"There are the obvious questions about Robert Mapplethorpe’s polarizing 1990 exhibit at the CAC, which, along with a more traditional retrospective, enveloped images of flowers, portraits of black men and S&M in three portfolios titled X, Y, and Z. How exactly did The Perfect Moment remold America’s perceptions of challenging art? Why did this happen in Cincinnati, and not in the handful of cities the exhibit was displayed in? Could this happen today? In a country shellshocked by terrorism, increasing racial unrest, a drug epidemic and countless systems that are failing us, does anyone even care enough about art to think so seriously about a single exhibit? But these inquiries cannot be answered so straightforwardly. Still, an ambitious symposium at the CAC, which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Perfect Moment, attempted to unpack what remains of Mapplethorpe and his momentous, posthumous and controversial show: his legacy, his persona, his mythology and his art."
Original Article: http://aeqai.com/main/2015/11/nsfw-notes-on-mapplethorpe-in-the-21st-century/