A music CD with a painting by Hieronymus Bosch on its cover has been banned by Polish "education inspectors," because in their words - "There are pornographic scenes in the Bosch picture that can damage people." The Polish education ministry had intended to give away copies of the CD to high-school students who excelled in their studies - but reactionaries within the ministry objected to the nudity depicted in the painting. Before long we’ll be hearing that the so-called "education inspectors" have enacted a ban preventing students from entering the country’s art museums - where innocents could be exposed to more pornography by the likes of Goya, Rubens, and Titian. The offending Bosch painting hangs in the Museo del Prado of Madrid Spain, an institution the inspectors will no doubt declare a den of iniquity.

The now prohibited CD by Polish rockers, Normalsi, uses a detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, the masterpiece created by Bosch in 1504. A triptych painted on wood, the oil painting portrays heaven and hell, the rewards given the faithful, and the wages of sin. The CD cover art uses a detail from the rightmost panel of the triptych, which depicts hell. Bosch was deeply religious, and while his surreal images are impenetrable to the modern viewer - they spoke directly to the pious of his time.

In Bosch’s painting a giant bird-like monster is seen devouring humanity and excreting them into pit. People are tortured with musical instruments and suffer all manner of anguish. The details surrounding the avian ogre are allegorical, imparting warnings about sin. The woman beneath the bird chair represents those guilty of pride; she’s been seized by a demon as she gazes into a mirror - which also happens to be another monster’s buttocks. Also beneath the evil bird monarch, one sees a man defecating coins into the pit - he represents those who have fallen to the sin of avarice. Next to him another man vomits into the abyss - symbolizing those guilty of gluttony. If Bosch were alive today he would undoubtedly paint a number of education inspectors into his horrifying vision of the underworld.

That LA artists have not made a bigger deal over the exhibition of works by John Heartfield currently at the Getty Museum is a perfect example of the cool indifference and political disengagement plaguing the artistic community. Few artists from the past have as much resonance in these troubling times, and Heartfield’s brilliant images continue to speak with a clarity of mind possessed when first produced - which was during the rise of fascism in Germany. Agitated Images: John Heartfield and German Photomontage, is one of the most important exhibitions recently mounted in Los Angeles; it not only illuminates the past, it points a way to the future for artists who want to address real world issues through their art.

Like many German artists of his time, Heartfield was a militant anti-fascist and a communist, but his artwork was also revolutionary when it came to technique and aesthetics. He was one of the very first to explore photomontage as a new means of artistic expression, and some of his sparing designs - stripped down to only a few iconic images combined with text - made him the predecessor of today’s minimalist and postmodernist artists. The likes of Barbara Kruger and Ed Ruscha owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Heartfield, along with aficionados and students of contemporary art - who would do well to study the life and works of the great German master. If you are not able to view the Getty exhibit, the next best thing would be to acquire the comprehensive book, John Heartfield: AIZ/VI 1930-38, a magnificent collection of the hundreds of works he created for the leftist magazine, Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (Workers Illustrated News), also known as AIZ.

Leah Ollman wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times on the Heartfield exhibit that appeared in the paper’s Calendar section on March 6, 2006. Ollman’s generally positive review was titled Blinding sarcasm - but Heartfield’s work was anything but blinding, rather, he gifted the masses a lucid vision. Accompanying Ollman’s review was a reproduction of Heartfield’s trenchant Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf - a word of warning never truer than today. How ironic that the LA Times placed Heartfield’s illustration next to the headline Ghostly Gowns, Dreamy Dresses, a heading about Paris Fashion Week - blind and deaf indeed.

I first discovered Heartfield’s work when I was only 16-years-old, and to say his art had a profound impact upon me would be an understatement. Save for the nihilistic works produced by Germany’s dadaists, I had never before seen anything like Heartfield’s photomontages. If dada was the shell shocked babbling of artists confronting the unmitigated horror of modern warfare and a world gone insane - Heartfield’s art was the counterbalance - a precision surgical tool that would identify and cut at the causes of war and fascism. To my young eyes, some of Heartfield’s images were quite easy to understand, but others held their meaning from me since they dealt with unfamiliar events and individuals. Being inquisitive, I eventually peeled back those layers of history, and marveled at how honestly and directly the artist delivered his message. One can only imagine the deep impact his images had upon the German people.

To understand just how radical a democratic stance the artist took, one must begin with his name. In 1916, to protest against the anti-foreigner and anti-British hysteria promulgated by German nationalists and right-wingers, the artist changed his name from Helmut Herzfeld to John Heartfield - which was an extremely "unpatriotic" thing to do at the time. A comparable gesture today would be for an American artist to adopt an Arab name. Needless to say, Heartfield’s courageous stance made him a high profile target, and his unrelenting lampooning of the madmen who seized control of his homeland caused them to seek his death. He escaped the clutches of the fascists by going into exile, but never ceased creating the artworks that so infuriated them. Heartfield eventually returned to his country in 1950, where he died in 1968.

Agitated Images: John Heartfield and German Photomontage runs until June 25th, 2006. You can read more about the Heartfield exhibit at the Getty website, or click here for info on admission, hours, directions, and parking to the museum.

Labels: German Expressionism