[rollei_list] Re: OT Mapplethorpe (was Re: Re:)
- From: Jim Brick <jim@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 15:13:41 -0800
My sentiments exactly!
Jim
On Mar 7, 2010, at 3:01 PM, Marc James Small wrote:
The huge problem with Mapplethorpe in the US is that he managed to
convince the National Endowment for the Arts to PAY him for some of
his more outrageous anti-Christian pictures which they then, very
stupidly, put on display. This was so over the top as to offend even
many moderate and left-wing Christians and agnostics. In the end,
the NEA was forced to review its policies and has played a LOT nicer
for the past decade. (Admittedly, the NEA has a real problem, in
that it cannot justify its existence save as yet another pig at the
public trough, but that is a discussion for another day.)
In other words, the issue was far less the crude and brutal
offensiveness of his work -- after all, he had the right to produce
whatever he wanted to produce -- as the fact that he maneuvered the
government into PAYING for this with tax dollars. That was where he
went through the fence.
The controversy certainly made him a household word in the US, but
not in a very positive light. Whether this resulted in commercial
sales, I know not, but it probably did. After all, if you piss off
75% of the people, you then become a hero to the other 25%. And the
controversy did not break for several years after his demise, so I
suspect that his Trust benefited but he did not.
I find his work neither especially interesting nor well made nor of
any quality at all. He was a man on a mission, and I am so out of
touch with his mission as to find that his work does not speak to me
at all. In my view, he is a third-rater whose only notable act was
getting the US Taxpayer to fund his dreck.
Maple White I admire. Mapplethorpe I do not!
Marc
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