Culture Wars: Morality, Obscenity and Censorship Flashcards
1
Q
Key Points
- Sexually explicit art
- Historical distinction between art and pornography
- Artistic merit and explicit imagery
- Concerns about the viewing
- Boundaries of art?
A
- What’s deemed to be representable, or not, why, and on what grounds?
- The moral and legal status of the body, particularly with sexually explicit art.
- The historical distinctions between art and pornography.
- What is ‘artistic merit’ and to what extent can it be used to justify the display of explicit imagery?
- Morality often underpins debates about the censorship of certain images (e.g. concern about the corrupting effects on the viewer).
- Censorship: provokes questions about the boundaries of the art (i.e. its function; how it is defined; importance of media; questions of freedom of speech; what falls inside and outside the parameters of ’art’; who decides).
2
Q
‘Helmut and Brooks’ (1978) by Mapplethorpe
- Description of the photograph
A
What? A black and white photograph of a fist up the ass.
3
Q
‘Jim and Tom’ (1978) by Mapplethorpe
- Description of the photograph
A
What? What? A black and white photograph of a male figure masturbating into a kneeling males face.
4
Q
Mapplethorpe’s Work
- Formal elements (merit)
- Medium
- The distinction between art and photography
- Offensive?
A
- What is ‘artistic merit’, and do Mapplethorpe’s photographs have it?
- Invites formalist engagement with his artwork (composition, lighting, staging) Medium of Mapplethorpe’s work (as photography) to the debates.
- Distinctions between art and pornography not as clear as might be thought (see Matthew Kieran): artists have engaged historically in production of pornographic images.Importance of gallery context in defining something as ‘art’ (e.g. Seedbed – masturbation in public)
- Encasing something in ‘art’ runs the risk of overlooking that it is sexually explicit?
- Issues of funding for sexually explicit or offensive art (NEA in US)
