Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995                   TAG: 9509020004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ALN SORENSEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

ARTVENTURE

Despite my best art-appreciation efforts, I couldn't find the bad stuff - not, anyway, in the photograph of "Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach" that appeared in this newspaper.

I was able to make out the outline of a dog's head, a weird face fashioned from a fruit dish, a torn cloth and rope, a gloomy landscape and other features reflecting, according to the experts, Dali's desolation over the Spanish Civil War.

But not until I took a field trip to the museum last month did I see the offending parts - and then, only after careful scrutiny.

According to a Bedford mother whose children were exposed to "Apparition," the gross material includes a man's genitalia. I was able to find them. Some of the other things she saw in the framed poster, I couldn't see. Then again, I couldn't see the Spanish Civil War, either.

The upset parents, one of whom complained in a letter to the editor, educate their children at home. I'm not sure that's cause for jumping to conclusions. Home schoolers aren't the only ones who might be surprised to find, in a gallery set aside for kids, a picture containing depictions of sexual organs.

Nor, if recent congressional debate is any guide, are home schoolers the only ones losing tolerance for condescension from arts mavens who sniff and pout about people's inability to understand and appreciate.

Art does not automatically trump other values. Robert Mapplethorpe photographs of nude men doing strange things may be art; I still wouldn't take my daughters to see them. Obviously, if parents keep their kids away from the Roanoke art museum, for whatever reason, that would be their prerogative.

I believe it would also be their mistake. After a tour of the ArtVenture galleries (a joint venture with the Junior League of Roanoke Valley), I'm convinced kids - as many as possible, as often as possible - should get a chance to visit these rooms. They're one of the museum's best features.

On display aren't just exhibits but activities (in museum lingo: hands-on) to stimulate sight and touch and help children understand and express themselves with art. Artists share techniques in various media. Kids study themselves in cubist mirrors, rub crayon on paper covering textured surfaces, design unusual masks. Children sit on each side of a glass wall, taking turns tracing each other's facial features with paint. A recent exhibit probed connections - colors, patterns, movement, rhythm - between music and visual art.

I was impressed. I know from experience - my children have been lucky enough to work with a spectacular art teacher - that art may be education's most underrated ingredient. It's great the museum staff engages youngsters, if only for short visits, to explore creativity.

Including the Dali?

Especially the Dali. I'll admit: Staring at the Spanish master's subconscious eruptions, I worried kids in the gallery might notice me looking for you-know-what. But I wasn't worried about them seeing it. The few, obscure parts of a dreamscape full of fear and mystery are like the few red-meat extremes that critics of arts funding pounce on for political consumption. They are not the measure of the work.

Shown in its original to thousands of schoolchildren every year in Hartford, Conn., "Apparition" plainly is not what one Bedford mother called it - pornography.

By her definition, if you wanted to protect children from any images of genitalia, you'd have to remove the World Book Encyclopedia from school-library shelves.

I know this because I looked up the "Painting" entry. We're talking pictures of undressed men and women lying together, naked breasts galore, full frontal nudity, several men's and a child's exposed sex organs, a rape scene, a Roman orgy, three nude women on a couch, two picnic scenes featuring naked ladies cavorting with fully clothed men, shirtless native women - you name it, it's there. And this is not to mention the more graphic crucifixion scenes, which are nothing if not violent.

I'm not defending the Dali on grounds that it lacks power to disturb or disorient. On the contrary. Art - even $20 reproductions - can have such power, including for kids. It's one of the things distinguishing art from ornamentation.

The Christian author, C.S. Lewis, wrote that art offers ways to open ourselves to the world, to escape the prison of our desires, habits and prejudices. We yearn to "get out of our own skins." We never succeed, but "if I can't get out of the dungeon I shall at least look out through the bars. It is better than sinking back on the straw in the darkest corner."

For Lewis, this isn't a matter of avoiding or repressing bad stuff, but of actively enlarging our perspective. He suggested we - including growing youth - fill our minds with fictions even if they can prompt vicariously troubling feelings: "to go out of the self, to correct its provincialism and heal its loneliness. In love, in virtue, in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the reception of the arts, we are doing this."

I imagine the art museum's staff could capitalize on the Dali controversy to attract more visitors. But they're too high-minded for that. Mark Scala, director of education, says an exhibit to open Oct. 4, "Fool the Eye, Fool the Mind," will explore techniques that artists use to create illusions. It will include a feature on how advertisers manipulate viewers' perceptions.

As part of the galleries' reshuffle planned long ago, "Apparition" came down last week. For the new exhibit, I'm sure the museum could produce a better marketing slogan than, in effect: We're safe again.