Subjectivity

I've been meaning to check out a photography exhibition at a museum nearby. I was interested because they said the photos were all polaroids and I was wondering how creative you could get with polaroids. Turns out, not very. It was a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition. I hadn't heard of him before but apparently he's pretty well known in the field of photography. He was a painter who turned to photography. He bought a polaroid camera to capture images that he would later paint, but he was so fascinated by the medium that after dabbling in it for a few years he turned to it completely. The exhibition was of the polaroids he took in that interim period. He was bisexual and there's a strong homoerotic current running through all his work. The photographs when they first came out were scandalous and much of his fame (and notoriety) derives from that. I was wondering how large a role sensationalism plays when it comes to artists. If many of his photographs weren't of such a sexual nature, would he have been as famous?

A friend of mine was dissing the Oscars the other day. He claimed that they were too liberal. His contention was that Sean Penn didn't get an Oscar for brilliant acting. He got it for really good acting in a film about gay rights. He's probably right, but if you think about it, the Academy is based in California, which is about as left wing as you can get. So it's natural that people feel strongly about films that have liberal themes. And naturally, people are going to be moved by films about issues they feel strongly about. His claim was that as judges they should be neutral. But when it comes to art, can you really be objective? I don't think so.

So while Mapplethorpe's photography is really good, perhaps it's okay to elevate him to greatness simply because he was bold enough to portray homosexuality at a time when no one else dared to.