From: Editor - P.O.V. Image Service (editor@p-o-v-image.com)
Date: 09/17/00-01:46:03 PM Z
Gregory Parkinson wrote:
> At 1:59 AM -0400 9/15/00, LAShively@aol.com wrote:
> >[...]
> >Needless to say the instructor had a fit and sided with the (pervert)
> >photographer as did the other males in class.
>
> Pervert?
>
> Thought Experiment: what if the photo had been of a muscular
> young man, on all fours throwing a steamy look at the camera?
Then someone might be congratulating a follower in the line of Mapplethorpe,
Ritts, Furstenburg, or Meisel for a great piece..
The problem is that art, whether one wishes it to have political content or not,
cannot but have political content and a political nature..
Art, as many have said elsewhere, is a mirror for society... And society is
drawn of the polis, the people, from which the word political derives..
Every work of art is a political commentary upon and/or derivation of the
society in which it was born..
An artist has the right to choose to represent any opinion within that society
(or outside it) if he/she can do so.. And at times, as we all know, the message
we perceive as viewers was not that intended..
Robert Mapplethorpe, Jock Sturges, and Sally Mann, have been attacked and
vilified for presenting sensuality/sexuality in ways that, for some, disturb
them..
But, think for a moment, is not the purpose too of art, at times, to disturb the
viewer to shake them from the comfortable somnolence of the everyday..? Just as
at other time, and in other places, it is to make one feel safe and
comfortable... Art is about the evocation of human emotion and about the
expression of human emotion, nothing can be more unpredictable.. (except perhaps
a Parisian or Bostonian motorist)
When I was at Berkeley, I endured a particularly tough crit from some classmates
who found some of my imagery in a particular piece presenting a "too Vogueish"
idealized view of women.. Needless to say, I did not intend to provoke those
reactions, but they were there.. In fact I later utilized them in further work..
The problem with the discussion of nudes here is that we speak of two different
issues..
One, the issue of the idealized in art and what we each perceive the proper role
of art.. Well, the Soviets tried to hold art to an objective standard of
promoting the common good.. They called it Socialist Realism.. Any surprise that
the best art from the Soviet period was "degenerate" or "decadent" and not
Socialist Realism..?
Two, whether each individual artist need portray a particular standard or be
subject to sanction.. Whether an artist pursues art for themselves or whether we
should harness them to the social goals and mores of the day.. To me, the
latter sounds like Jesse Helms, no like the voice of an artist..
One is free to like or dislike a particular piece. Aesthetic tastes, politics,
life experiences, all will play a part in the choice of one's personal
preferences in art, I however, will always support the choice of the artist,
whether or not I enjoy the work in question...
Keith
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