Mapplethorpe Foundation Blocks Roy Cohn Portrait For Biography

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation declined to authorize the use of a 1981 portrait of New York lawyer Roy M. Cohn for the cover of a forthcoming biography, citing concerns about its association with the sitting US president, according to the New York Times. The book, titled American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, reportedly characterizes President Trump negatively.

The foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, oversees Mapplethorpe's estate and collection. Its reported decision to deny licensing for the image, simply titled Roy Cohn, stems from concerns that its use on the book's cover could be interpreted as a political act. The artist established his eponymous foundation shortly before his death“to protect his work, to advance his creative vision and to promote the causes he cared about,” as stated on its website.

According to the Times,“the foundation's board feared that Mr. Trump could retaliate, perhaps by threatening its nonprofit tax status,” if he objected to his portrayal in the book. The book's co-author, Kai Bird, expressed his dismay to the Times, stating,“It's astonishing that these people are being so cowed, so easily.” The Mapplethorpe Foundation declined to comment to the Times regarding Bird's remarks.

The portrait captures Cohn's direct stare and distinctive scar-split nose against a black backdrop, a characteristic of Mapplethorpe's later work. At the time of its creation, Cohn was being interviewed for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, and writer Steven M.L. Aronson persuaded him to pose for Mapplethorpe. Cohn was then a prominent New York figure, representing mobsters, moguls, and media barons, including then-real estate developer and protégé Donald Trump. While Mapplethorpe was known for photographing New York's S&M scene in the 1970s, notably in his“X Portfolio” ( 1978 ), he began focusing on high-profile celebrities, collectors, and artists in the early 1980s. Despite his public anti-gay stance, Cohn was privately closeted. Both Cohn and Mapplethorpe died from AIDS-related complications before the end of the 1980s. A print of the photograph was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust in 2011, as a gift from the Mapplethorpe foundation.

The artist's legacy includes controversy surrounding censorship of his work. In 1989, months after his death, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., canceled a traveling retrospective due to the inclusion of the“X Portfolio.” This decision, prompted by conservative politicians' objections to a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the exhibition, placed Mapplethorpe at the center of the era's culture wars.

Suzanne Nossel, former chief executive of the free expression group PEN America, told the Times regarding the foundation's recent decision,“The idea that a photograph of a dead mobster lawyer could somehow qualify as political activity, even under the Trump administration, is hard to fathom. And yet, we're in an environment where no one feels they can rule anything out.”

Source: ARTnews

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