Artist as Buffer

I've been thinking a lot about art that takes us to difficult places lately and trying to figure out what -- if anything -- is the artist's responsibility to the material, to the audience, to themselves? The material presented in exhibitions like Without Sanctuary or Robert Mapplethorpe's work or Andres Serrano's work takes us into territory that most people avoid. I wonder if some of the problem with presenting such material is that the artist doesn't find a way to bridge the audience into and out of the hard places they are taken -- so people just call the art terrible and stay away.

The framing to difficult material can present its own issues. I had problems with the framing essay by the collector of the Without Sanctuary postcards. First, I thought some of the metaphors -- collecting discarded tupperware, a kite caught in phone lines -- just weren't the right ones in comparison to the images that the viewer encounted. A lost kite implies loss of innocence and nostalgia to regain that loss and didn't seem the right choice as the viewer watched the image of a woman hung from a bridge. But, I understood the impulse. He was reaching for less threatening images as a way to make these horrific images approachable. (I did think his reference to hunting photographs was much more appropriate and did give the viewer an intellectual way to consider very visceral photographs). But are most attempts to make these kinds of bridges going to fail because it's just too hard? But then, the images are left in their silence to shock the reader -- like a terrible car accident that you drive up on as you round a bend in the road. Is that the way it has to be?

I recently read an essay in progress by a friend of mine, Geeta Kothari, whose work I really admire. The essay centered on her mother's death. Her mother flew to India -- her home country -- alone and died in a hospital there. Afterward, the family realized that she knew she was dying and went alone -- without letting anyone know how badly she was feeling or that she had refused treatment -- because she wanted to die in her home country. But, her choice left a terrible wake of shock and grief for her family. Geeta got a phone call that her mother was dead and then had to get on an airplane and fly halfway around the world. By the time she got there, her mother had been cremated and her ashes scattered over the Ghanges as is tradition. I found Geeta's essay to be very brave -- delving into issues with her family, with her relationship with her mother, with her failures as a daughter and her mother's failures as a mother, with the great anger at her mother for not letting the family say good-bye. I asked her how she got herself to a place where she could both get into and back out of such difficult material. She said that she used framing devices -- like information about the airport and about India, as well as memories from her childhood -- to make her feel safe enough to keep getting closer to the really tough stuff.

I wonder if that's part of the reason why "shocking" exhibitions are criticized so harshly. Is it the work -- or is it the fact that the artist doesn't consider that we humans are sensitive creatures and need to have some kind of pathway built into and out of tough material -- and know it beforehand -- to even want to consider going there with them. Should that be considered in reviewing the work? Does the artist who is working with graphic images of death and sexuality (for example) have a responsibility to guide their audiences into and out of this difficult material?