Donald R. Blumberg. Untitled from the series Daily Photographs, 1969–1970; gelatin silver print; 16 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Much of the work in the show simply reproduces images from print and televised media, reframing them in subtle but meaningful ways. In the series Daily Photographs 1969–1970, Donald Blumberg photographs newspaper pages, focusing on images related to the Vietnam War while including surrounding text and advertisements. The works reveal the newspaper as a subjective nexus of interrelated information and opinions, instead of as an objective assemblage of discreet facts. His Television Political Mosaics and Television Abstractions (1968–69) are created similarly by photographing evening broadcasts on the television screen. Images of politicians, including Nixon and LBJ, are arranged either in orderly grids or in more chaotic compositions that threaten the intended stability of their original messages. In some works, Blumberg uses darkroom techniques such as solarization to give these familiar faces a more sinister appearance.

Japanese artist Masao Mochizuki also turns his camera towards the television, reproducing images on tightly composed grids in his Television series (1975–76). Mochizuki’s works, however, lack any of Blumberg’s authorial voice. With each frame taken at regularly timed intervals, his composite images do not discriminate between show credits, program drama, or advertisements. The images are all laid out as a constant stream of information and are reproduced at an intimate, miniature scale to draw viewers in, forcing them to actively gaze at content that might otherwise be passively absorbed.

Masao Mochizuki. The Air Power of the World from the series Television, 1976; gelatin silver print; 8 15/16 x 7 7/8 in. Courtesy of Osiris.

Produced thirty-five years after Blumberg’s photographs, Catherine Opie’s Polaroids are a departure from her highly polished portraits and landscapes. Snapped while watching TV, the photos reflect a raw immediacy and are tinged with frustration and humor. Opie assembles groups of Polaroids, mostly depicting newscasts of hot-button issues of the aughts (John Roberts’ Supreme Court hearings, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina), and arranges them to highlight certain themes, often counter to the original intent. In Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul (2004–2005), she juxtaposes images of the brain-dead woman and the pro-life Pope, their faces contorted into similar grimaces.

One of the standout works from the exhibition is Omer Fast’s video CNN Concatenated (2002). Cutting and pasting from multiple news broadcasts, Fast takes one word each from a chorus of talking heads and strings them together to form direct, patchwork addresses to the audience, such as, “I need you to stop pretending to care, to get off your ass, and start acting like you do, all right? This is not a lot to be asking for, is it?”

Catherine Opie. Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul from the series Close to Home, 2004–2005; dye diffusion prints; 15 1/2 x 14 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

David Lamelas and Hildegarde Duane’s 1978 video The Dictator is one of the only works that doesn’t appropriate already printed or broadcast imagery. Taking the form of a news interview between Duane’s Barbara Walters-like character and Lamelas’ newly deposed Latin American tyrant, the work has a dark humor that takes on a special relevance given our current president’s infatuation with the media, and vice versa. Despite Duane’s probing questions about human-rights abuses or plans for an anti-revolutionary coup, Lamelas’ character evades any judgment or condemnation, revealing the power of media appearances to legitimize the illegitimate.

In addition to the content of the news, some of these artists take aim to reveal its structure. Dara Birnbaum and Dan Graham’s video Local TV News Analysis (1980) is a straightforward reminder that news is not simply facts, put out into the world, but part of a system of consumption that is assembled, produced, and packaged. The hour-long video work depicts a typical American family watching the evening news, while in the upper left corner is an inset video of the newsroom. The piece compresses into one scene: the message, medium, and audience.

Robert Heinecken. A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate TV Newswoman (A CBS Docudrama in Words and Pictures) (detail), 1984; dye bleach prints; 44 1/4 x 42 1/2 in. Courtesy of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Robert Heinecken—an artist who is famous for adeptly reflecting and refracting media images—offers a parodic take on the search for the perfect newscaster with his multi-panel text and image work A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate Newswoman (A CBS Docudrama in Words and Pictures) (1984). By layering images of different broadcasters over each other, Heinecken creates a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, pointing out the absurdity of prioritizing the person delivering the news over the news itself.

Breaking News provides a well-rounded and focused, if not comprehensive, survey of artists who question the media’s subjectivity, using its own images and words to do so. The one missed opportunity is that by featuring works that engage primarily with print and broadcast sources, the exhibition stops too soon, overlooking the way almost all of us get our news today, with tweets and Facebook posts becoming as important as long-standing journalistic institutions. This does, however, leave room for another, more contemporary look at artists examining the current, arguably more fraught state of journalism.

Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media is on view at the Getty Center in Los Angeles through April 30, 2017.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Joe, N.Y.C., 1978 (from The X Portfolio); selenium toned gelatin silver print mounted on black board; 7 11/16 × 7 11/16 in. Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of yhe Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.9.41.6. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

An exhibition divided between museums is an uncommon practice, and braving Los Angeles traffic between Brentwood and Mid-City on the same day is not for the faint of heart. That said, the split format allows each institution to present Mapplethorpe’s work from a perspective that aligns with each of its institutional identities. Getty curator Paul Martineau describes the divide as Apollonian and Dionysian—an apt assessment given Mapplethorpe’s appreciation of classical sculpture and moments of so-called sexual deviance he captured in equal measure. Martineau organized Mapplethorpe’s work by major categories—Floral Studies, the Sculptural Body, Portraits, Studio Practice—all of which are represented by pieces hung in the introductory gallery. From there, the exhibition flows smoothly and is shaped by striking juxtapositions, including portraits of champion bodybuilder Lisa Lyon and Phillip Prioleau. In isolation, these photographs have achieved iconic status. When viewed within the context of the larger studies to which they belong, the photographs demonstrate the artist’s career-long fascination with the monumental and performative potential of the human form.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Lisa Lyon, 1981; gelatin silver print; 17 3/4 x 13 3/4 in. Promised Gift of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.2012.88.482. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

In the final gallery, selections from X Portfolio and ephemera from The Perfect Moment, the 1988 exhibition that cemented Mapplethorpe’s notoriety, are presented on opposite walls. Martineau wisely selected the attendant publication and the September 1989 volume of Artforum to accompany a short statement about the exhibition that aroused intense public fervor. Within the sprawling totality of the Getty exhibition, this small installation effectively encapsulates the details of the scandal without giving it too much attention. Given Mapplethorpe’s maligned public persona, that’s no small feat. What’s disheartening, however, is how X Portfolio is treated. Images of admittedly extreme sexual acts are tucked into a vitrine jutting perpendicular from the wall. To see the photographs, viewers must step to the vitrine and look down—a curatorial choice that references a similar display strategy employed during the exhibition’s brief run in Cincinnati. While the choice is understandable, given the more conservative demographic the Getty tends to attract, it reads as a concession designed to minimize potential discontent and further stigmatizes sex between consenting adults.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter, 1979; gelatin silver print; 14 x 14 in. Promised gift of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Across town at LACMA, it’s immediately apparent that curator Britt Salvesen took a more adventurous approach in displaying Mapplethorpe’s work. Rather than highlight the major categories of his work as Martineau did, Salvesen identified major thematic concerns: sex, success, and Mapplethorpe’s reckoning with mortality as AIDS-related illness and death drew close. The installation opens with solo and group portraits of gay men—affectionate, defiant, and altogether human—who were and still are stridently condemned for the aberrant “lifestyle choices” they celebrate. That such a grouping introduces the installation speaks to the small but significant strides Americans have taken to embrace gay identity.

In the same gallery, we see selections from Mapplethorpe’s early career. As a student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he worked with found materials from muscle magazines and religious imagery drawn from his Catholic upbringing in Queens, New York, to create two- and three-dimensional pieces. Moving from the accomplished portraits to the nascent work of a striving student artist, a juxtaposition emerges, aligning experimental starts with fully realized projects. That contrast unfolds across successive galleries, encompassing Mapplethorpe’s introduction to photography through Polaroid technology and eventual mastery of studio portrait practices. The LACMA experience culminates in a room dedicated entirely to X Portfolio and related BDSM imagery. Here, we are treated to the fruits of Mapplethorpe’s obsessive interest in form, texture, and the dramatic play of light and shadow, not to mention his fealty to honest representation of how some gay men interact. Perhaps it’s a reflection of LACMA’s demographic, a desire to push boundaries a bit harder, or both. Salvesen’s decision to hang such images, as opposed to hiding them in the relative safety of a vitrine, reinforces the museum’s foundational effort to embrace contemporaneity.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Wrestler, 1989; gelatin silver print; 22 15/16 × 19 in. Promised Gift of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.2012.89.786. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

At the end of these rigorously researched and happily exhausting exhibitions, what emerges is an account of a man who was driven as much by the prospects of wealth as he was by portraying his truth as a gay man, consequences be damned. Neither exhibition overlooks how cruel he could be to family, friends, and lovers, or that he slavishly ingratiated himself to those whom he thought could advance his career. Those all-too-human flaws contribute to a broader portrait of an artist who understood, perhaps more astutely than his peers, the cultural moment in which they were immersed as identity politics and the popularity of the photographic medium shifted to center stage.

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium is on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art through July 31, 2016.