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Robert Mapplethorpe began taking photographs in 1970 with a Polaroid camera given to him by a friend. Nearly twenty years later, when Mapplethorpe died at the age of forty-two, he was considered one of the most important photographers of his t ....

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... Defining censorship When it rules on an ''indecent art'' case, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether not subsidizing an activity is censorship. The National Endowment for the Arts has been giving tax money to artists since the Johnson presidency. Some of its decisions have been controversial. For example, it subsidized an exhibit of menstrual blood, clothing made of condoms, and a depiction of Jesus Christ as a drug addict and sex object. In 1990, after the NEA helped fund Robert Mapplethorpe's ''homoerotic'' photos and Andrew Serrano's crucifix in a jar of urine, Congress took action. It passed a bill requiring the NEA to consider ...