The Perfect Moment

''The Perfect Moment'' was the most comprehensive retrospective of works by New York photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The show spanned twenty-five years of his career, featuring celebrity portraits, self-portraits, interracial figure studies, floral still lifes, homoerotic images, and collages. The exhibition, organized by Janet Kardon of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Philadelphia, opened in the winter of 1988 just months before Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS complications on March 9, 1989. On tour, in the summer of 1989, the exhibition became the centerpiece of a controversy concerning federal funding of the arts and censorship.

Exhibition

Background

''The Perfect Moment'' covered all aspects of the photographer's career from the late 1960s to 1988. The traveling exhibition had been scheduled to appear at five other museums in various regions of the country during the next year and a half. It included more than 150 images. Despite the controversial character of some of the photographs, critical response was enthusiastic and attendance was robust throughout the show's Philadelphia run (from December 1988 through January 1989).

''The Perfect Moment'' traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Again, it generated no unfavorable public or critical attention. In June 1989, after the cancellation of the exhibition by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., two and a half weeks before it was to open there, ''The Perfect Moment'' unexpectedly provoked national controversy and ICA became a key player in the congressional debate over what public funds should and should not fund. The issues of censorship and artistic freedom that the show raised occupied the forefront of the debates between conservatives and liberals during the Ronald Reagan era and in its aftermath. Members of the religious right, especially, criticized academics and artists for what they regarded as their indecent, subversive and blasphemous works.

Layout and works displayed

''The Perfect Moment'' grouped photos into three categories:
*Rigorously conceived portraits and figure studies;
*Dramatically lit flower arrangements in color, and in black and white;
*Photographs of gay sadomasochism (S&M) that left nothing to the imagination.

Robert Mapplethorpe's XYZ portfolios, explored three subjects: homosexual sadomasochism (X); flower still lifes (Y); and nude portraits of African American men (Z). The extremely graphic S&M photos from Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio were displayed in a separate, age-restricted area at each venue of the exhibition. The portfolios were displayed with a series of poems by poet and singer Patti Smith. The poems echo Mapplethorpe's X,Y,Z trope.

The images that sparked the most controversy include:
*Jim and Tom, Sausalito, 1977
*Man in a Polyester Suit, 1980
*Jesse McBride, 1976
*Rosie (Honey), 1976

Rosie, a black and white portrait of a very young girl crouched down on a bench outdoors with part of her dress lifted, exposing her genitals, generated controversy because of the subject's age and the issue of consent. This photograph was deemed child pornography by Mapplethorpe's detractors, and it is surprising that it was featured in the exhibition catalogue, considering that the printer had refused to print it for the Mapplethorpe retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1988. There was one other photograph of a naked child, "Jesse McBride" which also contributed to the controversy created by "Rosie".

A 55-minute videotape of a BBC
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