OK. So maybe you’ve had more of Robert Mapplethorpe than you can stand. Or maybe you think he’s the greatest ever. Maybe you think his photographs of kids flirt with child porn. Or maybe you think all the fuss back in 1989 was just censorship pure and simple. Is the X Portfolio just a bunch of dirty pictures. Or is it a cry of liberation? All those views have been expressed by students in past classes — as well as critics and pundits.
But that’s not the end of the controversy. Glenn Ligon (along with a slew of critics) has, in effect, accused Mapplethorpe of objectifying black men. I’ve also heard people suggest that, had he been photographing the sexual practices of art-collecting, Upper East Side heterosexuals, the work would have gone exactly nowhere — that the X Portfolio pictures are, in effect, a kind of minstrelsy.
Then there is the art historical argument that Mapplethorpe was drawing on a long tradition of religious (specifically Catholic) imagery to address the Big Questions about life and death and transcendence.
So we turn to Robert Mapplethorpe.
Readings:
- Anne Higonnet: Photographs Against the Law [pdf]
- Eleanor Heartney, Post-Modern Heretics [pdf]
Additional reading:
- Judith Reisman, Promoting Child Abuse as Art
- Hilton Kramer, Is Art Above the Laws of Decency?
- Andy Grundberg: Art Under Attack: Who Dares Say That It’s No Good?
Critical Issues 