Is Robert Maplethorpe's work art? Is graffiti art? Is bad taste or a taste for the ugly and forbidden just a product of our century or does it supersede us? Because it is ugly, distasteful or the subject is forbidden by our particular society, does that mean it is not art? Or because it is acceptable in a society, that it becomes art? When is pornography acceptable to the public and when is it not? What is it anyway?
Japanese netsukes have always employed the erotic and pornographic and have always been considered art. They are beautifully carved and aesthetically executed. Do we look at them as artistic pieces or do we look at them as pornography? This is such an esoteric question it is impossible to answer as everyone will have a different answer, and it will alter with every generation or age, and it will change with every country. These are questions we must answer for ourselves and our time and society.
What about Walt Whitman? His poetry was considered disgusting to many in his day. And Henry Miller. Remember all those books that were banned in Boston when you and I were young?
There is quite a bit of difference between erotic, sexy, pornographic, elegant and cute. Let's examine a few.
Josephine Baker, the greatest of the Follies stars, danced almost totally in the nude. One of her best known costumes was a little skirt of bananas. Was her dancing art? Everyone from her Paris contemporaries to present thought so. A post card of Josephine Baker can sell for up to $200; a program from the Follies with her in it can pull about $75; a piece of her sheet music is worth about $50; and a poster from $500 into the thousands.
Why so much? Because she was beautiful, because she was an artist, and because she was exotic and sexy.
Take a look at Playboy and Hustler from today. Can you apply the same criteria? Can you get the same answer? The photographers are famous, wealthy, and maybe their work is pulling high prices, but is it art? Now go back to the early Esquire magazines and the early Playboys, and take a look at the Petty girls and the Vargas pin ups. Which would you want on your wall? Has art regressed? Or is it that what we are seeing isn't art?
What is fashion and style? When the new styles come out every year, do you look at it with the bated breath of someone drinking in the beauty of the Ziegfield Follies or does it look like a bad costume party or the side show at the Circus? How many women, assuming they had the shape and could afford or even want to afford the prices put on these outfits or costumes, and had the place to wear them, would purchase them? Do you have to spend thousands for a dress to be glamorous? And if you spent those thousands for the designer label, does that mean you are glamorous or even tastefully dressed.
Take a look at some of the wonderful Erte designs and then look at the next high fashion gala. Which would you prefer? A sensual Erte creation draped on a mannequin or your pick at the next romp down the fashion ramp?
Matisse and Cezanne are sensual and buttery. Is Maplethorpe?
Forget about the sex of the subject or the sexual preference; that is not important. Is it that Maplethorpe has stepped beyond the bounds of good taste on some of his subject matter and execution that has overshadowed all his good work?
Is his work there to provoke Jessie Helms or is it because this was how he saw things and what he thought was beautiful or reality? Beauty, after all is in the eye of the beholder. Because I do not care for some of Maplethorp's work, the subject matter and the execution... does that mean I can say, like Jessie Helm, that it isn't art? This is not only a social and ethical dilemma it is an intellectual one. Art is not only an emotional thing but it is also an intellectual experience.
All this has been leading us to the photographs that were popular into the 1940s in Europe and to a lesser degree in America. We all know that photo-graphs can increase in value by being tinted. Depending on how intricate the tinting is and how artistic, the value will go up. But, some are so garishly tinted that they are an assault upon the eye.
Starting before the turn of the century, photos of young children were taken in provocative positions or dress, or a combination of the two. The positions are the same artistic and provocative positions that we see with the adult females. These photos are both male and female and are of young children semi-clad, sometimes nude, in studio poses that would be considered "come on" if it were an older person.
At first glance they are innocent cute little children acting at being adults, however, these were studio poses set up specifically to be sold not to women who just loved a precious face and smile and would have thought it cute, but to men who thought them erotic. So how do you define these pictures? Does the intent and the time frame they were taken in make them an insidious foray into child pornography?
Why is it that these types of photos pull more money than pictures of the same time frame which are of children who are just cute, pretty or precocious? Because of their market, does it detract from their artistic merit? Obviously there are so many shades of grey in these questions and so many fine lines that the final picture looks like it came from the pen of Edward Gorey. Do black and white make grey? Perhaps art is just a philosophic concept... or a conduit to make us think.
©1997 Unravel the Gavel