The War on Art Is Repeating Itself
As an artist who lived through the Reagan-era Culture Wars, I recommend Isaac Butler’s “The Perfect Moment” for the stories that parallel our current fight to defend creative expression.
The War on Art is repeating itself, as revealed by critic and theater director Isaac Butler in his upcoming book, The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America's Culture Wars (2026). Butler revisits major events from the 1980s and 1990s, when right-wing politicians and organizations targeted arts and culture in the United States.
He draws alarming parallels to the current rise of similar conservative players. The book covers major incidents, including Martin Scorsese's struggle to produce The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) due to Reverend Donald Wildmon's mass mailing campaign against the film, and Andres Serrano's controversial "Piss Christ" (1987), a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in urine.
In 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. canceled Robert Mapplethorpe's retrospective exhibition, The Perfect Moment, due to its depiction of sadomasochism, Black nude models, and naked children. The cancellation was followed by a heated debate between Jesse Helms, a Republican Senator, and Sidney Yates, a Democratic Congressman, over the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Butler's work provides a balanced account of the political strategies employed by both sides during this tumultuous era.
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