Fingerprints or Mushroom Stamps?

This is my Goodreads review of Johanna Drucker's Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity.

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Feeling horny? Grab this book and flip to page 153. You'll find a photo of Family Romance, a "mixed media" piece comprised of four half-realistic, fully naked mannequins representing mom, dad, bro and sis.

Really need your hands free while you ogle? Break the spine of the book along this page; that way it'll lay flat on the table all by itself. Or, if you live in Southern California, you can head to the Central Library in LA and grab their copy, which has already had its spine broken in precisely this spot and is prone to fall open to precisely this page and this image.

I hesitate to add, " . . . for precisely this purpose," because there is no way I could know for sure what the "purpose" of the spine-breaker was, no way to know if this purpose was shared or how widely, no way to know if there was in fact any purpose at all. Among hundreds of LAPL books I've checked out, dozens have had broken spines. I can't remember another one that had an image of nude children anywhere in it, let alone precisely where the spine was broken; but let's imagine, in a mashup of the Infinite Monkey Theorem with Lacan's Missing Signifier, that there is at least one other book in these particular stacks that would seem, to me, to depict nude children in a semi-realistic manner, and that there is at least one other person in Southern California who would agree with me that this is what it depicts. Were this all to be true, the book I happened to check out wouldn't be special even in this regard. All that would be special about it from my standpoint, perhaps, is that I happened to read some other inscrutable, overlong art-crit book which mentioned this one favorably, my interest was piqued, I swapped one for the other at the circulation desk, and I was unlucky (lucky?) enough to find my latest heist literally falling open to an unusally pungent image before I was able to read a single word. This is all that I ought to be certain of. Nothing I can observe about the book proves anything further.

This has been my inner rationalist speaking. My inner empiricist is not as sanguine.

John Wertheimer—Mutual Film Reviewed

John Wertheimer
" Mutual Film Reviewed: The Movies, Censorship, and Free Speech in Progressive America"
(1993)

[160] the nation's highest tribunal brushed aside the Mutual's claim to freedom of speech and of the press on the grounds that films did not qualify for such protection: "It cannot be put out of view," Justice McKenna wrote, "that the exhibition of moving pictures is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit." As such, movies were "not to be regarded, nor [were they] intended to be regarded by the Ohio Constitution, we think, as part of the press of the country." The bald fact that most newspapers, books, and other "part[s] of the press of the country" were also "originated and conducted for profit" seemed not to matter to the judges. ...

At the time, the Court's decision in the Mutual Film case met with general if not universal approval from the legal community. ...[e.g.] The Central Law Journal, which also endorsed the Court's decision, pointed out that because moving pictures appealed to "the other senses than the intellectual sense," they had no legitimate claim to freedom of the press.

But as the years passed, and as American opinion makers grew increasingly fond of both films and the First Amendment, support for the Mutual Film decision dried up and gave way to criticism.

...

[161] In English law, from which American law derived, advance censorship of theaters and shows was both widely practiced and widely accepted for centuries prior to 1915. The history of the censorship of public amusements in England extends at least as far back as the sixteenth century. ...

[162] One may wonder at the widespread acquiescence of the English people in this state of affairs more easily than one may doubt it. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Sir William Blackstone and others condemned prior restraints on the press as unacceptable infringements on English liberties, neither Blackstone nor any other notable English commentator applied similar logic to works of the theater. Owing perhaps to the popular belief that the stage possessed an extraordinary power to influence morals, "nearly everyone" in England accepted as legitimate the system of advance censorship established by statute in 1737. ...

It remains possible, however, that the United States, with its written constitutions, its Bills of Rights, and its free-speech traditions walked a freer path than did England... The lawyers for the Mutual Film Corporation certainly thought so. ... A glance at the past, however, reveals that although the stage may have been freer in America than it was in contemporary England or Europe, the Mutual's lawyers' faith in the American heritage of liberty was blind. The American past was replete with prior restraints on theatrical expression. Moreover, and just as significantly, prior to the Mutual Film Corporation's lawyers themselves, scarcely anyone in America had thought to argue that the governmental control of public amusements raised constitutional free-speech issues.

...

[163] Although theatrical bans passed through cycles of passage, expiration or repeal, and reinstatement, and although enforcement of such measures was inconsistent, the fact remains that prior constraints on theatrical exhibitions had long roots in American soil.

...

Some level of official control over the content of theatrical amusements persisted through the nineteenth centure and into the twentieth. A few states continued the colonial practice of banning all theatrical performances outright. ... More common than complete proscription, however, were two-tiered regulation mechanisms in which some sorts of shows were banned entirely while all other sorts had to be licensed in advance.

...

[165] Did these nineteenth-century laws licensing and prohibiting theatrical shows in advance violate American constitutional speech and press guarantees? More important than any answer is the observation that this was a question that nobody at the time thought to ask...

[emailed to self, 26 March 2021]

Consensual Art (iiia)

The portion of LA Metro's Red Line between Hollywood/Highland and Universal City frequently becomes a stage for pop-up dance performers. It is the longest stretch on this route without a stop, and in my experience also among the least likely to be boarded by police. The greater duration and lesser enforcement hence seem to jointly determine performers' choice of venue. I rode home from work this way for a solid year and have thereby been treated to dozens of Friday evening performances.