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I realize of course, that it is unfair to judge Robert Maplethorpe's artistic credentials on the X-Portfolio alone, a minute collection in terms of his life's work. Still, since it has become so prominent and has, whether intended to or not, entered the public sphere as art, I will consider it without reference to his other works. The art of Joel Peter Witkin, however, is quite a different matter. There is no "other" work. His entire collection is devoted to "all manner of extreme visual perversions", as he himself declares in Richard Woodward's "An Eye for the Forbidden". The aesthetic, whether it exists or not, gets lost in the subject itself. I look at the work only to groan and turn away. I can go no further. What is pictured becomes much more significant than the picture itself.
From a strictly legal standpoint, I have little to say against the imagery of Maplethorpe and Witkin. The First Amendment is very broad in its application and, as it has been interpreted, gives artist's a license to basically do whatever they please. An artist's right however, does not translate into the audience's duty. The art world is so quick to unite in the war against censorship, that it begins to celebrate works that have very little merit save for creating a legal uproar. My question continues to be, "Why is this considered great art?". Why are we studying it at a university level? It seems to me that all of the debate surrounding these works is in regard to their classification, and no one stops to consider whether or not they represent artistic quality. When you think of all the art that has been produced throughout the years and throughout the world, there is but a small fraction which is deemed worthy of academic study. Most artists never find their way into the text books. This does not mean their work is not art, it just means it was not considered strong enough to merit such inclusion. I would simply maintain, then, that "visual perversion" is hardly sufficient grounds for establishing artistic merit. Just because an artist has a right to produce something, does not mean we as viewers have a duty to like it or study it.
Ultimately, the work of Joel Peter Witkin and the X-Portfolio of Robert Maplethorpe pushes the envelope so far that the sense of "perversion" is almost defeated. I would maintain that only a small handful of the world's population gives much merit to these forms of art. I would imagine, in fact, that most of world would never see it. Even our own university class of art students had quite a few dissenting voices on the subject. These images are so far from the "norm" that there can be no misinterpreting their intention. Perhaps it is the more subtle forms of sexualized art or advertising which does the most towards altering the standard of common acceptability. The blatantly grotesque is easily identified and, for the most part, easily avoidable. The subtle exploitation, however, is hard to identify and even harder to avoid. Still, my admittedly biased position is that, aside from any consideration as to their artistic classification, Maplethorpe's and Witkin's work are poor examples of art, plain and simple. To include them with the masters is an injustice to the masters and an injustice to us.
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