Remember When?

Remember when you were a senior in high school? If you went to an institution of learning and completed the 12th grade then you probably remember doing your senior research paper. After four years of college, you realize that this was the worst educational paper you've ever written, but at the time it was an undertaking the likes of which you had never encountered before. I wouldn't bring this up except for the fact that I heard some of my senior students freaking out today about their research papers and how they only had two weeks left to iron out all the wrinkles on them. It got me thinking about my senior research paper, this is a paper I will never forget because I had the single greatest research paper topic of all time - Pornography and Art: Which is Which?

I wish I would have saved it because I did spend a lot of time researching it and it would be fun to go back and read such rubbish, but, alas, I was a dumb kid with a serious case of senioritis and when my friends and I got the papers back we promptly went on a drunken campout and used them as kindling to start the fire.

Another reason I wish I would have saved it is because if I had that I wouldn't have to go to the internet right now to find out all the names of the artists that I knew when I wrote the paper. I do remember Andres Serrano and his photograph of a man nailed to a crucifix and dumped into a tank of unrine entitled "Piss Christ." (Pictured to the left) I remember Robert Maplethorpe, and his numerous shoots for Rolling Stone which toed the line, including one of the Smythes who's originals sold for over $500,000 at Southeby's in the late '90's. There was another artist and you'll have to forgive me right now, because I do have to go to the net for him (insert 2 minute research break here), his name is Chris Ofili, and he had a piece of art in the travelling exhibit "Sensation."

His painting created so much controversy that before the exhibit could open in New York the former Mayor Giuliani shut it down. The painting was entitled "Holy Virgin Mary" (below) and included a portrait of the Holy Mother smeared with elephant dung and surrounded with close up pictures of female genitalia. Now, some of you are screaming protest, some of you are screaming art, but there's one thing you need to know before you scream in protest. Mr. Ofili is a British born artist who paints in an African style. In certain African cultures elephant dung is rubbed on the women to make them more fertile, therefore, the elephant dung on Mary is meant to symbolize fertility. The close ups of vaginas are set in a pattern that are reminiscent of many paintings of the Virgin Mother in the same way that cherubs and seraphim are placed, in order to symbolize the holiness of her conception. It's at this point in time where the Hater would ramble off some post-modern thinker that says by including these pictures Ofili has effectively de-sexualized himself and the subject of the painting bo doing some round and round, herky-jerky voodoo, or something like that, but I digress.

I learned a lot about Maplethorpe and Ofili in high school and then about three years later I was watching HBO and saw some nudity, so, of course I stopped. When I realized what I was watching, however, I was mesmorized. It was a documentary about a photographer named Spencer Tunick. Spencer Tunick is a man who specializes in making art focussing on the chaos and mass-confusion of human life. He shoots totally in public places and totally with nude models. But here's the catch, he doesn't just shoot one or two people at a time (well, sometimes he does) most of the time, he shoots hundreds. That's right, hundreds of people who have seen his art and want to model for him completely nude and in public. In the documentary there was a story of a woman who lived in Harlem and had recently been raped, she heard about Tunick's shoot in New York and thought it might be theraputic to join in. There is an insanely beautiful shot of this woman (who is African-American) holding hands with a white woman. The picture is so intense and yet calming that it almost makes you cry. Tunick's real genius, as stated before, however, is in shooting large numbers of people. He positions them in ways that really bring forth the chaos of modern life. Some of the pictures that I saw in that movie have literally haunted me to this very day. Pictures that look like the apocalypse has just, happened, and it's all real. These people have seen that maybe, just maybe they can be part of changing the world through Spencer Tunick's vision. And hopefully, they can.