WouldntULike2Know - Jencks

Oddly enough, my last post was centered around the discussion of the controversial, postmodern artist, Robert Mapplethorpe. After reading Jencks article on Postmodern Poetics and the New Rules, I shall readdress Mapplethorpe through Jencks point of view. "Now, rules or cannons for production are seen as preconditions for creativity..." (Jencks, 281). Mapplethorpe received quite a large outcry, primarily from conservatives, when the public had learned that the NEA was using tax dollars to fund Mapplethorpe's disagreeable artwork.

"Inevitably art and architecture must represent this paradoxical view, the oxymoron of disharmonious harmony..." (282). In my last post, I discussed the conflict I observed in two of his questionable pieces involving children. Perhaps now, we could translate his "crude" artwork (as many would consider it to be so) as an oxymoron speaking against itself.

Which leads us to our final analysis of his works. Is this a photograph of a fist in a mans rectum? Or does it represent something more-- if we are able to get beyond its initial shock-- that which with we may not be familiar? "When several possible readings are presented simultaneously, it is left to the reader to supply the unifying text. This also entails frustration--the postmodern counterpart to the classical cannon of 'withheld gratification'. Both Stirling's, Salle's [and Mapplethorpe's] work is frustrating in the sense that it avoids a hierarchy of meanings. One has to look elsewhere to find a clearer expression of a unified view." (285).