Historic Artists Really Were So Unthinking

News item: Mayor and council member object to the proposed “Joe Fan” sculpture at Albi Stadium on the grounds that it doesn’t adequately portray fan diversity. In other words, it is a man.

Inspired by such true-life stories as the “Joe Fan” saga (now resolved), I have been daydreaming about what life and art would have been like if political correctness had evolved earlier in history. Life would have been more equitable, possibly, but far more comical. It would also have been far, far more difficult for artists:

Statue of Liberty

NEW YORK, 1884 - A storm of criticism erupted here with the unveiling of French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi’s massive copper statue. Interest groups immediately expressed outrage over the statue’s design.

“She looks like a tall WASP woman,” said an irate spokesperson for Citizens for Fair Statuary. “She was supposed to represent the immigrant heritage. Whoever heard of a tall blond immigrant, except for maybe a couple of Swedes here and there?”

A task force appointed by the city council immediately called for a redesign of the statue to make her look like a short, squat peasant woman wearing a head-scarf.

Bartholdi denied all charges of bias and resisted the notion that the statue must physically represent all immigrant groups. He said the statue represents the idealized concept of liberty.

“She is a representation of nobility and freedom,” said Bartholdi. “This is the way I see liberty in my mind. She’s not supposed to look like somebody’s Aunt Frodo.”

A protester on Ellis Island scoffed at this.

“Yeah, like nobility and freedom can’t be a stout woman with a mustache,” he said.

He accused Bartholdi of picking the design for “purely aesthetic reasons,” a slander hotly denied by the artist. The artist further denied that “Liberty” is either white or blonde.

“She is made of copper,” he said. “She is entirely green.”

Primitive Fertility Figure

SOME CAVE IN AUSTRIA, 30,000 B.C. - A men’s drumming-and-empowerment group went on record against the “Venus of Willendorf” fertility figure which has captured the imagination of this Stone Age community.

“The figure is depicted with heavy breasts and pregnant belly,” said the group. “Does ‘fertility’ or ‘childbirth’ necessarily have to be female?”

No, said the sculptress. But she said she thought the message was “less abstract” that way.

The Smiley Face

SOMEWHERE ON THE WEST COAST, circa 1971 - As the “smiley face” craze sweeps the nation, not everyone is smiling.

This week alone, three different anti-happy-face protests were staged around the country.

Animal rights activists said the face is an “exclusionary image aimed at non-smiling species such as the cockroach.”

Civil rights groups questioned the motivation behind making the face yellow.

And mental health activists called it a “slap in the face to our clinically depressed brothers and sisters.”

Washington Monument

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1884 - The nation’s capital was in an uproar over the unveiling of the Washington Monument, which was thought by many protesters to be a phallic image of male domination.

“There it stands, as if raping the entire nation,” said one weeping protester.

The planners of the memorial denied that the obelisk was intended to send any harmful gender messages. However, they added that the Capitol building and the future Jefferson Memorial are dome-shaped, thus providing a nice pair of maternal images to offset any male-imperialist damage inflicted by the Monument.

The Sistine Chapel

VATICAN CITY, 1511 - Progressive theologians, women’s groups and the Pantheists Association of Italy expressed unanimous opposition here toward Michelangelo’s depiction of God.

“God is portrayed as a stern elderly white male with a beard,” said one protester. “Who says God is not a woman? Who says God is not a person of color? Who says God is not clean-shaven, or with one of those handlebar-mustache type things?”

Michelangelo said people can second-guess all they want, but he had to choose something. He said he first tried painting God as a 3-year-old child, then as a nun, and then as a rather majestic-looking sheep. Then he tried the stern elderly white male motif and everything “just clicked,” he said.

“It matched the vision of God in my head,” said Michelangelo. “If it doesn’t match yours, get up on a scaffold and paint your own.”

A spokesman for the Pantheists Association was not mollified. He said that God should be depicted as being “everywhere and everything.”

“Well, you try painting ‘everything,”’ said Michelangelo, miffed. “Until then, mind your own damn business.”

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