U.S. law is quite clear that one's expressive freedoms extend to burning the flag. But a Clarksville, Tennessee curator does not think those freedoms include frying it:

An art exhibit featuring deep-fried American flags, complete with peanut oil and black pepper, has been removed by a museum director in this military-friendly town.

Art student William Gentry said his piece, "The Fat Is in the Fire," was a commentary on obesity in America. "I deep-fried the flag because I'm concerned about America and about America's health," Gentry said.

Ned Crouch, the Customs House Museum's executive director, took down the artwork on Nov. 15, less than 18 hours after it went up in this community next to Fort Campbell.

"It's about what the community values," Crouch said. "I'm representing 99% of our membership-- educators, doctors, lawyers, military families."

Crouch was quoted in The Tennessean as saying: "Over half my funding is public funding.... I don't want to rock a boat that's hard to keep floating. It's not worth jeopardizing for an exhibit."

He also said the timing of the piece could cause "incendiary reactions."

"Never in the history of the country has the flag been more hated or more loved," Crouch said.

"I feel extremely censored," Gentry told the newspaper.

At least one Clarksville resident sees the decision to remove the exhibit as an act of cowardice that dishonors the First Amendment: "Clarksville resident and Navy veteran Bill Larson said the museum should not restrict the free speech of an artist based on public response. 'The museum is obligated to the citizens of the community to present art, and it totally failed in that regard.'

I tend to agree, although I note that looking at the issue from a moral and legal perspective begs the aesthetic question that begs to be asked here: Can a deep-fried flag ever count as art?

The news report notes that the student's "exhibit featured three U.S. flags imprinted with phrases such as 'Poor people are obese because they eat poorly' and more than 40 smaller flags fried in peanut oil, egg batter, flour and black pepper."

Well, I rather think we are fat because of our wealth, not our poverty. Though the solution is not in the mantras that have already failed or in any thing you need to pay money for.

Sigh.

Clarksville resident and Navy veteran Bill Larson said the museum should not restrict the free speech of an artist based on public response. 'The museum is obligated to the citizens of the community to present art, and it totally failed in that regard.'

God forbid that public money be accountable to the public!

"I deep-fried the flag because I'm concerned about America and about America's health," Gentry said.

Which is to say that his motive for producing this thing had nothing to do with the aesthetic. Shut down the studio where he is enrolled, and start a new one which admits (and is staffed by) artists and not pickle-fingered social commentators.

I love how Erin's right-wing fan base can think of all sorts of reasons to impinge on people's free speech when that speech is distasteful to them (while defending the public financing of Campus Republican free speech in the form of tasteless affirmative action bakesales).

Hey Mr L: The public is never directly in control of how public money is spent (see Ted Stevens' bridge to nowhere). So don't give me the "if art offends some people, cut the funding" argument. It's sophomoric.

And Art: the idea that art is only aesthetic is also sophomoric.

If I call myself an artist and draw a picture, is a museum that gets public funding required to exhibit it in order for me to maintain my free speech rights? If they refuse, can I call it censorship? Where's the line between censorship and bad art? Note - bad art doesn't mean it must be "pretty", but everything produced by self-proclaimed artists can hardly be considered worthy of display, any more than work by all self-proclaimed writers is worthy of appearing in print.

I love how Erin's right-wing fan base can think of all sorts of reasons to impinge on people's free speech when that speech is distasteful to them (while defending the public financing of Campus Republican free speech in the form of tasteless affirmative action bakesales).

No one has an unrestricted right to nurse unmolested at the public teat.

Hey Mr L: The public is never directly in control of how public money is spent

Appropriations are made by legislatures with greater or lesser specificity. If they do not think the local art-world sandbox is worth the patronage, that is their call.

So don't give me the "if art offends some people, cut the funding" argument. It's sophomoric. And Art: the idea that art is only aesthetic is also sophomoric.

If you wish to make a statement about nutrition, write one. The purpose of art is the aesthetic. If it illuminates something about the psychological or the social, that should be a secondary effect. Visual art, music, and literature are such because of the cultivation of form.

Your remarks about what is and is not 'sophomoric' are non sequitur.

Brian Micklethwait:

"As for the endlessly repeated claim that art is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, I don't buy that. And I don't believe the people who say that they do buy it are being honest. I think that a picture which they have no problem with, but which they believe makes other people whom they disapprove of uncomfortable, makes them very comfortable indeed, and that that is the kind of discomfort (i.e. not discomfort at all, for them) which they like, and are referring to with all this discomfort propaganda."

More here.

Yeah, I'm not sure what art is if not aesthetic. If Alvin could please make an argument that art is something beyond the aesthtic, this might be at least possibly convincing.

I say this as someone with both fine and applied art training, some modicum of ability, varied tastes, and a belief that the State shouldn't fund art (per se) at all. (I say per se, because I have no problem at all with the State decorating its buildings or commissioning sculptures for its properties, etc. But that seems fundamentally different from "funding art" qua art.)

I see no reason why I must believe that if the State is going to fund art, it must fund anything anyone calls art, rather than artworks that the people are most likely to enjoy, but that's another argument entirely.

If "art" is merely a synonym for "political expression", then the State definitely shouldn't be funding it, because funding equates to control, one way or another. Don't people want their political expression independent of the State?

Or do they just want the State's bankroll magically without strings? Not going to happen.

Sigivald, with your training in art history, you'd know that art emerges out of human ritual practices, which are not "aesthetic" in the sense you and Art are talking about. All the arts probably begin in the attempt to change the world through magic, not only to contemplate the beauty of the world ('tho I'm sure our ancient ancestors did both).

When it comes to literature, the aesthetic has often taken a backseat to content. Aristotle emphasizes the social function of drama; other early thinkers about poetry see it as instructive as well as entertaining.

The visual arts have traditionally been as much about the praise of status (portraiture) and the contemplation of religious mystery as about form, color, perspective, and other strictly aesthetic traits. Insofar as art expresses the ideals of the artist and his/her society, it is as much intellectual as aesthetic.

"Art for art's sake" is a relatively late phenomenon in the history of the arts. Art is always about aesthetics, of course; but it's not *only* about aesthetics -- or, even, mostly.

Alvin: (On reflection I notice that many of your comments about literature and the like appear to really be brought on by what Art Deco said, not by anything I said, so I'm not going to address them, since they're not as relevant to me, and it'd take a lot of space. Suffice it to say that I was making no statement about art-in-the-past, but was speaking about art-as-it-is-now, and only Pictorial art, even if AD wanted to talk about Literature.)

I submit that modern (not Modern, but modern-as-in-currently-made) art is more often "about" the aesthetic than anything else, and that further whatever else there is is still in the aesthetic realm.

(To clarify something I believe may have been the source of the problem from the get-go - when I say aesthetic, I do not mean the Greek sense, of the Beautiful. I mean only having-to-do-with-the-senses; the physical appearance of the painting or sculpture, beautiful or not, as opposed to any "intent" behind it or analysis of it.

Which might make it clear why I think art (again, restricted to the pictorial arts, which was the original context of the discussion) is about aesthetics not only more than anything else, but to the effective exclusion of anything else.

F'r example, someone might (in fact, almost everyone does) argue that Guernica is A Deeply Moving Message Against War; I'd say "sure is, but only because it depicts it so effectively, because Picasso was a master painter (ie master manipulator of aesthetic factors)." - without the aesthetic, there's nothing there; there isn't even a message - because writing "war is bad" on a canvas isn't pictorial art anymore, it's literature.

Flag-cake-guy's art isn't good art if it's not aesthetically effective, message or not. (Repeating: Effective may not be the same as pretty; deliberate ugliness is art too, and an effective use of aesthetics.) - note that I make no judgement on whether or not his art is or is not in actuality good, having not seen it.

[Though I admit to strenuously doubting that it's any good, from experience, art that consists of a Powerful Symbol transformed into Some Other Thing and covered with Slogans or Factoids is, well, crap.

But I think that's because the good artists don't have to resort to tricks like that, while bad artists do (cf. above Guernica vs. "War is bad"); perhaps if the good ones did it as an exercise, they could make something good out of it?

Likewise, far too many incompetent "artists" seem to be of the opinion that presenting a Message makes them artists, and perhaps my opinions are partially a reaction against that? Perhaps.])

Sigisvald: I agree that a certain kind of visual art rests on the senses. But that's like saying that a novel is a visual form because, without black marks on a white page, you'd have no novel. I think your comments confuse the good art/bad art distinction with the art/not-art distinction. The deep-fried flag is probably, as you say, bad art. But after Duchamp, to claim that art must be primarily the powerful arrangement of visual sense data is too limited.

Furthermore, the dominant mode of "visual art" for the past thirty years has been conceptual art. And the whole point of conceptual art is to move beyond the equation of art with the material or the sensual. Tracey Emin's bed project is not about the arrangement of color or forms or lines, but rather it is about the contemplation of a certain idea or procedure.

To clarify something I believe may have been the source of the problem from the get-go - when I say aesthetic, I do not mean the Greek sense, of the Beautiful. I mean only having-to-do-with-the-senses;

I meant that as well.

...art emerges out of human ritual practices, which are not "aesthetic" in the sense you and Art are talking about. All the arts probably begin in the attempt to change the world through magic, not only to contemplate the beauty of the world ('tho I'm sure our ancient ancestors did both).

Interesting if true.

When it comes to literature, the aesthetic has often taken a backseat to content. Aristotle emphasizes the social function of drama; other early thinkers about poetry see it as instructive as well as entertaining.

Literature is distinct from music and visual art in that words have denotations, and I erred in lumping them together. I would not deny that literature can be instructive. It was my point that arts (verbal, aural, or visual) should not be engaged in for the purpose of instructive, but might include an instruction as a secondary effect.

The visual arts have traditionally been as much about the praise of status (portraiture) and the contemplation of religious mystery as about form, color, perspective, and other strictly aesthetic traits. Insofar as art expresses the ideals of the artist and his/her society, it is as much intellectual as aesthetic.

Please note, what you are looking at is a portrait which forms and colors. Saying it is in 'praise of status' is a meaning with which you endow it. It does not speak.

Furthermore, the dominant mode of "visual art" for the past thirty years has been conceptual art. And the whole point of conceptual art is to move beyond the equation of art with the material or the sensual.

Yes, and 'tis a pity.