In a weird bit of synchronicity, I received a notice for a March 29 Metropolitan Museum lecture on “What is Too Taboo in Contemporary Art?” the same day that my email brought me an invitation to tonight’s opening of a new exhibit at Los Angeles’ Antebellum Gallery that is bringing together the work of a large group of iconoclastic (and controversial) artists including Robert Mapplethorpe (left), Joel-Peter Witkin, Steven Meisel and the great Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.
An old New York City pal of mine, Adam Kozik — who has been making a name for himself in Chicago as a photographer over the past several years — is part of the show, so I wish I was one of those people with the means and the free time to jet around the country, attending cutting-edge art events.
Like Mapplethorpe and Witkin, Kozik has been out there on the edge finding beauty in the most unexpected places and subjects — including areas that we might not want to venture into ourselves.
Kozik’s growing portfolio features everything from flowers to faces to architectural studies, but the work in the L.A. show falls into that sexually explicit area that some people term “erotica” and others dismiss as porn.
It’s fascinating to me that the roadblocks faced by Mapplethorpe and Pasolini in the 20th century are still in place for adventurous contemporary artists who would like to move into commercial galleries and theaters.
These artists were and are recorders of the culture around them as well as aesthetes — what they’ve seen is what they explore in the art, so there is a journalistic/documentary aspect to the photos, paintings and films that shouldn’t be underestimated. Mapplethorpe’s work as a documenter of the New York underground of the 1970s and ’80s has become a part of that city’s historical record.
In a recent email, Kozik asked, “Why does everything have to be…happy art?” and it’s a key question of our time, whether you’re talking about movies like “There Will Be Blood” or art exhibits that take us to the darker side of contemporary culture.
