University of Virginia Library

Teri Towe On Goya, Haugh, And Bailey

By TERI TOWE

During the closing years of
the eighteenth century,
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes,
one of Spain's greatest artists,
completed a pair of canvasses
that are among the most
famous in the whole body of
Western Art. The Nude Maja
and the Clothed Maja have
been reproduced in magazines,
in books, and even on Spanish
postage stamps.

But since Sheriff George
Bailey and County
Commonwealth's Attorney
Charles Haugh have laid down
their small-minded
interpretation of even more
small-minded decisions handed
down by the United States
Supreme Court, it seems that it
will no longer be "legal" for
anyone in Albemarle County
to offer a reproduction of the
Nude Maja for sale or for
distribution without charge.

No longer will Albemarle
County philatelists be able to
complete their collections of
Spanish stamps, nor will it be
possible for Albemarle County
art lovers to purchase
reproductions of this
remarkable painting.

Why, you may ask? Simply
because Sheriff Bailey has let it
be known via the press and
network newscast that the
representation of pubic hair is
per se obscene in Albemarle
County. It seems that neither
he nor Mr. Haugh like
representations of "nekkid"
women. Not "naked"; I heard
Sheriff Bailey myself –
"nekkid."

Of course, neither Sheriff
Bailey nor Mr. Haugh seems to
possess the kind of education
or common sense or
broadmindedness, for that
matter, to comprehend or
consider the implications of
the dangerous pronouncement
they have made. Like the
proverbial ape with the string
of pearls, Bailey and Haugh
have no appreciation of art or
its purposes.

As has been pointed out by
countless commentators and
critics over the years, one of
the major purposes of art,
whether representational or
non-representational, is to
shock, to startle, and to prod
an open and receptive mind to
think about another's
perception of an object or of
an idea. Whether it be
Rembrand's Bathsheba,
Cezanne's The Bathers, or
Picasso's erotic etchings,
representations of the human
body, both male and female, in
action and in repose, have been
viewed and accepted with
interest, with appreciation, and
with awe by all but the most
small-minded since the dawn of
recorded history.

Somehow, however, the
small-minded seem always to
be in authority. Like Mme. de
Maintenon, the second wife of
Louis XIV, who ordered the
destruction of a number of
canvasses in the French royal
collection (including, perhaps,
DaVinci's Leda and the Swan)
on the grounds of obscenity,
and like the English art critic,
John Ruskin, who burned
Turner's erotic drawings after
the artist's death, The Nixon
Four-Plus-One on the Supreme
Court and those of a similar
mentality are willing to risk
curtailing free expression
assured us by the First
Amendment in an endeavor to
prevent consenting, adult
Americans from buying and
enjoying pornography. I should
of course be more exact. I
mean what the Miss Grundys in
this country deem to be
pornographic.

To many, I admit, hard core
pornography is difficult to
take, but all they need do is
avert their eyes or avoid
entering the shops which they
know purvey "dirty books."
Funny, isn't it, though, how
the average Miss Grundy revels
in his or her displeasure. Ask
any adult book store manager.
Those who are most offended
by pornography are always
careful to scrutinize the
material in the minutest detail
before boiling over in
hypocritical righteous
indignation.

The censors' wrath is
limitless. Since they themselves
are mediocrities of a
McCarthyesque type who can
succeed only at the expense of
others whose only sin is rising
above the mediocrities who
surround them, censors
demand and permit only those
forms of expression of the
mind and of the soul which
conform to the standards of
their mediocre,
narrow-minded, arrogant, and
hopelessly middle class
backgrounds. These people are
incapable of understanding
that great art, unlike a Country
and Western hit song, does not
sell a million copies.

My wrath has nothing
whatsoever to do with liking or
disliking Country and Western
music, nor is it the result of
what many may consider a
cultural or generation gap. My
displeasure is based on the
disgraceful lack of tolerance in
this country.

Americans pay great lip
service to the concept, but
rarely, if ever, are they inspired
to make a sincere effort to
understand and to accept the
right of the minority to hold to
beliefs, tastes, and feelings
which are not popular with the
Mediocre Majority. One can
only conquer an idea he feels
to be worthless by dragging it
out into the open and fighting
it with reason and with logic.

It is particularly disgraceful
that the ignorance and
intolerance of Sheriff Bailey
and of Mr. Haugh should be
allowed to flourish in
Albemarle County, the home
of Thomas Jefferson, one of
the great champions of the
freedoms of expression, an
honest, open-minded, moral
man who appears to have
advocated the erection of a
brothel on the Grounds of the
University of Virginia.

Bailey and Haugh seem on
the verge of prevailing. Test
case, my foot! These men are
getting away with nothing
more than pure and simple
censorship. I cannot help but
think of the eloquent last
words of Mme. Roland, the
Girondist author, on the steps
of the guillotine in 1793: "Ah,
Liberty! What crimes are
committed in thy name!"