegious to his or her beliefs, yet it is not the blasphemous we must censor, but the harmful. Free speech through art is a great power, imminently wielding the capability to offend. Being offended, however, does not put you in the right - it is only a personal reaction. Rather, recognize the art’s impact beyond individual emotions, expanding your insight to analyze the artist’s aim and the art’s position in culture. In measuring not only our personal judgments but also the art’s greater impact, only then can we divide the offensive from derogatory propaganda.
Works Cited
Blanchard, Tamsin. "Arts: Sensation as Ink and Egg Are Thrown at Hindley Portrait." The Independent 19 Sept. 1997: n. pag. The Independent. Web. 5 Apr. 2015,
Cabut, Jean. "It's Hard to Be Loved by Idiots" Charlie Hedbo Feb. 2006: n. pag. Print.
Devereaux, Mary. "Protected Space: Politics, Censorship, and the Arts." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51.2 (1993): 207-15.JSTOR. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.
Goldstein, Sasha. "Charlie Hebdo Has Long History of Poking Fun at Religious, Political Establishment from Paris Offices." The Daily News [New York City] 07 Jan. 2015: n. pag. Daily News. 07 Jan. 2015. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
Lack, Jessica. "Censoring Provocative Art Is the Worst Advert for 2012." The Guardian 25 Aug. 2008: n. pag.The Guardian. 25 Aug. 2008. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
Harris, Gareth. "Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary Returns to London." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 28 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.
"Mahomet: Une Etoile Est Nee!" Charlie Hedbo 2012: n. pag. Print.
Olifi, Chris. The Holy Virgin Mary. 1996. Oil Painting. Sensation/Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Shusterman, Richard. "Aesthetic Censorship: Censoring Art for Art's Sake." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43.2 (1984): 171-80. JSTOR. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.
Taibi, Catherine. "These Are The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons That Terrorists Thought Were Worth Killing Over." The Huffington Post. N.p., 07 Jan. 2015. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
Ward, Victoria. "Charlie Hebdo Cartoonist Murdered in Paris Terrorist Attack Was on Al-Qaeda Wanted List." The Daily Telegraph 07 Jan. 2015: n. pag. The Telegraph. 07 Jan. 2015. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
Weissmann, Jordan. "Charlie Hebdo Is Heroic and Racist. We Should Embrace and Condemn It." Slate. N.p., 08 Jan. 2015. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.
Young, Allison. "Chris Olifi, The Holy Virgin Mary." Khan Academy. Khan Academy, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.