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Witkin, like a perfect '80s persona-star, never drops the mask of Serious Diremaster, never lets on whether he is giggling at how he has been able to peddle a titillating rubberneck image as "high art" via his considerable talent. But he became king of his artistic niche: those who wholeheartedly embraced body modification and other outlaw alterations of kinkiness that the late '80s and early '90s wrought on the human body. All the kids with five pounds of metal on their lips and eyebrows who've stuck their dicks in dirty animals of the night to find that cool, tar-colored "truth" will always put a Witkin on their Web site, now and forever, because they don't drop their masks, either.

For all of his nonstop posturing, at odd blasts in the Witkin collection there are simpler pieces that I feel actually pull off his higher intentions better than the more sensational, Rococo works.

"Baccante," a photo of a woman from the back, leaning, with one shriveled arm and one large arm, next to a distorted skull, asks the viewer whether deformity is only a question of perspective: Is her arm shriveled, or is it just photographically distant? Like cubist works and those of Pablo Picasso, Witkin's simpler images have less a feeling of deformity than of an illumination of the non-omniscient gaze of the viewer: You don't see all sides, you can't see everything, so don't judge.

Much of his work, however, despite his darkly fertile imagination and masterful printing process, can be labeled a fairly straightforward freak show, with Witkin utilizing little more than a mask and the nudity of the abnormal subject as a means of transporting his lofty message -- a message all too easily inferred as purely prurient.

The work is beautiful enough to be "real art," but it is still an intellectually camouflaged, carny peep show of the most debased and obvious water. You can put as many flowery wreaths and as much gorgeous photo technique as you want around a dead baby, and it will be art, yes, but it is still a dead baby. It is still a sideshow for the morbidly curious, regardless of how much Witkin may drone on about the deeply religious quality of his work.

In my angrier years I thought Witkin's photographs were a great metaphor for everything, especially Hollywood: "Look, at first sight, it is a sumptuous banquet, an abundant horn of plenty. Look closer, it is in reality a human arm, being eaten by a one-legged dog, etc."

Now I say Joel-Peter Witkin's photographs are pretty, a visually avant-garde and "hep" take on the standard Pottery Barn timelessness, a good post-punk twist on shabby chic. Yes, a Witkin would look perfect on my wall right over my zucchini-green velvet love seat. Ooh! Daring.

I've always liked his photographs; I like to look at them, the same way I used to like to look at the RESearch "Freaks" book, or read the National Enquirer or listen to Bauhaus. Now, however, like these other comestibles, they have become dated. Witkin has sifted down into my consciousness as being essentially the Anne Rice of photography, certainly deserving of his place on the shelf with all of the other fine staples of Goth-style shock-rock -- Nine Inch Nails, Michael Gira and the Swans, all that nasty Baudelaire yadda yadda, black-clad ultra-serious teenaged Todesangst.

Ultimately, all that careful work just looks trivial to me, silly, lowbrow and campy, because of the hard-headed perversion of the subject matter. I laugh at Witkin pictures the same way I laugh at pictures of my former self in all that eyeliner I used to wear and those pointy "Cure" boots with the skull buckles.

We all need our fright-wig period, but only the most fearful artists feel such a heavy, pounding need to express adolescent, in-your-face ideas about life, death, mortality and culture for the entirety of their careers. The artists I respect get more irreverent with age while, at the same time, they humanize; they lighten up, they drop the old mask, they actually start to care about things more and open up a little, laughing about things they used to take to heart as deathly serious. They evolve -- for better or worse.

While '80s direness icons like Diamanda Galas and Henry Rollins have lightened up and are even capable of making fun of their old, dark disciplines of persona, Witkin is still cranking out big black books of self-important horror with titles like "Harm's Way: Lust & Madness, Murder & Mayhem." The enigma wears thin after a while; the mechanical Head of Fire becomes transparent. If the nerdy little wizard in the booth is able to get over himself and wave hello, you realize he isn't such a bad guy after all.

It's too much work, too much double talk, to try to art up the ruse any harder, past a certain point -- to try to ascribe too much meaning to it all. Call it a good blast of horror fiction. It's more fun that way.

Oh, Joel-Peter, take your black cape off and stop scowling at the picture window. Come in and eat Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the family.
salon.com | May 9, 2000

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