Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe - Essay Example

MAPPLETHORPE: BLACK MYTHOLOGY, HOMOEROTICISM, OR A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE? of School) and State location of School) (Date of Submission) Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was no stranger to controversy. Depending upon the view, he is considered either one of the most innovative and uninhibited artists of modern times, or a publicity seeking, amoral destructive cultural influence. Even his death of AIDS in 1989 has failed to temper the discussion regarding the renowned artist who seemed equally at ease photographing flowers and celebrities as he did men in various and highly controversial stages of erotic display. In 1986, he published The Black Book, a selection of his many idealized and homoerotic nude photographs of black men. The work, deemed homoeroticism by many, incurred the wrath of religious groups and politicians angered that Mapplethorpe had received public funding for the exhibits. Moving on from classical nudes of the 1970s, Mapplethorpes X Portfolio series (including highly erotic male poses) of the early 1990s garnered U.S. national attention when it was included in The Perfect Moment, a traveling exhibition funded by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a government funding agency. The event resulted in an unsuccessful prosecution of a Cincinnati, Ohio arts center which hosted the exhibit. Perhaps the most controversial works produced by Mapplethorpe, undoubtedly because of their association with the issues of sex and race as seen through the erotic prism, are the The Black Book photographs of black men widely and vociferously criticized as exploitative by some and deemed nothing more than homoerotic dreamscapes by the artist. Not all critics, however, see Mapplethorpe’s photographic series in that light. Celant (1993) for instance, while alluding to the erotic nature of the photos, takes a far more aesthetic position, viewing the photographs as contributing historically and artistically to the appreciation of black cultural mythology--an area widely ignored. ‘A gratified serenity suffuses most of these photographs, as if they were somehow detached from the constantly self-renewing fever of desire. (Fig. 1) Literally putting black men on a pedestal, Mapplethorpe establishes them as calm sources of beauty, more perfect than flesh’ (Celant, 1993:1). In writing this Celant makes a counter argument regarding the prurient intent of the photos and supports the argument put forth in this paper that while views differ on the series, the works clearly present a variety of artistic intentions and should not be judged or critiqued based purely on their apparent sexual or homoerotic content, or, as been charged in some instances, an attempt to exploit males on the basis of race. Celant (1993) writes, ‘His formal approach to them sets them [black males] up as ideal, as almost sacred’ (1). In stating writing this he is thereby and rightly so reinforcing the argument that Mapplethorpe’s photos of black men are not merely homoerotic visions, but reflections that promote the mythology of the black male coexistent with, at times, homoerotism and other artistically relevant social and emotional states. The Black Male as Mythological Hero In examining Mapplethorpe’s work of the 1970s one finds numerous examples of the artist’s forays into photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture (both cultures widely accepting of male-male eroticism.) These earlier works chose not to portray the subjects in homoerotic terms, but merely as males in their classic heroic beauty. In later photos of black males it is obvious Mapplethorpe had similar artistic intensions in mind, as in Thomas, 1986 (Fig. 2) which pictures the black nude male set within a discus in heroic classical pose of the Greco-Roman athlete, a choice that does not appear incongruous with his earlier work nor accidental. ‘His [Mapplethorpe] interest in black men is connected both to sex and to the esthetic pleasure of their bodies beauty and plasticity’ (Cenant, 1993: 2)—reflecting the classical Greek adoration of the male body sans any obvious homoerotic intensions. The Issues: Fueling the Controversy An important point to consider when analyzing the photographs is the cultural politics of sex and race prevalent during the 1980s. Mercer and Julien (1988) write of the ‘unprecedented civil disobedience…as black people…rose up to resist… increasingly coercive policing’ (97), which in this instance they attribute in Britain to the conservatism of the Thatcher era. In reaction to this the development internationally of a more visual black pride and black gay pride evolved. This evolution is consistent with Mapplethorpe’s artistic instinct in reflecting the cultural and political atmosphere in his art, a rebellion of sorts meant to support the black male and reveal the absurdity of notions held by whites concerning race that ‘One is civilized at the expense of sexuality…If the black, the savage, the nigger is the absolute Other of civility then it must follow that he is endowed with the most monstrous and terrifying sexual proclivity’ (Mercer and Julien, 1988: 108) (fig. 3). In a later work, Welcome to the Jungle, Mercer expands this topic within the context of changes in the cultural and political landscape. (Mercer, 1994:171) Hall (1996) further explores this theme. ‘Within culture marginality has never been… such a productive space as it is now. It is the result of the cultural politics of difference, of the struggles around difference, of the production of new identities, of the appearance of new subjects on the political and cultural stage’ (Hall, 1996: 467). New identities indeed emerged from this period, including those which allowed men in general to exhibit traits until then considered feminine. Alluding to this attitude, and considering the premise of the paper, we see in Mapplethorpe’s work the perfect blending of the feminine and male side of black male identity expressed in ‘Dennis Spreig, 1983’ (Fig. 4) through flowers as phallic symbol of black male eroticism also consistent with the black male identity. Hall (1996) writes, ‘…there’s nothing that global post-modernism loves better than a certain kind of difference: a touch of ethnicity, a taste of the exotic, as we say in England, a bit of the “other”’ (467), the “other” incorporating both sexual and ethnic connotations. Art, Mapplethorpe and Popular Culture Tastes and sensibilities of popular culture change drastically over time, and what would be unheard of in one epoch is quite the norm in another. In order to see Mapplethorpe’s work in the correct context, Hall insists upon a completely new vision not only of popular culture as an entity, but also how it evolves and to what extent Mapplethorpe’s work should be included in its development. Hall (1996) writes: It is necessary to deconstruct the popular once and for all. There is no going back to the innocent view of what it consists of. ..Popular culture always has its base in the experiences…the informal, the underside, the grotesque. [it] is thus the site of alternative traditions…that is why the dominant tradition has always been suspicious of it…They suspect that they are about to be overtaken by what Bakhtin calls ‘the carnivalesque’. (469) The problem for mainstream society is how to differentiate high from low [popular] culture, and, in that determination, how to deal with the reality that what constitutes high and low culture in one period of history may not hold true in another. (Hall, 1996: 469) Art, Exhibitionism or Racial Fetishism? The question for many critics was: Did Mapplethorpe reproduce a mythical black masculinity or invent new ways of seeing what Kobena Mercer calls the ‘homoerotic imaginary’? The opinion of the Ferguson in the National Review (1989), a widely read conservative publication, presents the blunt and one-dimensional view of the black series as “homoerotic and sadomachistic imagery” (para. 3). In the same article Ferguson quotes Congressman Richard Armey. ‘...the interpretation of art is a subjective evaluation, but there is a very clear and unambiguous line that exists between what can be classified as art and what must be called morally reprehensible trash’(para. 4). (Fig. 5) Yet questions regarding whether Mapplethorpe perceived his images as obscene is questionable given other explanations for what Mapplethorpe was attempting to achieve, in Celant’s view ‘an ideal empathic being, someone to love and to be loved by’ (Celant, 1993:1), the ‘ideal’ once again reinforcing the mythicalisation intent. For the National Review to assume Mapplethorpe’s intentions while valid as critique is capable of challenge. Celant writes, ‘Mapplethorpe knows that the passage into the ‘diverse’ is sexual and racial, and that art must address these two conditions’ (1). Using images from another exhibit and adding a second relative caution, Mercer argues ‘It is one thing to say that South African apartheid is ‘obscene”, but to use pornography in this way…only leads to closure, rather than much needed opening of critical debate about the politics of sex and race…’ (172). Mercer (1994) further argues that maintaining that the representational image of blacks in homoerotic or other sexual positions when viewed by non-blacks tends to reinforce what the larger majority already sees as negative and reinforces racial fetishism. Foregoing the ‘…the personal intentions of the individual behind the lens’ (173), Mercer addresses ‘…the tendency whereby the images of blacks become fixed into…stereotypes functions to encode versions of reality that confirm the ideological precept that ‘race’ constitutes a ‘problem’ per se’ (Mercer, 1994: 82-83). When considering the work in this light it is suggested that while Mapplethorpe’s intentions in creating the works may be discussed on a myriad of artistic, social and political levels, the negative end result on a society already racially biased and solidly sold on black male stereotypes makes a case against the works as less supporting a glorious mythical image of black men and more one of sex obsessed individuals with little more to offer the culture. Both Black Males (1983) and The Black Book (1986) feature nude males only, “An erotic/aesthetic objectification of black male bodies into a homogenous type” (Mercer, 1994: 174). As in ‘Man in the Polyester Suit,’ Mercer writes, ‘it is the penis that identifies the image as a black man’ (Mercer: 174), and, one might conclude, nothing about the image is thereby ‘mythical’ except the outsized member as photographed, feeding into fetishism to which the photos contribute based on myth [black mythological identity in fetish and in the negative] that black men are perhaps more well genitally endowed than others. There is a certain dehumanizing aura about the photos. In viewing them the viewer is not privy to the lives of the subjects, but thrust into a position of assessing abstract expressions and poses akin to “fashion models” (Mercer, 1994:179). Confirming the existence of fetishism in the photos, Mapplethorpe uses lighting and positioning to reaffirm the way white people secretly or overtly perceive black people, hardly mythical, as in Thomas and Dovana (1987) (Fig. 6) in which the body positioning and stark lighting depict the typical white view of the black male salaciously seeking the amorous attentions of the white woman. Metz (1985), in his article Photography and Fetish, adds to this concern. ‘The photographic lexus [a rectangle of paper] has not fixed duration; it depends rather on the spectator, who is the master of the look’ (81). Celant (1993), however, would argue that Mercer’s view is limited to social reality and does not address the more import aspect of deeper meaning and interpretation removed from whatever the masses, willing to see the photos as supporting racial fetishism, may or may not perceived. Celant writes: Mapplethorpe knows that the passage into the "diverse" is sexual and racial, and that art must address these two conditions. And so he makes photography a means to confront the force of segregation and ghettoization, to shatter prejudice. His images of black men are vortices of energy that can sweep the viewer away. Illuminating black men as divine, Mapplethorpe opposes them to an everyday existence of mediocre conformism. In this sense they do have a certain violence--the violence of the sacred, which demands its victory over social destiny. These black figures act on repression to attack the unacceptable conditions of a society imprisoned by hypocrisy. (Celant, 1993:1-2) Metz (1985) explanation of the basis of fetishism in photography is more explanatory and cautious than critical. ‘Photography enjoys a high degree of social recognition in another domain: that of the presumed real. It leaves much room for symbolic [fetish] aspects as well, such as the more or less codified patterns of treatment of the image (framing, lighting, and so forth) and of choice or organization of its contents’ (82) —a strong referent component. Hall (1993), a staunch advocate of popular culture as an ever changing force in art, may be seen as supporting the notion of Mapplethorpe’s images as accomplishing a great deal in actually diminishing black stereotypes by presenting black males as heroic, beautiful, and sensual—qualities generally admired in males of any ethnicity. What we are talking about is the struggle over cultural hegemony, which is these days waged as much in popular culture as anywhere else. That high/popular distinction is precisely what the global postmodern is displacing. Cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination (thats not what the term means); it is never a zero-sum cultural game; it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture; it is always about changing the dispositions and the configurations of cultural power, not getting out of it. There is a kind of “nothing ever changes, the system always wins” attitude, which I read as the cynical protective shell that, Im sorry to say, American cultural critics frequently wear, a shell that sometimes prevents them from developing cultural strategies that can make a difference. It is as if, in order to protect themselves against the occasional defeat, they have to pretend they can see right through everything -- and its just the same as it always was. Now, cultural strategies that can make a difference, thats what Im interested in. (Hall, 1993: para. 8) Hall agrees that while images can reinforce stereotypical perception, it is to be expected and should not interfere with other intentions meant by the artist. In doing so, then, Mapplethorpe is certainly creating a mythical image of his subjects. ‘Popular culture, commodified and stereotyped as it often is, is not at all, as we sometimes think of it, the arena where we find who we really are, the truth of our experience. It is an arena that is profoundly mythic’ (Hall, 1993: para. 26). The work of Mapplethorpe taken as popular culture belies the notion then that it is nothing more than sexual exploitation of popular stereotypes, turned in upon itself. But perhaps this denial of the pornographic may be also the sign of its exclusion from the realm of popular culture—an attempt to create a new mythological identity for the black male separate from that stemming from the black diaspora and fetism. Mapplethorpe creates an original aesthetic photographic art form as representational of the black male that must necessarily include the erotic—homoerotic or otherwise. In Conclusion: Ligon’s Notes Perhaps the most complete commentary on Mapplethorpe’s Black Males comes from American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon in Notes on the Margins of the Black Book (1991-1993). In it, Ligon juxtaposes several of Mapplethorpes most iconic images of black men appropriated from Mapplethorpe’s 1988 publication, Black Book, with various critical texts reflecting a variety of interpretations. (Fig. 7) ‘In Notes, as in all of Ligons work, sex, race, and desire cannot be disentangled, and [in Notes as reflection of Mapplethorpe’s Black Book itself] questions are raised about the complex nature of the self and its relation to culture” (Guggenheim, 2010: para. 2). If art is meant for the viewer, then James Baldwin’s comments (Guggenheim, 2010) on Ligon support the thesis and dispute the notion that Mapplethorpe’s work is strictly a product of his homoerotic obsession. ‘What ones imagination makes of other people is dictated, of course, by the laws of ones own personality and it is one of the ironies of black-white relations that, by means of what the white man imagines the black man to be, the black man is enabled to know who the white man is’ (Guggenheim quoting Baldwin, para. 2). Mapplethorpe;s work, then, is hardly a mere homoerotic dreamscape, but a complex, multi-intentioned and reactioned series of photographs representing as many perspectives as there are viewers. Bibliography Celant, G. ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: Man in a Polyester Suit’. ArtForum, September, 1993. Reproduced on: FindArticles.com. 23 February, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n1_v32/ai_14580135/?tag=content;col1 Chapman, R. and Rutherford, J. (eds). (1988) Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity. London:Lawrence & Wishart. Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien, ‘Race, Sexual Politics and Black Masculinity: A Dossier’. www.questia.com Ferguson, A. (1990). “Mad About Mapplethorpe”. Extracted from the National Review: (4 August, 1990). Published 1 August, 1989. http://www.fortfreedom.org/b24.htm Guggenheim (Website) (2010) ‘Notes on the Margin of the Black Book’. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=The%20Bohen%20Foundation%20Gift&page=1&f=Major%20Acquisition&cr=4 Hall. S. ‘What is This Black in Black Popular Culture’ (1993). Social Justice: Spring/Summer, Vol 20 n1-2 p104(11). http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:2FYykP3FDwIJ:www.bsos.umd.edu/aasp/chateauvert/whatis.doc+what+is+this+black+in+black+popular+culture&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Hall, S., Morley, D., and Kuan-Hsing Chen (1996). Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Mercer, K. (1994). Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. Metz, C. ‘Photography and Fetish’: Vol. 34 (Autumn, 1985), 81-90. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0162-2870%28198523%2934%3C81%3APAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H Retrieved from: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/Metz-Photography-and-Fetish-October-1985.pdf Figures (Fig 1) Ken Moody, 1984, R. Mapplethorpe. http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.85.htm (Fig. 2) Thomas 1986, R. Mappethorpe. http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.97.htm (Fig 3) Man in Polyester Suit, R. Mapplethorpe. http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.46.htm (Fig 4) Dennis Speigh, R. Mapplethorpe. http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.90.htm (Fig. 5) Carlton, 1988, R. Mapplethorpe. http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.116.htm (Fig. 6) Thomas and Dovana, 1987. http://www.american-buddha.com/maplethorpe.102.htm (Fig. 7) Notes on the Margin of the Black Book, 1991–93. Off-set prints and text, 91 off-set prints, framed: 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches (27.9 x 28.6 cm) each; 78 text pages, framed: 5 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches (13.3 x 18.4 cm) each. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, The Bohen Foundation, 2001.180. Photo: Ellen Labenski. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about-us/guggenheim-images/show-full/piece/?search=The+Bohen+Foundation+Gift&page=1&f=Acquisition&cr=4 Read More