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UW-Green Bay hosts contentious artwork
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by Michael Gendall
Monday, September 19, 2005
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's Lawton Gallery is hosting a controversial art exhibit, "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin," this month. The exhibit, which has been monitored by the Secret Service at past showings, features highly provocative art in the form of U.S. postage stamps, including such images as the World Trade Center burning with the words "Blame God."
In wake of the controversy, UW-GB Chancellor Bruce Shepard decided to remove a piece from the university-funded exhibit.
The piece in question, created by graphic artist Al Brandtner, is a sheet of stamps showing President George W. Bush with the red-and-white stripes of an American flag in the background and a hand emerging from the right border of the stamp with a gun pointed at the president's temple. The words "Patriot Act" appear at the bottom.
"[T]he advocacy of assassination is something I view as neither abstract nor theoretical," Shepard said in an e-mail to UW-GB colleagues. "It happens, it is real. I further believe that the one piece of concern very reasonably can be seen as expressing advocacy of assassination."
But Brandtner insists his work was not meant to advocate assassination in any way.
"The chancellor was taking the point of view that it's advocating assassination," he said. "I didn't see it myself as I was threatening, and I really didn't see it as a real scenario. I don't expect people to heed the call and do something so crazy."
According to UW-Madison political science professor Donald Downs, if the university is sponsoring a particular show, it has some editorial discretion to remove artwork, but added the legality of Shepard's action depends on the particular arrangement between the university and the art exhibit.
"[I]f the exhibit is part of a public forum, then the university would not have that discretion," Downs said via email. "Given the fact that the picture involves a political viewpoint, the removal raises serious questions of appropriateness."
Brandtner said although he understands Shepard's decision not to show the piece, the censorship has served to increase interest and publicity for his work.
In his e-mail, Shepard said that not to censor Brandtner's work would be allocating taxpayer money to what could be interpreted as the encouragement of assassinating President Bush.
"It is a question of whether this campus will use publicly provided resources for what, very reasonably and by many, will be construed as advocacy of a most violent and unlawful act," Shepard said.
Brandtner said the extremity of his work grew out of his strong desire to have it accepted.
"The curator of the show (Michael Hernandez de Luna) was flat-out adamant that the work we or anyone submitted to him was hard-hitting and ball-busting, that kind of stuff," Brandtner said. "I was really just trying to use Bush as sort of a target. I was trying to define that Patriot Act somewhere and turn that around and redefine it."
Brandtner said political assassinations throughout history have been committed by self-described patriots and added his design went to extremes to illustrate a frustration with the Bush administration.
He said the stamps represented "sort of a wishful thinking about the Bush Administration in general that they would just be gone."
UW-GB Communications Director Christopher Sampson said he was curious whether the
"Patriot Act" piece would be on display at any public university-funded gallery.
"We are the first public university where this exhibit has appeared," Sampson said. "It was at a private art gallery in Philadelphia [and] it was at Columbia College in Chicago, a private art school."
Asked if the nation would be better off with the president dead, Brandtner responded "No, I don't think so — I think that's an extreme sort of thing."
Brandtner said the controversy surrounding his artwork has given him a powerful political voice he never had before.
"I've never been able to express my political views in a very coherent way," Brandtner said. "I'm a guy that's just trying to make a living as a graphic artist and all of a sudden some artwork that I've done has propelled me into the middle of an argument."
