Mapplethorpe. X, Y, Z @ LACMA and Getty

Condensed for an earlier blog post...I felt this was important to underline with the new shows of Mapplethorpe's coming to Los Angeles.

This past week (earlier in Spring of 2012) I was finishing up my finals for my second quarter back in school at Antioch University. In Academic Writing I was to turn in a research paper, on a topic of my choice. I thought it would be interesting to re-investigate the whole NEA/Mapplethorpe/Helms controversy, and decide for myself how I felt about government arts grants. I worked on this paper for a month. Twenty pages in length, it covered the topic in depth, and I was happy with the work I had accomplished.

On our final day in class we were to share a brief presentation on our paper, our topic. I volunteered to go first, and stated that I would read the first two paragraphs of my paper. It outlined in a personal format my experience with this show, and examined the NEA, and Helms' agenda.

To the class I read:

"On a thursday night, I went to the Whitney to see this obscene Mapplethorpe show, The Perfect Moment. Thursday evening's were free at the Whitney, and I was grateful for the sponsorship so I could view Robert's works. I was a young artist and I was about to have my mind blown by his vision."

Surprisingly, tears began streaming down my cheeks as I continued:

"I didn’t have much money in my pocket, and was grateful for this free evening of art, made available through the generosity of the museum and various sponsors. I was aware of Mapplethorpe’s flowers, his pictures of Patti Smith, and of celebrity portraits. I slowly made my way through the museum. Roberts works silently held their place, adorning the walls." 

I stopped reading. Tears ran down my cheeks. I had no idea what was happening to me. I offered my apologies to the class, expressing embarrassment and exasperation for the emotional response to my story sharing. I continued reading: 

"Glorious prints, with such deep intense blacks, it appeared you could slide your fingers into their depths, trailing ripples into black water at night. Soft luminous bodies, their physical perfection matched in how he captured them. And his flowers. Deep religious visions. Reverent, and also containing an occultish air, tinges of unspoken mystery floating within their folds. Satanic shadows played off their form, as they were expertly lit."

I stopped reading again. I was having difficulty as I tried to hold back my gentle sobs. What the hell was happening to me? I told the class that I was confused and stunned as to my tearful reading, and apologized. They kindly reassured me I was doing fine, and their encouragement allowed me to feel safe in our space to continue: 

"I wasn’t sure what part of the pictures to focus on, my eyes were drawn deeper and deeper into his work. These images, as they grew on me one after another lining the museum’s walls, brought me into his world. My artistic spirit was plateauing, and I wondered how high it could ascend. What I wasn’t prepared to see were all the partially nude black men. In business attire with enormous cocks hanging out of open zippers, or white mens genitals held fast in some kind of trap, barbed wire encasing it all. Finally, in all his glory, was an incredible photograph of Robert himself. Standing with his back to the camera, clothed in nothing more than a leather vest, and leather chaps covering his thighs, Robert looks over his shoulder and stares down the viewer. One leg rests upon a sheet covered riser, his legs spread wide as he crouches, revealing the handle of a bullwhip shoved into his ass. The tail of the whip hangs out and down, past his legs, slithering on the floor. It is incredibly disturbing to me, and I am nervous looking at this picture, with many others around me at the show looking also. Lastly I see Robert in close up, holding a cane adorned with a skull at its tip. You see his hand, the cane’s skull, and his head. All the rest is black. He stares into the camera lens, and beyond. This is the last self portrait Robert would produce. Looking into the eyes of this brilliant artist, I am moved outside my comfort zone. I am grateful to be here, at the Whitney in NYC, to see these works. To be exposed to these ideas. I wonder at the world, art, Robert, AIDS, the NEA, Jesse Helms, and where it all is going to go. The future and my life before me, what is left?"

     I finished reading. Tears streaked down my cheeks. I wiped my eyes, and looked down into my lap. Stunned, shell shocked. I felt like I just had an earthquake inside.The class applauded my efforts, and our professor spoke of the power of the written word. How even when we are writing, at times we are ourselves unaware how deep into our subconscious we are accessing, and what results will play into the stories we share. He commended me on my willingness to finish, and the beauty of my choosing to do so.

     I realized on a profound level the impossibility of Mapplethorpe's work being obscene. The response I discovered I contained inside my artistic soul after seeing his beautiful show, The Perfect Moment, had silted down into me. It became a part of my being, as have so many other great artist's works I've seen and resonated with, even if unaware. What I had understood about his work was now a part of me, even though I had not ever articulated it, until that moment. And I had to read it aloud to a class for the discovery.

     This is the power of art.

     This is the beauty of an artist leaving something behind.

The LA Times writer Jori Finkel on October 19, 2012, articled questions wondering if the re-newed shows at LACMA and Getty will strike again the chords of controversy.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-robert-mapplethorpe-lacma-20121020,0,4121613.story?track=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=175674

The current air we are living in seems not so unlike the ones breathed nearly 25 years ago. I like to imagine we have moved on. I would hope all could see in his works what I saw, and how they touched me so deeply all those years ago. They raised my consciousness; my understanding of myself and the world I find myself living in, and those I share it with, and still do.

Tag

This summer I found many large printed photographs laying on top of the garbage container by the freight elevator on the floor of the building my studio is in. There is an agency-rep/management company of some sort also on this floor. They keep the door to their offices open all the time, something I find irritating as every time I pass their door coming or going from my studio I have that, "I need a hall-pass, why is the hallway monitor so mean," feeling I used to get back in junior high school. Like they are surveying the activity of the hall. Like they are in charge of this area outside their door, and have a need to know what everyone on the floor is up to. At any rate, they clearly dumped the photographs of one of their clients, or photographers, including the very expensive clear portfolio sheet liners they rest in for showing, out. But not carefully were they trashed, wrapped up inside a garbage bag. No, they were just casually disregarded on top of the garbage container for anyone who happened to pass, find. I thought they were great. Large semi-glossy prints from various photo shoots. Semi dressed young men selling towels, or jean jackets, or cologne. The kind of photographs created for a large fashion company print ad campaign. The one you would flip past in Vanity Fair magazine as you hunted for the index. Searching for an article by Christopher Hitchens that will be forgotten when you discover Rick Floyd no longer is the art director for Annie Leibovitz, and Tommy Hilfiger was busy at a charity event in the Hamptons, again.
What? Christopher is no longer with us? Rick Floyd has moved on? Hilfiger isn't charitable? Well, clearly it has been some time since I flipped through a Vanity Fair, or worked an editorial job with Annie Leibovitz and Rick Floyd.
Nervously fumbling through the thick pile, not wanting my "dumpster diving" to get caught, I thought about the photographer whose work was being tossed. I wondered if she or he was an ex-client of the "Hall-Pass Agency." I imagined how she or he would feel if they would come across the work I saw in my mind I was about to create, using their work as my base media of choice. I grabbed them all and walked the long route back to my studio, avoiding the Hall-Pass Agency.
Once back in my studio I spread them out all over the floor. I picked up my black oil stick, and without thinking wrote the first thing that popped into my head on the printed materials, Basquiating them fairly rapidly. I always wonder when I make new art who will see it, and what they will think. It is almost as if I imagine who the object is being created for, and this unknown entity whispers in my ear, "me."
Once completed I carefully hung them to dry, using paper tape and lining them up along a separate columned section of one of the walls. I would be able to look at them over the next two months as the oil stick slowly dried, and I would think about how I felt about them. Like I have mentioned here in the blog before, new works take some time getting used to, and the uncomfortable-ness with which I viewed this collection wasn't much different than any other new form I have rendered. Some of the images I loved more than others, as always happens in a series, but all in all they seem to sum up what I was feeling at the time. A kind of Rorschach, ink-blot response.
A picture is one thing, and asks the viewer to handle it in a specific manner. The written word is another thing and requires the same, but different, handling. Forced together, especially if the viewer were to read out loud the written words, would cause a third function of the art to be created. First being the work, second being the viewer, third being this combination of the two, taking each out of their self, and producing another entity entirely. This is the actual work, and something I am learning and dealing with as I continue my series The Word.

From the forthcoming series Tag, as yet not on my web-site:

Fags For Sale

Oil Stick on Photograph Paper

18" x 14.5"

2012

I Will Never Grow Old

Oil Stick on Photograph Paper

18" x 14.5"

2012

Thinking About Myself

Oil Stick on Photograph Paper

11" x 14"

2012