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- LETTERS, Page 6Photographs by Mapplethorpe
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- I am not sure that any art exhibit should be funded with
- federal money, considering the homeless in the U.S. Robert
- Mapplethorpe's photographic show was certainly not deserving of our
- tax dollars (NATION, July 3). Some of his work is very good, but
- much of his "art" is sickening and without redeeming value.
-
- Lynne Klein
- Pine Lake, Ga.
-
- Mapplethorpe was a national treasure. His pictures are rightly
- included in the world's best photography collections. No one can
- tell someone else what is or isn't art. What I find great in a
- Mapplethorpe photo is not the same thing someone else may feel. Art
- is personal. As you view it, you battle within yourself the issues
- of right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad. You thrash
- these things out alone.
-
- Jay Gibson
- New York City
-
- The society that would consider images of children in erotic
- poses or one man urinating into another man's mouth to be works of
- art is a sad one. As Edmund Burke said, "Never, no never, did
- Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another." I have no doubt that
- Mapplethorpe truly was an artist. But his sexual perversions were
- his own and they do not belong in an exhibit funded by my taxes.
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- Jean E. Williams
- Royal Oak, Mich.