Polamatic # 2 / kitchen sink #28 ~ what a difference a country makes

manipulated Polamatic ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
fries stuck on plate ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Yesterday, I read an article on the NY Times website, Sally Mann's Exposure, which is well worth the read. In a nutshell, the article, written by Mann, is about the furor which resulted from her book, Immediate Family (published in 1992), and the toll that furor has had on her and her family.

The furor included some vitriolic criticism from critics, politicians, and general all-around non-art nut jobs. Here in the good ol' US of A that's par for the course when it comes any art which courts controversy (the controversy here is Mann's naked children). As is often stated, when it comes nation founding we were unlike the lucky Australians who got the criminals. Instead, we got the Putitans.

In any event, what came immediately to my mind as I read the article was my trip to Tuscany a couple years back. While there, the wife and I spent a day in Florence driven in part by the desire to see some Italian art. First on the list was Michelangelo's David at the Academia Gallery (it's permanent home). The Academia also houses a fine collection of predominately religious Renaissance art.

So, you can only imagine my extreme, albeit also very delighted, surprise to find on exhibit in the David gallery, a companion display some of the Robert Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs as well as others by him of the human / female form. The exhibit was mounted to draw attention to an over-the-centuries connection / visual conversation between Michelangelo's statue and Mapplethorpe's photographs. Which, in essence, is the beauty of the human form no matter from which perspective one views it - "Form is understood as a value in itself," said Franca Falletti, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, and should be considered regardless of any subject matter and "the baggage of personal experience."

IMO, it took a hefty set of balls to mount this exhibit in Roman Catholic Italy (96% of Italians are Catholic), much less in a museum primarily dedicated to, but by no means exclusively, religious art. Nevertheless, I don't remember any wide-spread controversy gripping the Italian public. No protesters were marching up and down the strada outside of the museum, at least not when I was there. It seemed to me that the exhibit was met primarily with a ho-hum it's-just-another-nude reaction.

Now imagine if you will, if a museum in Cincinnati, Ohio - the birthplace of American sculptor Charles Henry Niehaus - were to mount an exhibit of his nude sculpture, such as The Driller, and accompany it with a this-thing-is-like-that-thing Mapplethorpe photograph exhibit. Just imagine. The museum exhibition director, and quite possibly the museum director, would have to be suicidal, employment and arrest wise (not to mention death threats), if they were to do so.

Now, to be certain, everyone should be allowed to express their views on art. But why is it, especially in the good ol' US of A, many views on the subject turn into ad hominem attacks upon the artist, him/her-self?

Personally, I blame it on the Purtians, many of whom were given to burning "heretics" at the stake and other physically punitive actions, and their puritanical legacy. CAVEAT: the aforementioned should NOT be construed to mean that I believe all, or even most, Christians are implacable prudes.