Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe
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The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe has been the subject of a continuing series of debates about what is or is not art, about which art should be supported by public funds, and about the nature of his own work. At the center of the controversies are a group of works known as the X Portfolio which depict homoerotic sadomasochistic acts and, more generally, eroticize male genitalia in a manner never attempted before in Western art. The cancellation of a Mapplethorpe retrospective by the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D. C., the uproar in Congress over funding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the obscenity trial of a Cincinnati museum and its director were the major events in the controversy that reached beyond Mapplethorpe himself and extended to a public furor over the nature of art. In the midst of these controversies, the philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto became one of the principal interpreters and defenders of Mapplethorpe's art. Danto's defense of Mapplethorpe was a part of his ongoing project of defining the nature of art in philosophic terms and encouraging the aesthetic appreciation of contemporary art. The formulation of his ideas took place in the course of reviewing a major retrospective of Mapplethorpe's work, writing about the work in a major essay accompanying the publication of some Mapplethorpe photographs, and defending the work in the course of the various public controversies. By examining Danto's assessment of Mapplethorpe's wor
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by the First Amendment' if 'the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in sex; portrays in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct . . .; and taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'"20 The basic question that had to be answered, a point kept before the jury by the defense, was whether the photographs were, in fact, art and, consequently, protected by the First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
The prosecution produced only a single expert witness, a Ph.D. in communications who had, over the years, gotten, in pay and grants, nearly a quarter of a million dollars from Donald Wildmon's American Family Association. The defense witnesses were extremely well prepared and refused to be drawn into controversy over the subject matter. They admitted that it was intended to shock but discussed the artistic value of the works. The jurors were convinced by testimony such as that of Martin Friedman, director of the Minneapolis Walker Art Center. Friedman said of the photographs, "I recognize that they are difficult [and] confrontational. I recognize that they tell us things maybe we would rather not hear. But they do shine lights in some rather dark corners of the huma
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 5366
Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page)
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