After years of delays and rejections (due more to the personal reluctance of the artist than the negative of institutions) the polemic work of Larry Clark receives its first retrospective in America. The vulnerability and mystery of the adolescence and its alienation of adults are the key subjects of his production from “Tulsa” (1971) to “punk Picasso” (2003).
Clark was a pioneer in the unveiling of the other side of American youth: suburban ennui, drugs, senseless sex, guns and violence, self-destruction and death; creating besides a new style of photography alien to aesthetics and focused in the subject (and shocking those who thought drugs, guns and misery were exclusive of a certain race or races, only to see their own kids fall).
The choice of the impossible world of teenagers as the sole topic of his work conditions the way of seeing, the reaction, reception and message. The artist speaks of didactics and moral, his critics (in America) accuse him of perversity and exploitation. The art of Larry Clark provokes confusion and a feeling of loss: the youngsters portrayed do not know where they go; the portraying artist dedicates his life to decipher the adolescence, but will never succeed; the spectator that looks at the portraits and the artist gets lost in a myriad of feelings, all negative: rejection, disgust, disapproval, inability to understand.
The discomfort of Larry Clark is due to the brutal presence of juvenile violence and sex and also the being the artist a protagonist of his own work, which disturbs the looking. Clark recalls (in images and words) his sexual, criminal and hallucinogen experiences, and the viewer struggles between the rejection of such an ego show (the inanity of the homemade videos of his teenage girlfriend in “punk Picasso”) and the condemnation of his acts (rape, attempted murder).
Whatever the reaction, indifference is not a possible answer to these images.
The “classic” work of Larry Clark (“Tulsa” and “Teenage Lust”) is honest and real, innovative and even beautiful. Afterwards, in his videos and collages of the 90´s, his intentions and results are less clear and satisfactory. “Tulsa”, his great masterpiece, is a powerful shadow that shrinks the rest of the exhibition.
Worth noting is that Clarks’ long-awaited retrospective has not stirred any kind of negative feelings or Mapplethorpe-style polemics from visitors or city officials (unlike in Brooklyn 1999, Giuliani and “Sensation” seeking some publicity), as if the not-so-yore times of censorship and religious fanaticism were over, in progressive New York City and weird America.
Nevertheless, the art of Larry Clark fits better in a cabinet size than this big retrospective he has gotten, but in one or the other the power of his images and the mystery of adolescence spark debate and doubt, symbol of a transcending artist.
(originally published in "Lapiz", May 2005, this version modified afterwards)
