Real Homosexuality: Robert Mapplethorpes Photography in a Political Landscape :: Robert Mapplethorpe Photographic Essays

At each moment, the question boils down to this: dignity on whose terms? Increasingly, the answer is that to have dignity gay people must be seen as normal. --Michael Warner No medium or arena is free from political assimilation. Perhaps this is why the term "the personal is political" is so reverberant in such a multitude of communities. In the fine arts community, every art piece reflects a personal decision or touch; what medium to best describe a subject or idea in, or the physical shape and making of art by an artist, for example, are ways in which each artist has ownership over their own work. When art is displayed for an audience, the very act of placing a personal piece into the public sphere creates a forum for interactive and political dialogue and judgment. To present artwork in a public arena authorizes the audience to construe interpretation and assessment on that art. The policies and politics that dictate the arrival of art for the public purview are not immune to the authority and judgment-making that occurs once the art is on display. There are foundations and organizations that are founded and funded by the government for the promotion and distribution of fine arts, which of necessity are bound by the legal and litigious dictates of the governing bodies and the public it represents. When artwork or an artist is controversial, it becomes a political issue due to the governmental involvement in funding, and thus approving, of the contentious art or art-maker. For artists who work in the photographic medium, controversies arise more readily due to the realism of the images. In the case of Robert Mapplethorpe, a prominent and sensationalist photographer of the '70s and '80s, his photography was the site for which conservative senator Jesse Helms was able to symbolize the misinterpretations of visual representation for 'real' action. Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) was a gay male artist who died at the age of 43 of AIDS. His technically brilliant and stylistically scandalous images sparked both controversy and contemplation. He was both praised and derogated by his stark and honest appraisal of the erotic male nude, sadomasochism culture and practices, and homoerotic and multiracial portraits. "Mapplethorpe's work has a 'shocking' quality both for his choice of subject matter and the fact that the photograph is intrinsically more realistic than painting because the images are 'real'." (Cooper, 285). North Carolina Republican