The justification of one gallery for refusing a piece on AIDS was that it was going to be in public space and not in gallery space. Aesthetic freedom means galleries become the prison houses of expression, distorting the expressions itself. A further flip-side of the system appears as 2 Live Crew uses their repression to sell albums containing songs glorifying rape and attacks on women. Just as pornography is sold along with the repression of sexuality or Andrew Dice Clay uses public boycott threats to sell his movie and his miserable act. Though it is the dream of every liberal, any reform of stereotypes is impossible.
Black homosexuals are many degrees removed from the television's image of normalcy.
But this challenge is still a dialogue with power. The heights of artistic achievement hide the depths of advertising banality just as the heights of scientific insight hide horrors like Chernobyl. Every artistic proprietor shamelessly plays to the mainstream. It is no secret that most successful artists, of any medium including photography, support themselves via sales to advertising agencies or design shops. Maplethorp, as a classically oriented photographer, preserves all the artistic illusions that incidentally but necessarily support homophobia.