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 damage? Increasingly, the answer is that to have dignity gay people must be seen as normal.--Michael WarnerNo medium or arena is free from policy-making assimilation. Perhaps this is why the term the personal is political is so echoing(prenominal) in such a multitude of communities. In the fine arts community, every art switch reflects a personal decision or touch what medium to best describe a grammatical case or idea in, or the physical shape and making of art by an artist, for example, are ways in which each artist has ownership everywhere their own work. When art is displayed for an auditory sense, the very act of placing a personal piece into the public sphere creates a forum for interactive and political negotiation 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 reaching of art for the public purview are not immune to the say-so 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 hold in 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 inter-group communication 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 office 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 di ed at the age of 43 of AIDS. His technically resplendent 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 homosexual and multiracial portraits. Mapplethorpes work has a shocking quality both for his choice of subject matter and the fact that the photograph is intrinsically more realistic than house painting because the images are real. (Cooper, 285). North Carolina Republican