The first question is…what is art? No one person can ever really define art within a set of guidelines. Art is whatever you want it to be, it is an expression, one person’s opinions, art has been around since imagination, it is the story of a culture. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, “art, in all its forms, feeds and nurtures the soul of a society; provokes thought and debate; causes critical thinking; and fosters understanding of things foreign to our own immediate world. In the end, arts plays a primary role in encouraging healthy tolerance of the diversity in any culture.”# Therefore, one person, or even a group of people cannot really decided wh

Censorship, in general, is wrong and should be opposed. The definition of censorship according to Rita Gilbert, author of “Living with Art,” is “the supervision by one individual or group over the artistic expression of another individual or group.”# That means that one person or group has the power to control the expression of another person. Censorship is usually done for political, religious, or moral reasons. In other words, if the art offends a person’s political, religious, or moral points of view, then it gets censored because the art does not go along with their point of view. There should, however, be measures taken to protect those who are offended for not all art is appreciated by everyone. The only art that should be censored because of context should be for children. Children do not really need to have a picture of a naked woman in their classroom so they can point and laugh at it. They would not get any emotional feelings about such artwork. People must have maturity to see certain types of art and if they do not have the maturity to understand the art then instead of making it a big issue they can choose to have the option of not looking at the art. The choice is up to that person, no one is forcing them to go look at the art.

Two artist that have caused much controversy are Sally Mann and Andres Serrano. Mann’s controversy has been over images of innocence and nudity while Serrano’s has been described as blasphemous. Sally Mann’s art work is mischievous and some of the sly gazes in a few photographs suggest a sense of seductiveness as well as a portrayal of innocence. Her black and white prints have been known to be controversial to some, however, her work is still praised throughout the art community and in the general public. Conservative critics have been calling her images "child pornography" and further evidence of the art world's amoral decadence. Mann has argued that these are the innocent poses of children that are often times misinterpreted by adults. Amazon.com describes Sally Mann’s photography with words such as, “terror, self-discovery, doubt, vulnerability, pain, and joy.”# If all these words come to mind in view

Some topics in this essay:
Rita Gilbert, Endowment Arts, Piss Christ, Sally Mann’s, Catholic Church, Andres Serrano’s, Wendy Steiner, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Serrano Mann’s, considered art, piss christ, art censored, national endowment, national endowment arts, endowment arts, beauty eye beholder, person’s opinions, andres serrano, religious moral, throughout art, political religious moral, sally mann andres, political religious,