Word: certainly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...point is the Corcoran Gallery's sudden cancellation of an exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs. The whole matter was needlessly confused when the director, Christina Owr-Chall, claimed she was canceling the show to protect it from censorship. She meant that there might be pressure to remove certain pictures -- the sadomasochistic ones or those verging on kiddie porn -- if the show had gone on. But she had in mind, as well, the hope of future grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is under criticism for the Mapplethorpe show and for another show that contained Andres Serrano...
Luckily, cancellation of the Mapplethorpe show forced some artists back to the flair and cheekiness of unsubsidized art. Other results of pressure do not turn out as well. Unfortunately, people in certain regions were deprived of the chance to see The Last Temptation of Christ in the theater. Some, no doubt, considered it a loss that they could not buy lettuce or grapes during a Chavez boycott. Perhaps there was even a buyer perverse enough to miss driving the unsafe cars Nader helped pressure off the market. On the other hand, we do not get sports analysis made by racists...
That may be. However, it is far from certain that other Communist countries in the East bloc with sizable Catholic populations will follow Poland's diplomatic lead. The government of Hungary has restored some religious rights, and Rome has responded warmly, but there are no hints that these moves will be sufficient to forge a new diplomatic relationship with the Vatican. Rome's prospects with the hard-line rulers of Czechoslovakia are far dimmer. In the Soviet Union the enforced illegality of Catholicism in the Ukraine appears to present an intractable barrier. Still, when John Paul was elected Pope...
...cultural life of Japan. Japanese artists traditionally reflected this reverence not in intellectual abstractions but concretely, in highly stylized representations of specific rivers, mountains, plants and animals. As in other aspects of Japanese thought and behavior, artists were expected to remain respectful of the past and concentrate on certain well-established forms and techniques. But during the Meiji era (1868-1912), modernism was introduced from the West, knocking major dents in this rigid system with an emphasis on innovation, individualism and the search for new forms. Japanese artists, emulating European easel painting, began to produce portraits and still lifes...
...terrain," says an Indian officer, "is to be the first on top." Seeing that the Indians would in fact get there first, the Pakistanis took a gamble: in howling winds they tied two soldiers to the runners of a helicopter for a seven-minute ride to the peak, not certain whether wind speed and icy temperatures would cause them to freeze to death before they reached their destination. The soldiers survived, landed on the summit and held off about a dozen Indians climbing toward the same spot...