There is a point here that comes up so frequently, and just as frequently bypasses the truth and leaves us with overall fuzzy thinking that I think it is time to just look at it plainly. It affects the whole direction of the dialogue. As I recall, Kramer said that the appeal of some 19th century art was in such prurient, at least latent, content as pedophilia and necrophilia. Is the content there or not? I would say that in a picture of a naked little girl of 7 to 9 years old, with visible overtones of budding sexuality, that is clearly the pedophile's object of desire. Equally, if sensuality is given to a corpse, the necrophile's object is there also. We can could go on and on about the artist's motives, (OH, but he was such a good and devout man . . .), and I think that is a waste of time, and reminds me of my son being caught doing the very think he was forbidden to do and saying that he really wasn't doing that thing because he wasn't thinking the same thing.
But are we going to say that since we already assume Caravaggio is ok, no matter what he painted, the it is ok to paint a pedophilic painting? I am not going to lend my support to that. Let's not play games around this. We are either for or against these things. If Ganymedes are pedophilic, and that is what the myth is all about, then out goes Ganymede, for me. It doesn't matter how "beautifully painted."
Now if we are going to say that Kramer is being selective, that can get into endless and useless attacks and defenses, just like American politics. But to find out how selective or hypocritical he is would require reading a lot more of Kramer than anyone on this list that I have heard so far has ever been willing to do. And remember, people's thinking can change. Kramer is an arch conservative. He just has a long standing belief in abstrtaction as a valid art form and, especially, an American modern art form, one that goes right with 20th century civilization. History shows that, in fact, it did just that.
