Cthulu on Speed Dial

[mallorys_camera]

He often did work that shocked me, Patti Smith wrote of Robert Mapplethorpe’s most famous photographs.

You know the ones she’s talking about. The guy pissing into somebody’s mouth. The whip handle shoved up an ass. Male genitals caught in elaborate nooses.

Elsewhere she describes her reaction as “squeamish.”

I’m so glad she wrote that!

I have the same reaction. I was kind of ashamed of it. How uncool am I? I thought. But Patti Smith is the last word in what’s cool and what’s uncool, no?

Thing is if you place one of Mapplethorpe’s floral portraits next to one of the pictures of a black guy hammering nails into his dick, they are essentially the same photograph. The use of light and dark is exactly the same, the formality of the composition, even the pornographic subject matter – because really, what are flower petals except sexual fetishes for bumblebees?

Intellectually, I’m cool with that.

But when I look at his pornography, it nauseates me. I mean that literally: I want to vomit.

It’s not a generational thing. Mapplethorpe and I are both Boomers, we shelter under the same symbolism of economics, current events and pop culture.

It’s not a judgmental thing either. Honestly, I want to like them.

Corny, I know, but what I feel is that they’re decadent in some sense that’s a gateway into pure evil. Of course, I’m not sure that evil even exists outside of bad acid trips and the prose of Danielle Steel. But even though Hannah Arendt’s riff on the banality of evil has come to monopolize most contemporary discourse on morality, we can’t forget evil’s more ceremonial aspects either. Cthulu on speed dial: Hey, big fella. Want to come up from the subterranean nether worlds and grab some lunch?

We were both praying for his soul, Smith writes early in the book, he to sell it and I to save it.

###

Just Kids also made me wish I had more of an eye. My artistic instincts, such as they be, are so exclusively channeled into words that often I feel like an idiot savant. I read about Robert’s decorating schemes, his precise vision for the rabbit warrens he inhabits with Patti Smith, and I look around at the cement bungalow – still mostly empty of furniture and artifacts because why should I invest in new furniture and artifacts when I have two full storerooms filled with perfectly good furniture and artifacts in Monterey?

That was a rhetorical question, of course.

Sometimes I make art. Not particularly good art.

Day before yesterday I cruised two local crafts stores because I wanted to make a folk art kind of box as a birthday gift for Max. I was appalled at the prices – part of the charm of Patti and Robert’s craft projects is that they were all done with found objects; you had to be porous walking around, always on the look out because art cannot be compartmentalized into one sector of your life, it’s all around you waiting for you to see it.

Else?

I’m kinda lonely.

I admire the pickup line Patti Smith used on Sam Sheppard: Wanna walk down to the deli and grab some coffee? You just don’t make friends that simply anymore. Now it’s this kind of ritualized dance done mostly over the Internet, and it’s tedious and repetitive. I feel the person I was in my 20s struggling to get loose of this middle-aged carapace, the person I was before I had children – she's the person who cares about art. Me? I’m just as happy to watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and eat Doritos.

Comments

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

I'd love to grab some Doritos and watch TV with you, but can we change the channel to something else? :)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Heh. Are you having an Oscar party? I used to host one every year in CA. I even made a plastic mold and awarded chocolate Oscars to my guests! I so wish I knew somebody here who was having an Oscar party and would invite me.

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid we inadvertently decided to have a Key West themed dinner party the night of the Oscars. I'm not sure whether anyone will stay and watch the Oscars or whether they'll all go home early and watch. Our TV is not well situated for more than a few people to watch it. You're welcome to come to dinner that night!

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

I'm squeamish too, and I have the same reaction to Mapplethorpe's work. I'm pretty sure that's what Mapplethorpe intends. If I were an artist (of any sort), I'd prefer that people rant against my work than ignore it.

Evil exists. I don't know enough about Mapplethorpe himself to judge whether he's inviting us to fall in or merely contemplate. Whichever, it's inevitable that some folks will do the other.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I think partly Mapplethorpe did the sex shots to be confrontational. But I also think the meta message is that there really isn't any difference between the shots of the flowers and the sex shots, that aesthetics in the ultimate sense is a learned preference.

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

I love Mapplethorpe. Even the photos of stuff that I'm not much into. And I have his flowers book. It's full of tissue paper snowflakes I cut a million years ago. And that stuff's not evil any more than gendered clothing or behavior is - there may be power imbalances or horrible history attached to certain acts or signifiers, but there is a difference between reenacting and reclaiming symbols and actually harming or oppressing people. Still, your feelings are your feelings, and you sure as hell don't need to like stuff that you hate, even if it has the crispest lighting and the most formal structure.

This reminds me of something. For a while my mom was more or less a kept woman, a bored and unfulfilled housekeeper. I visited her and she told me about having been horrified to have seen (at a women's music festival) a woman leading her girlfriend around on a leash. And I said, "Mom, the historical implications of you simpering around in an apron while _____ says, 'Suzy, my toast isn't done enough' appall me way more than two women having weird consensual fun with a dog collar." My mom's a champ. She totally got it.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally think the fact that I react to Mapplethorpe's work the way that I do bespeaks some deficiency in me. Like I said, I get it on an intellectual level.

Have you read the Patti Smith book?

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

Nope. I don't know much about her, other than that I like her music and admire the way she's become an iconic rock musician without banking hard on her looks in the way many other women would. I know she and Robert were waif roommates. That's about it. I'll look for it next time I'm between books.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

There's a lot about Mapplethorpe's artistic process in the book, the evolution of his vision. And it's a sweet book, and well written. I highly recommend it.

[hotelsamurai.livejournal.com]

Flowers = plant genitalia. No joke.

I have a squeamish reaction to some art - the films of Michael Haneke (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808279/) come to mind - but it is a particular kind of discomfort that I experience as aesthetic pleasure. An acquired taste, maybe, but there is nothing sweeter.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Don't know the films of Michael Haneke. I have physical reactions to things that bypass the brain -- when I like something, I get goosebumps; when I feel a strong aversion towards something, I get physically nauseated.

[hotelsamurai.livejournal.com]

Haneke's not for everybody. I can't really blame the people who thoroughly hate him. Even I find the violence disturbing, and I'm thoroughly desensitized. I enjoy not the violence as such, but the disturbance.

[chezsci.livejournal.com]

I like to keep an eye on evil - that's why I watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Lisa' dog Giggy is actually Cerberus, Guardian of Hades.

I'd forgotten about Patti Smith and Sam Sheppard. The Marlboro man with a brain - like Tom McGuane. I think that's why picked up Sheppard's work to begin with...the Patti Smith Stamp of Cool Approval. That and a girl I was macking on at the time liked his plays.

I have the same ambivalence about Mapplethorpe that most people seem to have. Flowers as genitalia? My first thought upon seeing Robert M.'s was that O'Keefe did a better, more subdued job of it and that Mappelthorpe was always bashing you over the head. Being subtle wasn't his thing. I get the same feeling from Gaspar Noe's films, cringe, but I can't stop watching. Mapplethorpe didn't distinguish between his art and his fetish(s).

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

My X-husband used to say that the reason 9/11 took place was because Osama bin Laden knew that some day, the Real Housewives franchises would be made.

Have you read the Patti Smith book? It's a fast read. Biggest Patti Smith romantic mismatch waas Smith and some guy from the (gulp) Blue Oyster Cult.

Mapplethorpe didn't distinguish between his art and his fetish(s).

Very true. But I think in some sense, that's what all art that's not made for strictly commercial purposes does, no? A guided tour through the inner landscape of the painter/writer/musician's obsessions.

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

I do not even **want** to like his stuff. To me, it is NOT art. I call it filth.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I call it filth.

Tastes are tastes. :-)

But I'd have to call Mapplethorpe's work "art" even though it revolts me. Yes, higher production values. :-) But also... there's a unity of vision there which you don't find in straight porn.

[john-xxx.livejournal.com]

Electric Patti gave me JUST KIDS and I loved the book, mostly for the feeling of a lost place and time it conjured up.

Mapplethorpe was a good photographer who knew how to get good exposure, both in the photos themselves and FOR himself.

His homo-erotic stuff did nothing for me, however.

Still. It's fun to imagine young Patty and young Robert, being them.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Still. It's fun to imagine young Patty and young Robert, being them.

Isn't it though? I wish I had friendships like that.

[john-xxx.livejournal.com]

It's not too late for friendships like that, though for some reason it seems more difficult to form any kind of strong friendship after, say, 45...not sure why, but this is a topic of endless discussion with my Spousal Unit.

What is it? People have all the friends they need? They're too lazy to make an effort? Their kids become the center of their world (and then, their grandkids?) Or, worse, their spouse becomes the center of their world?

We just can't figure it out.

Good, strong friendships are invaluable. But fewer and fewer people seem interested in having them.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

...for some reason it seems more difficult to form any kind of strong friendship after, say, 45...

I've noticed the same thing. I have no idea why that is. I suppose part of it is that the metaphoric context for close friendship is either road trips or being the only two strangers at the party, and as you get older you find yourself in those situations less and less.