The art under the lens of the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe subaltern knowledges: the X, Y and Z

• Grant number: 12/16034-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2012
• End date: October 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Larissa Maués Pelúcio Silva
• Grantee: Lucas Álvaro dos Santos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura, Artes e Comunicação (FAAC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research focuses on studying the X, Y, and Z photographs of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe under the lens of the subaltern knowledge (Queer Theory and Postcolonial Studies) on your relations with the knowledge’s-powers current in the time that they were created, including those that structure and orient the universe of the arts, conferring to the picture its power aesthetic-discursive. The study's object focuses on three photographs, one for each portfolio, being X portfolio, with sadomasochistic photographs, Y with flowers and still lifes and Z with artistic nude photos of Afro-american men. We think that the themes and photographs that later were being vilified and censored by conservative institutions, even within the artistic universe, are in dialogue with the sociocultural expectations of his time. We guide discussions of our research with some questions such as "which dialogues can we intuit and, thus, discuss among the photographs that compose the X, Y, and Z portfolios? Why was this art considered "outrageous and disgusting"? Why did not accept 'certain' aesthetics/discourses present in his photographs to the point of abjecting them? After all, is an art studied/analyzed under the lens of the subaltern knowledge? (AU)