In the art world, last fall felt like the mid-'80s.
Bowing to condemnation from conservative politicians and religious groups, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., removed David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire In My Belly from "Hide/Seek," its survey of gay and lesbian depictions in portraiture. The issue at hand: In his piece reacting to the AIDS epidemic and the loss of his partner, the artist included some 11 seconds of ants swarming on top of a crucifix.
This prompted the inevitable reaction: The Warhol Foundation, as well as other private benefactors, said they would no longer provide funding to the National Portrait Gallery or the Smithsonian writ large. Seems these debates spark every decade when provocative artists and social conservatives mix — Chris Ofili's elephant-dung Virgin Mary in 1999, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ in 1987, Robert Mapplethorpe just about whenever his work is shown.
Many of these names crop up in "Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art," something of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's official response to the Fire controversy. It brings together work addressing a spectrum of social issues through photography — feminism, race relations, gay activism and AIDS — but since its April opening, it hasn't made much of a peep. No large-scale boycotts, no sniping word wars in the media. A placard at the main entryway warns of the extreme nature of the images contained within, cautioning parents to view the work first before allowing their children to see it, but doing so, it is not immediately evident where this extremity lies.
Upon entering the gallery, a pair of Nan Goldin nudes are immediately visible on the opposite wall — one involving a male figure tied up in a dank bedroom. A strong opening stroke, but hardly worthy of a disclaimer. But wait — this exhibit is smartly curated, favoring photos that might not overtly take the offensive, that might seem abstract or innocuous on first glance, but leave a lingering discomfort the more time you spend with them.
Of the issues it aims to address, gay activism and AIDS get perhaps the largest showcase. A stretch of the back is dedicated to Wojnarowicz's Sex Series , a collection of photomontages rendered in haunting negative, juxtaposing large square stock photos of trains and buildings with small circular inset images (many depicting sex acts in detail). Some of these pieces don't draw a clear connection between, say, the cityscape and the man fellating his partner, but others make it painfully evident. Untitled (Train) matches a rail scene with free-associative insets of riot police at an ACT-UP protest, news clippings about a gay couple brutally attacked in Manhattan, and microscopic images of white blood cells depleted by HIV/AIDS. (Wojnarowicz himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1992.) For those who did not live through it, it can be difficult to comprehend how terrifying the epidemic truly was — but these images go a long way toward conveying that feeling.
Likewise, Peter Hujar's grainy 1970s shots of deserted New York City docks and the men who met there after dark is a powerful representation of how alienating and alone it was to be gay during this era. A group clad in Halloween costumes poses with open beer cans and exasperated faces in one image; in another, a lone male looks from his car with a pensive gaze. Hujar's studio work, hung nearby, shows male models delighting in their own nudity — one sucks his big toe with a quizzical face, another rides a zebra in a faux-dramatic pose. These images are playful and enjoyable, but the scenes that stick with you are the nighttime streets.
In the realm of race relations and racism, the exhibit showcases Serrano's Klansman (Great Titan of the Invisable Empire) . The imposing profile of a man in KKK regalia takes up almost an entire floor-to-ceiling pillar. It isn't overtly graphic or explicit by any stretch. It's actually kind of a beautiful portrait, were it possible to view the image with neutrality. But this isn't a possibility — and the fear struck by the menacing gaze of this actual Klansman (Serrano did not hire models for this series) is as palpable as the fear the artist is said to have found in his subjects, whom he discovered were largely poor, rural and timid.
Portraits by Carrie Mae Weems use placement of text alongside images to confront stereotypes. Black Woman with Chicken is a square image of, well, a black woman holding fried chicken, and her face seems to say she's not thrilled with being placed in this box. Images from Weems' Colored People series are informal portraits hand-dyed to play off colloquialisms for skin tones in the black community — Blue Black Boy (pictured) is an underwater tint, Golden Yella Girl is a sunburst, and you're left puzzling over what it means.
Feminism is the exhibit's stated topic that feels the most shortchanged; short of Barbara Kruger's Untitled (We are your circumstantial evidence) , a monumental Pop Art collage of fashion imagery, "Unsettled" shows photographers like Goldin and Zoe Leonard addressing women's issues at the same time as they address any number of other concerns — poverty, say, or drug addiction. The feminist movement here isn't tackled with the focus of its counterparts.
But while "Unsettled" studies intolerance and confrontation, the most fascinating battle line the exhibit reveals is wholly internal. A Mapplethorpe image on display comes from his controversial Black Book series, a stunning shot of the muscular back and buttocks of a model. In the exhibit notes, it points out that Weems was one of many voices calling Mapplethorpe out for objectifying black men through this work, and the further racist undertones it carried.
Even within the art world, it seems, there is misunderstanding, disunity and division.
"Unsettled" runs through summer 2011. For more info, visit philamuseum.org.
