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Sexual Politics in the Defense of Art: Culture Wars, Mapplethorpe, and the Road from Formalism to Identity Politics

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Sexual Politics in the Defense of Art: Culture Wars, Mapplethorpe, and the Road from Formalism to Identity Politics SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE DEFENSE OF ART: CULTURE WARS, MAPPLETHORPE, AND THE ROAD FROM FORMALISM TO IDENTITY POLITICS Dustin Kidd ABSTRACT This paper examines the 1990 trial in Cincinnati that resulted from the ~ ;:if" display of controversial photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. 1 focus J' on how the art world attempted to defend Mapplethorpe's work from the charge of obscenity and to demonstrate the artistic merit of the photographs. Although formalist aesthetics provided the primary defense, by the trial's end,formalism had been abandoned infavor of identity politics - specifically, a sexual politics that focused on the sexual identity of the photographer and the content of the photographs. Bringing content 'and context into the discussion of art has made, 1 argue, for a more democratic art world. It has opened the door to forms of art that are less elite and that offer voices of counter-hegemonic contestation. These findings reveal that large-scale cultural conflict can have positive benefits for the public square. Politics of Change: Sexuality, Gender and Aging Research in Political Sociology, Volume 13, 79-112 Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0895-9935/doi:l0.l016/S0895-9935(04)13003-9 79 80 DUSTIN KIDD Sexual Politics ill the Defense ofArt 81 INTRODUCTION the Contemporary Arts Center. The resulting trial, as well as associated art world activities surrounding the trial, is the focus of this paper. On May 18th, 1989, the New York art world turned out for a memorial service at The arts were not the only American institution to experience such controversy, the Whitney Museum of American Art to mourn the death of photographer Robert as heated debate erupted in the media, the courts, and the houses of public Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe had appeared on the New York art scene at the policy-making over a plethora of issues. These cultural conflicts raise difficult end of the sixties, after leaving the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before completing questions about the public sphere. Habermas ([1981J 1984) argues that the public his degree, and moving into the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. His reputation had sphere allows for collective action by providing a space for consensus building. grown steadily through the seventies and eighties, with numerous solo exhibitions But how can consensus be reached when divides are deep and when there is no acruss the country and commissions for various magazine and album covers. shared set of values or tenns to guide the debate? Do culture wars indicate the Mapplethorpe's photographs cluster around three main forms: flowers, portraits, collapse of the public sphere? Or might they make an important contribution and sexual explorations. The extent of his success was evidenced in his first towards achieving reasoned debate? retrospective exhibit, which opened at the Whitney in July of 1988. By that time, In the section that follows, I review the concept of culture wars from both a his health had significantly deteriorated as a result of his AIDS diagnosis in historical and a social scientific point-of-view, before turning to a specific segment 1980. Eight months after the exhibit opened at the Whitney, Mapplethorpe died - the so-called Mapplethorpe trial (it was really the trial of curator Dennis Barrie of respiratory failure on March 9th. and the Contemporary Art Center) - of the culture war in the arts. In this later sec­ On that same May day when New Yorkers were coping with Mapplethorpe's tion, I examine how the art world discusses the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and death, politicians in Washington, DC were coping with the boundaries of art and I demonstrate that this discourse has changed as a result of specific events in the the purposes of public funding for the arts in a debate that would later migrate controversy. The consequences of this change are shown to have positive demo­ into an attack on Mapplethorpe's photographs. At the time, discussion centered cratic effects, such as broadening participation in the arts for counter-hegemonic on Andres Serrano's photograph Piss Christ, which depicts a crucifix surrounded groups and providing certain shared assumptions (like the importance of content) by a yellowish liquid that seems ostensibly to be urine. Piss Christ had benefited that provide for reasoned, public square debate about the arts. from, ami received exhibition due to, an award program from the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in North Carolina - an award program that was supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Senator CULTURE WARS Alphonse D' Amato declared that Serrano's photograph was a, '"deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity" (quoted in the introduction to Buchwalter, 1992, The term "culture war" can have both a general and a specific meaning. The general p. 3). Teamed with Senator Jesse Helms, D' Amato proceeded to lead a campaign meaning refers to any divide within a society that occurs over a specific issue or against the NEA, and this campaign gained stearn when Helms learned that NEA cultural trend. Such a divide would be indicated by significant media attention, an lllonies had helped to funo a Mapplethorpe retrospective at the Institute of Con­ outpouring of public sentiment, and one or more institutional events such as the temporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia. That exhibit included 175 of Mapplethorpe's passing of a law, a court trial, a policy change in an educational institution, or the photographs, some of which depict activity that is widely described by viewers election of a political official. and critics with terms such as homoerotic or sadomasochistic (SIM). Additionally, The specific use of "culture war" refers to a period in American history when two were accused of representing child pornography. It is important to note that the sort of divides described above were particularly.numerous and prominent. other interpretations of these images are possible, and many have been offered by This period is roughly the years 1987-1993, and it was marked by battles over the art world both before and since the controversy. Nevertheless, what followed abortion, funding for the arts, gay rights, and educational curricula, among others. has been termed the "culture wars of the arts" (Bolton, 1992), a period of intense The term gained particular valence at this time, as participants in these battles debate abollt what counts as art, about the boundary between art and obscenity, attempted to make sense of their experiences. and about the role of government funding for the arts. That conflict extended The conflicts that occurred indicated a number of different points of cleavage beyond the politics of Washington and reached its zenith in Cincinnati, where within American society - between religious and secular ideals, between the local police arrested a curator who had brought the Mapplethorpe retrospective to left and the right, between science and culture - and a number of different ~ 82 DUSTIN KIDD Sexual Politics in the Defense ofArt 83 interpretations of constitutional rights. The largest overview of these conflicts events suggest about the culture wars thesis, and about social science approaches is given in James D. Hunter's ClIltllre H'tlrs: The Struggle to Define America to ideas, morals, and values? In this paper, I present a narrative about the critiques ( IYl) I). Emphasizing that these individual battles are part of a much larger war and defenses of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography - a narrative that opens. the between orthodox and progressive perspectives - perspectives that not only door for refinements of the culture wars thesis. divide institutions against other institutions, but also within themselves - Hunter Critiques of a different nature have already been offered against Hunter's maps out the terrain of this culture wars period by pointing to debates about the claims. These criticisms divide into two different forms. First, some work has definition of family, control of educational cUlTicula, the content and ti.mding of addressed the claim of opinion polarization that is suggested in the culture wars popular culture and of art, domination of the court system, and the politics of thesis. These articles analyze public opinion surveys about such issues as diversity, elections. In every sphere of debate, he says, a traditional- or orthodox - view of cultural authority, and the arts, and they find that public opinion has little of the' the world butts heads with a progressive ideology. Wliting in the midst of these polarization that Hunter seems to suggest (DiMaggio & Bryson, 1995; DiMaggio battles, Hunter raised doubts that an end was in sight: et aI., 1996; DiMaggio & Pettit, 1998; Evans et aI., 2001). They find, instead, a clustering of opinio'ns in the middle, not the extremes, of the political spectrum. A principled pluralism anu a principled toleration is what common life .in contemporary America sllOulu be about. BlI[ this is only possible if all cOlHenuers, however much they disagree with "The public's attitudes on most social issues gravitate to the center; most people each other on principle, do not kill each other over these uifferences, uo not desecrate what derive their attitudes on most issues from experience or specific considerations, the uther holds sublime, and uo not eschew principled discourse with the other. In the enu, rather than broad ideological postures; and most social attitudes - abortion being the possibility that public discourse could accommodate to these conditions, adopt these civic the great exception - actually became less rather than more polarized during the practices, llr cume to any kinu llf common understanding might be unrealistic (Hunter, 1991, last quarter of the 20th century" (DiMaggio & Bryson, 1995, p. 3). To the extent p.325) that Hunter's thesis relies on a claim about opinion polarization - and I think it is While many agree that the culture wars period is over in terms of highly publicized limited - these reports isolate that claim to a small number of issues, not the breadth large-scale cultural conflict, there is not yet a theory about how it passed, which is of cultural debate.
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