Originally published on 9/16/14 at HalfAChicken.com
https://halfachicken.com/justinavalon/article/87
Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio: Obscene? Yes. Kinky? Just a little bit. But is it art?
If you’ve never heard of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe before, here’s a quick primer: 1) he’s dead, and 2) his work made waves during the pretentiously-titled “Culture Wars” of the 1980’s (LACMA 2013). Mapplethorpe represented the perfect bad boy blend of student, transgressor, and pioneer of the art world in the 20th Century. Never one to let the critics breathe easy, the X Portfolio was his attempt to document hardcore homosexual sadomasochism as art (Bunyan 2013). At the time, it was considered a highly subversive commentary on American culture, as well as a test of human gag reflexes. The shock value of the collection could resuscitate an elderly woman with a pacemaker. And possibly rattle her back to death again.
We’ve come a long way from frilly bloomers and exposed ankles, Grandma.
In fact, the series was so raw and uninhibited that even today the Mapplethorpe Foundation omits much of that collection from its website, choosing only a few tame pieces for inclusion.
Don’t believe me? Take a look:
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/exhibitions/2012-10-21_los-angeles-county-museum-of-art/.
Suggestive, yet tasteful, right? No signs of anal fisting or dildos being inserted into places that never see the light of day. However, any in-depth research of Mapplethorpe’s work will reveal far more graphic instances of cringe-worthy imagery that make up the true X Portfolio. The controversial power of his work is apparent from the first image you see. Here is but a small sampling:
(WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.)
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/robert-mapplethorpe-x-portfolio-4576015-details.aspx?intObjectID=4576015
Frankly, even that selection is tame compared to other pieces from the portfolio. The point is, this collection of family-friendly photographs was a real tour de force for its ability to disgust and intrigue, evoke and provoke. As if that weren’t enough, Mapplethorpe also had the appearance of a younger, more angst-ridden version of James Dean, making him a visual double-threat both behind and in front of the camera.
Not pictured: his Jussi Award for his role in the movie East of Eden.
However, his reputation and legacy aside, can Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio be considered art? On one hand, his photography has been compared to paintings by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Soutine, and some claim that they seem to pull back the metaphorical foreskin (meta-foreskin?) of his abstractist predecessors, revealing a naked and throbbing “documentary truth” hued in sepia and grayscale.
Ironically, despite his best efforts to break away from “photographic purity” (Knight 2012), Mapplethorpe’s contemporary work actually harkens back to a historical tradition of tantalizing pictorials dating all the way back to the 5th Century B.C. This was a time when Greek vases were often painted with images so sensuous that Alexander the Great surely whacked off to them between conquests to relieve tension.
In this sense, Mapplethorpe wasn’t doing anything entirely new; he just did it bolder and with more rubber dildos.
Remember, it’s only awkward if you make eye contact.
On the other hand, how many pictures of testicles bound and stretched in a vice can you go through before you start questioning where the line is and at what point was it crossed? (I wish I was being rhetorical in this case). Nowadays, people are critical of movies like Saw and Hostel, which are infamous for being so gory that even their own actors can’t bear to watch it.
Case in point:
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/horror-film-saw-so-gory-even-star-costas-mandylor-cant-watch/story-e6frfmvr-1225783609471.
“I want to play a game…it’s called ‘Ventriloquist’…and you get to be the dummy…”
By comparison, the X Portfolio is way more graphic than either of these films. There is no doubt that the issue of content versus intent and how these forces interact and even oppose each other is especially present Mapplethorpe’s work. Sure, the message is there, buried somewhere underneath all the sex toys and human hand-puppetry, but does the raw carnality actually hurt the medium? Are we so transfixed on the disturbing imagery that we fail to see the point behind it all? Is there even a point, or is it just shocking for shock’s sake? Or is the offensiveness itself “the point”?
I’m of the belief that extreme acts of expression such as Mapplethorpe’s operate on the “Just Fucking Crazy Enough to Work” principle, and in this case there’s enough ingenuity and balls for it to actually work. How else could you display pictures of explicit sounding (and we’re talking the Urban Dictionary definition here) in a public gallery and somehow violently straddle that wave of controversy to become one of the most popular posthumously talked-about photographers of back then and today?
That certain
je ne sais quoi about Mapplethorpe’s work that landed him stints in LACMA and Perth in the past few years must still be shining through somehow since it’s been about 30-something years and we’re not yet done talking about him. It’s like he knew his brazenness was all he needed to keep us looking at his favorite dick pics for decades to come. I won’t go so far as to call Mapplethorpe the original SnapChat dick pic guy, but I do applaud him for unapologetically doing what most other artists are too scared to do, and actually succeeding at it. Arguably, because of work like Mapplethorpe’s, we are beginning to embrace the counterculture and find acceptance and even beauty in what we previously thought to be vile and unspeakable.
It’s either that, or we as a culture have loosened our morals enough to entertain the idea of butt plugs and bondage gear as just another way to kill an afternoon.
You know, maybe Quentin Tarantino was onto something in Pulp Fiction…
Sources
Bunyan, Dr. Marcus. “Exhibition: ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ.’”
http://artblart.com/2013/03/17/exhibition-robert-mapplethorpe-xyz-at-the-los-angeles-county-museum-of-art-lacma/
LACMA. “Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ.”
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/robert-mapplethorpe-xyz
Knight, Christopher. “Review: LACMA’s ‘XYZ’ on Robert Mapplethorpe: Gay artist vs. straight tradition.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/04/entertainment/la-et-cm-mapplethorpe-review-20121104
Mapplethorpe Foundation –
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/exhibitions/2012-10-21_los-angeles-county-museum-of-art/
Greek vase painting –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_erotic_depictions#mediaviewer/File:Erotic_scenes_Louvre_G13_n4.jpg
Pulp Fiction scene still –
http://toscanoirriverente.tumblr.com/post/1610451140/iwdrm-bring-out-the-gimp-pulp-fiction
Robert Mapplethorpe portrait –
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/AR/AR00225_10.jpg
Robert Mapplethorpe X Portfolio sample –
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/LargeImage.aspx?image=http://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d45760/d4576015x.jpg
Saw Jigsaw scene still –
http://cdn.tss.uproxx.com/TSS/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/saw-movie-600x450.jpg
