By Berit Kjos
May 1994 – The headline for a full-page article in the San Francisco Chronicle fits our times: “Puppets for Social Change—the Art of Protest on S. F. Streets.” The top picture showed a gigantic puppet named Rage swaying above the mass of demonstrators, its mouth contorted in a scream, its fist gripping a sign proclaiming “NO.” Marching with Rage were a surrealistic crow, a sun goddess, and various mythical monsters. Together they composed “a walking gallery of feelings that collective members want to express – need to express.”
Primal expressions are in. Mythical and mystical art permeates art galleries, museums, theaters and cultural centers. Dancers imitate tribal fertility rites. Drummers summon ancestral spirits. Sculptors revive pagan gods and goddesses as city symbols. Public schools teach tribal maskmaking and ritual chants. Community art fairs popularize dreamcatchers, medicine shields and other occult artifacts used to manipulate pagan spirits. Together these timeless expressions evoke one overriding vision: a mystical world where humans once again seek animal powers and spiritual connections apart from God.
This explosion of occult stimuli desensitizes us to evil, distracts us from reality, molds our minds and – unless we have a firm Biblical foundation – shapes our beliefs. Most of us don’t argue with a painting – we simply store the image. A Chevron ad said it well: “Art is not only a reflection of our culture, it also serves to shape and define who we are.”
While some wonder how our culture can survive this onslaught, others cheer the revolution. “Artists can play a unique role in raising our consciousness about the changes that must be made for the healing of our planet,” said Andria Diaz, faculty member at Matthew Fox’s Institute. Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers agree. In the popular PBS television series, The Power of Myth, they discuss the artist’s crucial role in social transformation:
Moyers: Who interprets the divinity inherent in nature for us today? Who are our shamans?
Campbell: It is the function of the artist to do this. The artist is the one who communicates myth for today... .
Moyers: So shamans functioned in earlier societies as artists do now. They play a much more important role than simply being... .
Campbell: They [the shamans] played the role the priesthood traditionally plays in our society.
President Clinton seems to appreciate the transforming power of art. He and Hillary have commissioned actress Jane Alexander, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), to make sure that “arts are part of the life of every single American in the country.”
“Let me get into the fray here,” said Alexander, who is eager to re-invent the image of a politicized agency seared by controversy. Following Clinton’s campaign style, she will crisscross the country, using her fame to prove the vital importance of the arts.
Her primary focus will be arts education. She plans to work closely with Secretary of Education Richard Riley... to make the arts as important in classrooms as history and science,” wrote New York Times editor Karen De Witt.
“And I’m not talking just about pumpkins at Halloween or bunny ears at Easter,” added Alexander. “I’m talking about a lot more in terms of a daily expression.”
Like global-minded educators within the National Education Association (the other NEA) who listen to parental concerns but allow nothing to interrupt their agenda, Alexander is prepared to hear – but not heed – those who question the motives and choices of the NEA: “Oh, I don’t think I’m going to necessarily try to put out the fire,” she said. “These are people you have to listen to. Many of them come from deep religious feelings. I just don’t want them to drown out the hall.”
In her interview with De Witt, Alexander shrewdly restrained her comments on controversial issues such as the recent use of NEA funds to pass out $10 bills to illegal immigrants. “There are a lot of people – particularly on the border in California – who are very, very sensitive to the issues of undocumented workers to begin with,” she explained cautiously. “And handing out tax-payers money to them, that complicated the whole issue for many, many people.” Apparently, she saw the problem as a lack of understanding among those who opposed the government give-away, not as a misuse of government funds.
To prevent opponents from chipping away at the $174 million that President Clinton has requested for the endowment, Alexander must divert our attention from the abuses to the benefits. “There’s been so much attention focused on being in a defensive position. I’m going to get into the offensive position,” she said, sounding more like a football coach than a public servant. “So I’m going to get out there and try to tell the truth...with regard to the...100,000 grants in 27 years.”
But telling the truth doesn’t mean talking about specifics. She refused to say how she would change the agency or evaluate federal grants. Nor would she comment on Clinton’s decision to appeal a court ruling that canceled the mandatory decency standards established by the Bush administration.
Is there a need for such a standard? Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice who replaced former Chairman Frohnmayer as head of the NEA seems to think so. Astonished at what she observed during Frohnmayer’s rule, she asks, “How can you run an arts agency and not evaluate the art you fund?” For her refusal to bow to the demands of the more political and militant arts groups – many of whom were using their NEA funds to lobby – she faced smears, threats and attempted blackmail.
Dr. Radice hampered – but couldn’t block – the radical agenda of the arts establishment. Jane Alexander, on the other hand, is fortifying it. Her inordinate power to influence culture is exposed in the October Phyllis Schlafly Report: “The NEA functions as a sort of Ministry of Culture from which the Art commissar decides which art should be endorsed and subsidized and which should not. That doesn’t sound very American, does it?’’
In a recent newsletter, Mrs. Schlafly documents some of the 1992-93 grants:
• $13,000 to New York’s fashionable Kitchen Theater for video-related expenses, including ex-prostitute Annie Sprinkle’s obscene video, “The Sluts and Goddesses of Transformation Salon.” An earlier live performance had featured Sprinkle chanting prayers to the “spirits of ancient sacred temple prostitutes” and inviting her audience to examine her private parts. The ecstatic Annie had uttered the immortal line, “Usually I get paid a lot of money for this, but tonight it’s government funded.”
• $25,000 toward the production of Poison, a film showing graphic homosexual sex.
• $20,000 to the Arts Complex. Attractions included Annie Sprinkle performing “the story of my sexual evolution...into goddess/sex-educator/healer Anya.”
• $170,105 to La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, “the venue for Lesbians Who Kill, the newest offering from the Three-Lesbian team of Split Britches.”
• $20,000 to Joel-Peter Witkin—his fourth grant from the NEA. His sick photographs include Testicle Stretch, Woman Castrating a Man, the Maquette for Crucifix. His picture of a corpse’s head sliced in two sold for $27,000 at Sotheby’s in 1990.
The list of bizarre pornographic government funded “art” is endless. In October 1993 the NEA funded three gay film festivals in Pittsburgh. According to Focus on the Family, it contributed $17,500 toward movies showing masturbation, oral sex between two men, and a man licking the inside of a toilet.
Upside-down values
If the NEA supports this twisted and depraved form of “art,” what kind does it reflect? In his article, “Art Censors: A Closer Look at the NEA,” James Cooper suggests that it spurns any expression of the “aesthetic criteria that are the foundation of Western culture.” For example, the NEA refused to fund artist Frederick Hart who created the Three Soldiers for the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, one of Washington’s most popular attractions. Hart worked three years in an unheated studio to complete the magnificent Creation sculptures now adorning the main facade of Washington’s National Cathedral.
“The NEA told me what I was doing wasn’t art,” he explained.
Why such upside-down values? The work of all artists – Christian or Pagan – express and promote personal values. While our “traditional” art illustrates the truth, beauty and moral order of Bible-based cultures, pagan art promotes the myths, rituals, oppressions and natural inclinations or earth-based cultures. In stark contrast to the rising clamor for unconditional tolerance, contemporary leaders who extol self- expression and envision a unifying all-inclusive global spirituality can neither tolerate nor understand the expressions of those who follow God.
A Christian perspective
God created artists, but, as always, Satan seeks to distort God’s gifts to fit his plans. Art and God’s truth enhance each other, but so do art and pagan myths. Together, the latter union can fashion an imaginary world filled with false hopes, untamed passions, counterfeit gods and deceiving spirits. Since they have always been used to establish polytheistic religions, God told His people long ago, “ The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet...do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the Lord your God.”
God’s Word describes this timeless drift from truth and order into myth and decadence in Romans 1:21-29: “...although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God or gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over..to sexual impurity...to shameful lusts.... Men...were inflamed with lust for one another.... They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.”
The best forms of art should remind us of God’s greatness. If they fit the criteria of Philippians 4:8 (Whatever is true... noble... right... pure...), they will turn our spiritual eyes to the Creator with thanks and adoration – and He will receive the glory. 
A footnoted version of this article is available upon request.
