Conservatives called her art “obscene.” She’s back for more.
MIAMI BEACH, FLA. >> Very few visual artists have been the subject of a Supreme Court case. Karen Finley, 67, is one of them. A member of the so- called NEA Four, Finley — along with Tim Miller, John Fleck and Holly Hughes — sued the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990 after the organization withdrew their fellowships.
The federal agency was under scrutiny for financing art — including Andres Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine — that the religious right deemed indecent. A performance in which Finley covered her body with chocolate frosting, red candies and alfalfa sprouts to make a statement about society’s treatment of women was another attractive target. On the Senate floor, Republican Jesse Helms called Finley’s work “pornographic” and “obscene.” A nationally syndicated newspaper column dismissed her as nothing more than “a nude, chocolate- smeared woman.”
During an eight- year legal battle, Finley and her fellow artists were awarded the value of their vetoed grants but lost their broader challenge to NEA policy. In an 8- 1 decision, the Supreme Court upheld a law, amended in 1989, to state that the agency should not only base its funding decisions on artistic merit but also consider “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.” The decision transformed Finley’s career and the shape of public arts funding in the United States.
In this 25th anniversary year of the National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley decision, the artist is revisiting “Go Figure,” a work she created in the wake of the lawsuit. It is being presented at Art Basel Miami Beach, in a booth at the Convention Center, through Sunday.
“I felt that we as the NEA Four were standins for many artists, and the artist was being dismissed,” Finley recalled recently during an interview from her studio in Rockland County, New York.
“Go Figure” involved inviting the public to participate in a life drawing class with a nude model. ( At the fair, nude models will pose for two hours each afternoon, tucked behind a privacy wall; Finley and other artists will be on hand to sketch alongside fairgoers. Other works by Finley, including figure drawings,
protest banners and footage of the notorious chocolate performance — “We Keep Our Victims Ready” ( 1990) — are also on view.)
Helms and other critics had “eroticized my career, my work, my livelihood,” Finley said. With this installation, she seeks to reframe art- making as a highly technical craft — and the body as a neutral teaching tool.
“Go Figure” may take on new resonance in Florida, where in March a high school principal was fired for including Michelangelo’s David in a Renaissance art class without proper permission. One parent called the sculpture “pornographic,” the same term Helms used to describe Finley’s work.
Florida has been a hotbed for what lawyer David Cole, who represented the NEA Four and now serves as national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, calls “culture wars 2.0.” While explicitly sexual material is less provocative in the era of internet pornography than it was during the first culture war, gender transgression and race remain hot- button issues. Under Gov. Ron Desantis, Florida passed bills prohibiting public schoolteachers from discussing critical race theory, sexual orientation and gender identity. “It’s déjà vu,” Cole said. Since the passage of what critics refer to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, more than 40 similar policies have gone into effect in 22 states, according to the free- speech advocacy group PEN America.
The American Library Association reported that attempts to ban books are up 20% this year nationwide, the highest level since the organization started collecting data more than 20 years ago.
When “Go Figure” was first staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 1997, it included a ref lecting pool on which Finley projected the audience’s responses to the question “What is offensive to you?” Although the pool will not appear when New York gallery Freight+ Volume presents the work in Miami, the question remains a potent one.
Tom Healy, Finley’s former art dealer and a trustee of PEN America, said he would have been
“shocked” to learn 25 years ago that today’s left- leaning activists believe that free speech should be balanced carefully against concerns about the care and safety of students before speakers with provocative
ideas are invited to campus.
“There is a different sense of decency operative today in deciding what kind of speech should be free,” Healy said.
And recently, a new front in the culture war has opened up on campuses with demonstrations over the Israel- Hamas war, and at some art institutions as they remove artworks or postpone shows of artists who have been critical of Israel.
The 1998 ruling did not go so far as to restrict the NEA’S ability to fund “indecent” art, noted Amy Adler, a professor specializing in art law at New York University. In the end, the language was vague enough that it “didn’t mean much.” But the firestorm nevertheless had an effect. In the years after Finley filed her lawsuit, the endowment stopped awarding fellowships to individual artists in all genres except literature. It shifted more money to state arts agencies, which critics said diminished its influence in Washington, and focused attention on communitybased initiatives in lieu of avant- garde art.
Today, Finley teaches art and public policy at New York University and continues to perform; she recently staged a one- woman show about the pandemic ( a New York Times critic’s pick). Artists call her a few times a year, she said, for help navigating a censorship issue. ( Harris Kornstein, a drag performer, said Finley was a key sounding board after PBS took down a video of him reading a children’s book amid conservative backlash.)
“I think a lot about the fact that I’ve had the privilege of censorship — that my body would be considered worthy of censoring,” Finley said. “There are many people whose voices are not even listened to in the first place.”
There is irony in Finley restaging a performance from one of the most contested moments of her career at Art Basel Miami Beach, a playground for the rich, powerful and politically connected. Since she originated “Go Figure” a quarter- century ago, the political fallout from the culture war has shifted to the library and the classroom.
“Back then, the art world was tarred as being emblematic of a repugnant, sexually perverse, impenetrable cultural elite,” Adler said. “Now, art is often perceived as a luxury commodity marketed to the very rich.”
Above all, the installation marks Finley’s return to “a space that seems to have been denied her,” Healy said. “On the other hand, I know she’s going to subvert it. That’s Karen being Karen.”