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An overflow crowd gathered at the West Hollywood City Council Chambers to hear about the history of Mapplethorpe’s controversial works as well as his place in our conversation about perfection and exploitation in art, which continues with a major retrospective on view now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The panel—which was moderated by author and Los Angeles County Museum on Fire arts writer William Poundstone and included two curators, a photography collector, and a painter and historian—acknowledged the importance to Mapplethorpe’s legacy the controversy that began in 1989. That summer, a traveling solo exhibit of his work drew the ire of conservative and religious groups, who termed the show’s homoerotic and sadomasochistic themes obscene and the photos pornographic. The controversy gained Mapplethorpe significant fame, but the panelists agreed that the ongoing interest in his work demonstrates a value far deeper than shock.

“At this point we’ve seen so much sexually based work it’s ceased to be shocking,” said Steve Reinstein, a longtime L.A.-based real estate developer and art collector who counts Mapplethorpe among his favorite artists. “I do like work that’s confrontational. I look for work that challenges me.”

Jonathan Weinberg, a painter, art historian, and author of Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art, agreed. “You have to sort of love him and be revolted by him,” Weinberg said of Mapplethorpe. “He’s constantly testing you with his work. That’s part of its power.”

The photography standards of the 1970s and 1980s held that photos document the real and the true. But Mapplethorpe sought the opposite. “‘Things are more beautiful in my pictures than in real life,’” is what Mapplethorpe seems to be saying, said Weinberg. “He takes things and he transforms them. He believes in the magic of art.”

Reinstein agreed: “It goes beyond perfection. What I see is an exaggerated beauty.”

Paul Martineau, who curated the Getty portion of the Mapplethorpe retrospective, noted that the artist’s quest for perfection extended beyond the human form. “He never photographed any wilted flowers,” Martineau said. “Once they started to droop, they were in the trash.”

Britt Salvesen, who curated the LACMA portion of the exhibition, suggested that the fact Mapplethorpe drew inspiration from pop artist Andy Warhol offered some insight into the photographer’s approach to his work. “I think he valued surfaces,” Salvesen said. “Maybe that was another thing he gleaned from Warhol and the way he talked about superficiality. In the pictures you see this attention to the surface.”

“Did that interest in perfection lead Mapplethorpe to exploit some of the people he photographed?”, wondered Poundstone. Mapplethorpe’s Black Book, for instance, is a series of idealized images of African-American men that has spurred some criticism.

Martineau described an interview with one of those men that he came upon while doing research for the exhibition. When asked what it was like to work for Mapplethorpe, the model recounted the photographer asking him how he would like to be pictured. When the model said he had always wanted to be on a pedestal, Mapplethorpe pulled out a plant stand and photographed him that way. “Look very carefully before making judgments about objectifying,” Martineau said.

Weinberg observed that over time, some of the images had taken on a different meaning—some of the men had subsequently died of AIDS, so the portraits had become a way to remember them.

In the question and answer period, an audience member asked if Mapplethorpe’s photographs of women, specifically musician Patti Smith and body building champion Lisa Lyon, bear any relevance in today’s world, where some voters are reported to be struggling with the concept of a woman as president.

Salvesen said Mapplethorpe deliberately included women in his subject matter, and was specifically interested in androgyny. “Lisa Lyon and Patti Smith are two very different manifestations of what he could see as androgynous,” she said.

Martineau’s response suggested a connection between past and present, specifically in his portrayal of Lyon: “She’s represented at her most powerful, a very independent and strong woman.”

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“I never tire of his images,” said Rebecca Morse, who curated Sultan’s first retrospective, now on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Some details are of the world as it stands and some are purposeful and adjusted by him. The combination of those two things creates an interesting tension. You’re rewarded by additional viewings.”

For instance, there’s “My Mother Posing for Me,” from a series published in 1984. The main focus of the photograph is nominally the woman standing stiffly in a lavender satin blouse and white polyester pants. But Sultan didn’t just frame his mother in the shot—his father is sitting in the room, too, just to the left. His father, however, is ignoring the photo shoot and doing his own thing—watching the Dodgers on TV.

There’s an element of voyeurism in Sultan’s photographs—they give you the feeling of gaining access to sights you’re not usually allowed to observe. His “Swimmers” series (taken in San Francisco) invites you to stare at people’s bodies under the pool’s surface as they learn how to swim. “The Valley” series takes you on the sets of pornographic movies, where Sultan snapped shots of an empty, dirty-looking mattress or a high-heeled woman in a cover-up, smoothing her hair between shots.

Sultan often achieved the intimacy of his work by spending a lot of time with his subjects, Morse said. The pictures he liked best of his parents, for instance, typically came at the end of a weekend spent hanging out with them. Sultan seemed to want to get his subjects to the point of practically forgetting that he was there.

The level of comfort between Sultan and his subjects is evident in Morse’s favorite photograph, “Reading in Bed.” Sultan’s mother isn’t looking at the camera here, and has her nose buried in a magazine. His dad has strewn papers haphazardly on the bed and floor. They’ve kicked the comforter down to a twisted heap at the foot of the bed. You get the sense that you’re not disturbing the two of them as you check out the trinkets on their side tables, the rococo sconces, and that fabulous paisley wallpaper.

“Larry Sultan: Here and Home” is on view through March 22, 2015 at LACMA.

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“Three rock concerts” was a reference to the existing architecture of LACMA, which had grown in fits and starts over the years. The original museum, which opened in 1965, was local architect William Pereira’s Southern Californian version of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center—three temples on a raised plaza. The second stage was a partial makeover by the New York firm Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, which in 1986 inserted a postmodern wing and roofed over part of the plaza. The third stage (1988) was a freestanding pavilion designed by the Oklahoma maverick Bruce Goff and completed after his death by Bart Prince.

Blogger Mark Berman calls Pereira’s original buildings “mid-century classics.” Typical maybe, but classics? The architecture is pretty banal, even by Lincoln Center’s low standards. Stage two is not much better—L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight called it “Hollywood Egyptian.” And stage three, with its two stone towers and fossil-like objects on the roof is, well, goofy by any standard.

Despite his hesitation, Piano relented and the first phase of his addition opened in 2008, the second phase two years later. The Piano addition struck me as heavy-handed, not his best work, and hardly the “good piece by a string quartet” he had promised. As for the “rock concert,” my first impression of the original museum was that it resembled an undistinguished shopping mall that had been enlarged over the years and then awkwardly converted into a cultural facility. But after sitting for a time at Ray’s and Stark Bar, the outdoor café on LACMA’s shaded plaza, I changed my mind.

Most art museums today resemble either palaces (if they are old), or upscale automobile showrooms (if they are new). This was neither. Groups of excited children played on the plaza, and clusters of teenagers wandered in off Wilshire Boulevard. The familiar mall-like atmosphere made this an unintimidating space; it was definitely not the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it struck me that this vulgar (in the literal sense of the word) solution to an art museum succeeded in one important way. Because of its lack of pretension, this was a cheerful place in which people appeared decidedly at home.

A sense of place is an elusive quality, difficult to achieve, and not easy to maintain. It is the result not only of architectural forms but also of behavior, habit, and time. Learning to use what you have is as important as having the perfect building. That’s why it’s a shame to hear that LACMA has decided to wipe the slate clean and demolish all its older buildings, except the Goff pavilion. Why does Los Angeles, which has little enough history, feel the need to keep reinventing its surroundings?

It would be better to reconsider this wholesale demolition. Especially as the proposed replacement, designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, leaves much to be desired. It is a spreading building raised up on stilts; instead of a friendly plaza there is a dark and gloomy undercroft. The kidney shape is supposed to have something to do with the nearby La Brea Tar Pits, but it reminds me of a 1950s coffee table. Finished all in black, the proposed museum will be a somber presence among the palm trees on Wilshire Boulevard, as anomalous as a Calvinist preacher on a sunny Malibu beach. Or maybe it’s the quintessential Angeleno building? After all, replacing an aging faithful spouse with a younger more stylish trophy wife is an established Hollywood custom.

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My three-year-old son Ben is sometimes too much like me: hurried, fast-talking, fast-walking. The only time he slows down is when he spots a fountain. Words are my business, but I’m not sure how to explain the effect that moving water has on him. His body freezes and warms all at once at the sight. All his toddler id leaves him.

Before he was born, my wife and I rented an apartment a block south of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the Miracle Mile. We didn’t know the neighborhood well, but we knew it was four blocks from her office. Maybe it would make life easier. It didn’t. Our business, journalism, was already in the process of melting down, and staying in the game was a struggle. My wife was on call seven days a week and covering a couple of beats, even while breastfeeding. I was juggling a dozen different assignments and a book.

When Ben was born, we couldn’t slow down or take much time off. But we always made time for walks with him. LACMA was close, so we bought a membership and wandered around.

Ben would sometimes cry in the galleries, which didn’t make the security guards happy. But he always was perfectly behaved when we wandered around to the strange and spectacular fountain next to the Leo T. Bing Theater, on the southeast corner of the museum property. Its four spraying jets of water hit and miss three whirligig sculptures as they speed up and slow down their rotations, seemingly at random.

The fountain is an artwork called “Hello Girls,” by Alexander Calder. But our visits weren’t about art appreciation. They were about the hold the piece had on our child. We started to go every day we could, with Ben in the stroller. Ben’s first real word–“fan-ta”–was uttered at the edge of the water. By age two, he called it the Calder Fountain. When his new brother Tom arrived home shortly after Ben’s second birthday, Ben insisted that his first trip outside the apartment be to the fountain.

When Ben’s grandparents bought him a plastic tricycle, his legs were too short to touch the pedals. But he’d ride over to the fountain anyway, propelling the trike by pushing his feet against the ground, the same way Barney Rubble drove a car in The Flintstones. When we arrived too early, before the museum opened, Ben would charm the LACMA security guards into letting him sneak into the fountain space.

At the fountain, life seemed to fade away. We were almost always alone. And even though the fountain is only a few feet from Wilshire Boulevard, it’s dug about 10 feet below street level, making it strangely quiet.

Ben would be strangely quiet too. We’d watch the water and the winds push the whirligigs around in unpredictable ways. I’m not sure what exactly Ben thought as he sat there looking at the fountain, but I couldn’t help but identify with those whirligigs. As hard as I worked, my life was at the mercy, too, of the winds and of the media business and of the needs of young children and of traffic.

The stillness we felt at the fountain was real. But it, like so much in L.A., is just a projection. The fountain’s own story is as chaotic as our lives sometimes feel. There were problems with the van that brought the whirligigs out here from Connecticut, where the artist made them, back in 1964. The museum had great difficulty unpacking the sculptures. And the fountain in which they were originally displayed kept getting gummed up by oil rising out of the ground. (The La Brea Tar Pits are a touchdown pass away from the fountain).

None of this much mattered to us. When we visited, the world seemed to stop for a little while.

But the world doesn’t. At the end of last year, we decided to move out of the neighborhood. We found a place in the San Gabriel Valley, near good public schools and grandparents. It was the right decision. But we miss the fountain. Fortunately, my wife and I still work in the area, and our childcare is still around here, so we take Ben whenever we can.

And it never fails. He stops and looks and grows quiet. And we stand and think and don’t say much of anything.

Joe Mathews is Zócalo’s California editor.

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