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Fotografo Robert Mapplethorpe
Fotografo Robert Mapplethorpe
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Biography
BIOGRAPHY
Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946,
the third of six children. He
remembered a very secure childhood
on Long Island, which he summed up
by saying, “I come from suburban
America. It was a very safe
environment, and it was a good place
to come from in that it was a good
place to leave.” He received a B.F.A.
from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where
he produced artwork in a variety of
media. He had not taken any of his
own photographs yet, but he was
making art that incorporated many
Self-Portrait, 1975 photographic images appropriated
from other sources, including pages
torn from magazines and books. This
early interest reflected the importance
of the photographic image in the
culture and art of our time, including
the work of such notable artists as
Andy Warhol, whom Mapplethorpe
greatly admired.
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SELECTED WORKS
The categories to the left feature the
primary themes of Robert
Mapplethorpe's photography. Each
section offers a sampling of 10 images.
Self-Portrait, 1985
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
Flowers, 1982
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Male
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Portraits
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Statuary
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Self Portraits
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/selfportraits.html07/11/2004 0:15:51
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Unique
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Biography
MAPPLETHORPE FOUNDATION
After discovering, in 1986 that he had been diagnosed with AIDS, Robert
Mapplethorpe was determined to build a lasting artistic legacy. He accelerated his
creative efforts, broadened the sweep of his photographic inquiry, accepted
increasingly challenging commissions, and, despite the ravages of his illness,
continued to create powerful images up until his death in 1989.
After coming to grips with his diagnosis, Mapplethorpe began to discuss with his
friends and professional advisers the best way to preserve and manage his archive
of photographs after his death. The consensus was that the appropriate vehicle to
protect his work, to advance his creative vision, and to promote the causes he cared
about was a foundation -- a not-for-profit organization managed by friends and
advisors, people he knew and trusted, with substantial professional credentials, who
after he was gone would work together to attain his goals. With characteristic
foresight, Mapplethorpe decided to move forward immediately, realizing that the
only way to ensure that the proposed foundation would become the institution he
envisioned was to establish it and make it fully operational while he was still alive
to oversee it.
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. was founded on May 27, 1988, some
ten months before the artist's death. Robert Mapplethorpe funded the Foundation
with substantial contributions, selected four trustees to serve with him on its board,
and was appointed its first president. He also established the Foundation's initial
philanthropic mandate, targeting the area of his greatest concern: the recognition of
photography as an art form of the same importance as painting and sculpture. He
directed that the net revenues proceeds from the sale of his works be used to benefit
those museums and other artistic institutions that had shown particular interest in
establishing photography departments or expanding their existing ones. The
Foundation's first gift went to the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for
Contemporary Art-not, in fact, to sponsor the now legendarily controversial
Mapplethorpe exhibition
The Perfect Moment
, but to assist the ICA in producing the handsome catalogue that accompanied the
show.
courageous decision to leave his home in Manhattan and travel to Boston's New
England Deaconess Hospital, where some of the most meaningful and advanced
medical research in the AIDS field was being conducted. There, he came to
appreciate first-hand the enormous task faced by the research immunologist in
battling the fiendish complexity and sophistication of the HIV/AIDS virus. During
the last weeks of his life, he supplemented the Foundation's existing goal of
supporting photography with a new second mandate: to support medical research in
the HIV/AIDS area, in the hope of halting the continuing tragedy of men and
women dying before they reached their most creative and productive years. His trip
to Boston was his last. Tragically, he died there, at age forty-two, on March 9,
1989. AIDS had come too soon for him, too long before the promising new life-
saving treatments that his own philanthropic efforts would help to eventually
develop.
In the field of the photographic arts, the Foundation has funded numerous
publications on photography, supported exhibitions at various art institutions, and
provided grants-in the form of funding or gifts of original Mapplethorpe works-to
qualified art institutions, ranging from the world's major art museums to small
university galleries. In 1993, the Foundation provided a major gift to the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation to create the Robert Mapplethorpe Gallery and
inaugurate the Guggenheim Museum's photography department and program.
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EXHIBITIONS
As exhibition dates may change, please contact the venue for a confirmation
of viewing hours and availability.
http://www.proweb.jp/flower
Robert Mapplethorpe
Weinstein Gallery
908 West 46th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55419
612-822-1722
Tuesday - Saturday 12-5 pm
Opening reception,
Friday, October 15, 2004
6:00pm to 8:30pm
Galleria In Arco
Turin, Italy
April 1, 2004- May 22, 2004
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STORE
The Mapplethorpe Store features the largest
collection of Robert Mapplethorpe merchandise on
the internet. All of the available items have been
created with the authorization of, and in many cases
in conjunction with, The Robert Mapplethorpe
Foundation.
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Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Online Exhibitions 2004
Exhibitions:
Steven Matijcio
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Momentum
Jinyoung Kim
Columbia University/ Whitney: Modern Art and Curatorial Studies.
Emphasizing Invisibility and Poetic Simplicity: Understanding Robert Mapplethorpe’s
Work in Relation to Asian Painting.
NOTE: To view all pictures, please disable any pop-up blocking tools.
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Momentum
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Today the public may know more about elements of Robert Mapplethorpe’s personal
biography—for example, his homosexuality and the triumphs and tragedies of his life—than
they know of his deeply personal approach to art. Unfortunately, we still do not know enough
about the philosophy and aesthetics underlying the choices he made in his work. We might
gain some understanding, however, by noting that Mapplethorpe’s photographs share an
aesthetic sensibility and ideology with traditional Asian paintings—in that both emphasize
invisibility and are stylistically characterized by a poetic simplicity, an economy of expression.
An awareness of the function and meaning of space in Asian paintings is particularly valuable
for understanding Mapplethorpe’s photographs. Rather than considering the various
sociopolitical elements informing Mapplethorpe’s photography, this online exhibition will
examine more fundamentally aesthetic notions, such as beauty and composition.
Emphasizing Invisibility
An abundance of empty space typifies Asian art. Air in the mountains, or central white spaces
and clouds, create a zone of calm within paintings and simultaneously offer viewers a chance
to participate in the artistic process, as they relentlessly pursue a perfection that is inherently
incomplete. Unlike the common Western perception of empty space as flat, inert, and lifeless,
Asian landscape paintings use voids to represent dynamic and active spaces linking what is
visible to the invisible, allegorically symbolizing a harmony between each composition’s
subject and the universe. As such, the paintings become embodiments of specific moments in
time; yet concurrently represent a potential flow of time created by the expressive use of
empty space. This duality of meaning in Asian painting invites viewers to experience the
essence of the subjects in relation to time and space on both physical and meditative levels.
empty, yet complete, infinitely capable and restrictive. As with many Asian paintings, the
viewer must fill in the unfinished space; this same premise is a primary foundation of
Mapplethorpe’s aesthetic goals.
Spatially, Mapplethorpe’s photographs expand and contract by their use of empty space.
Departing from simple representative characteristics of photography—meaning that the subject
is frozen and fixed in time—his photographs often take a 360-degree turn. Viewers first focus
on the object, then space, then the interaction between space and object, finally returning to the
object as the main subject. The focus of Mapplethorpe’s flower-themed photographs lies in the
empty space, a visualization of the concept of infinitude and meditation by emptying one’s
mind, (Fig 4) In Orchids, 1985 (Fig. 5), a blue bowl holds a delicate orchid in full bloom.
Although flowers serve as a traditional subject for still life in Western painting,
Mapplethorpe’s flower-themed works have a particular flair for intentionally manipulating
empty space. This particular photograph shows a white wall extending upwards into infinity;
this seemingly empty, negative, unfinished, and untouched space is charged with an invisible
dynamic energy and takes on the quality of meditative emptiness so evident in Asian brush
paintings; (Fig. 6). Such a background is as important as the foregrounded object for creating a
photographic subject. This empty background extends the photograph beyond the frame of the
visual field, creating what Roland Barthes called a “blind field,” which gives a photograph the
[1]
potential to communicate beyond what is simply visible on paper. In this way,
Mapplethorpe’s use of empty space achieves a timeless harmony simultaneously within and
beyond the picture frame.
Poetic Simplicity
Once upon a time, there was a father and a son. One day, the old father asked his son to
“do” their backyard. When his son finished sweeping the yard, his father was not quite
satisfied with the result. “It is not done yet. Do it again.” When the son got tired of
sweeping the yard, he complained, “Father! I have cleared the entire yard. There is not
even a single speck of dust. Why do you keep saying that it is not done yet?” Then, the
father came out to the yard, and shook one of the maple trees. Suddenly, there were
colorful leaves spread over the yard.
The preceding episode, an extract from a Korean folk tale, asks us to contemplate the question,
“What is artistic beauty in life?” The boy’s father does not want his son to merely complete a
chore. He expects the boy to discover that beauty enters life naturally; the newly fallen leaves
are the finishing touches that complete the yard as an artistic entity. Knocking the leaves down
is the father’s artistic expression of how a yard is created. Mapplethorpe’s still life and portrait
photographs share a similar aesthetic sensibility and ideology in the presence of two seemingly
incompatible qualities—directness and ambiguity.
Another key element for understanding Mapplethorpe’s work in relation to Asian painting is
recognizing the coexistence of spatial clarity and ambiguity in his photographs. His figures
have the stark essence of two-dimensional objects, while simultaneously disappearing into the
background. Mapplethorpe’s Joanne Russell, 1986 and Self Portrait, 1988 (Fig. 7), are
portraits done in silhouette shapes. Rather than merely photographing Russell, or himself, he
objectifies figures, equating Russell’s face with a decorative pin on her chest, or his own with
the skull head cane, positioning all these elements as floating objects within black space. Thus
the space in the photograph becomes a second subject, fluid elements that both separate and
objectify the subject, all the while intimately engaging the objects within and beyond the
photograph. Mapplethorpe’s nude photographs and high-contrast portraits manifest a
simultaneous presence of visual clarity and ambiguity. In his photographs, empty space
separates and blends objects, and the object becomes almost inseparable from the invisible in
space, even as an image remains in perfect focus.
Oriental painting indicates the temporality of life by emphasizing the passage of time that is
evident in each brush stroke. Just as an Asian painter uses a brush, Mapplethorpe implies
movement in time and space with a stroke of light in the following works: Lisa Marie, 1987,
Lydia Cheng, 1985, Lisa Lyon, 1982, Tit Profile, 1980, and New York City Contemporary
Ballet, 1980 (Fig. 8). The light in these works is a mobile element that serves to juxtapose the
concept of a “still life” with the visual experience of speed. In such contrast, Mapplethorpe
instills a poetic simplicity that becomes essential to his studio photography. The characters in
Japanese calligraphy carry a deep significance in their visible shape alone and share a similar
sensibility. The boneless style of brushwork is rough and spontaneous, conveying a great sense
of movement (Fig. 9), much like a studio light in Mapplethorpe’s work.
Mapplethorpe also manipulates light to stillness, as illustrated in Self Portrait, 1975 and
Parrot Tulips, 1988 (Fig. 10). Both these images are of a painterly quality, surrounded by
space highly celebrated with light. The light acts as pigment, highlighting the artistry inherent
in the contours of the object and the space that surrounds them. Much like the fallen maple
leaves in the foregoing fable, Mapplethorpe meticulously uses simple elements such as “light
and space” in seemingly free and banal manners that ultimately create poetic beauty. As in life
itself, the methodology is direct and simple, yet the resulting images convey a complex
multitude of layers and meanings. With light, space, simplicity, and ambiguity, Robert
Mapplethorpe gives definite forms to the essence of his subjects.
[1]
Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, 1980, p. 57.
Checklist of works:
Hanging scroll
11.8(H) x 19(W) inches (30 x 48.3 cm)
Courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
25. Calligraphy, “Yagasu Shoka no Tsuki”, 1668
Hanging scroll, ink on paper
50.5(H) x 10.5(W) inches (128.3 x 26.8cm)
Private Collection
Courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
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Momentum
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Momentum
Whether resting momentarily, sleeping during the evening hours, posing for a picture, reclining lazily,
or standing perfectly still, we are always, without pause or recess, in motion. The heart pumps, blood
circulates, breath is taken in and out, the sun moves almost imperceptibly across the sky, and every
second that passes is one step further from birth, and one step closer to death. Yet even in demise, only
the individual’s physical vessel ceases to move, its memory living on in various ways, and its soul
ascending to another realm while other organisms around it begin the process of mourning, burial, and/
or moving on. Like the technological medium of the Internet that this exhibition inhabits, made to
function without beginning, end, or central command, every destination and apparent endpoint is just
another entryway to another series of portals and passageways. It continues, ad infinitum. The act of
photography has been said to interrupt this process, fashioning little ‘deaths’ by capturing and
sequestering moments of life onto film, paper, glass plates and various other materials that may differ
in format, but unite in the cessation of motion. However, is this ever completely true? Can the
dynamism of life and nature be fully immobilized by the eye of the camera, and frozen into the perfect,
autonomous moment? These are complex questions that cannot ever be entirely answered, but the
photographic work of artist Robert Mapplethorpe provides an invaluable lens by which to continue the
Working with ever-greater refinement and precision to achieve immaculate compositional structure,
[1]
Mapplethorpe self-professedly pursued “perfection” in his artwork. From his earliest Polaroid’s and
assemblages to his penultimate clicks of the shutter, he consistently strove to package provocative and
often jarring subject matter into strict formal parameters, forging a spotless standard in the pristine
prints that followed. Whether flowers set in a piercing light, nudes and portraits of sculptural sublimity,
or sado-masochistic sex acts composed with drama and delicacy, the many subjects of Mapplethorpe
passed through the idealistic filter of his vision, sublimated into an airless arena of aesthetic purity. In
weaving this intricate fabric of lighting, balance, proportion, content, and emotional valence, he
endowed his art-works with a seductive mix of unrest and serenity, and distinguished a style all his own
[2]
in the process. Within this signature approach he evoked the ideals of Antiquity, and revealed his
ancient inspirations with the comment, “If I had been born 100 or 200 years ago, I might have been a
[3]
sculptor.” He quickly amended these words with the qualifying statement, “but photography is a
very quick way to see, to make sculpture”. Between substitution and amalgamation, Mapplethorpe’s
work teetered on the brink of two very different disciplines. Some of his earliest works were indeed
quite sculptural, and even as he maneuvered his way through assemblages and collage into a more
In this he was not alone, as numerous critics, writers and theoreticians came to entrench this
interpretation of his work – in an often, resolute manner – into the body of literature that grew around
his practice. A brief, but emblematic cross-section of this contingent begins with author and art
historian Charles A. Riley II, who argued, “Mapplethorpe’s idiom is one of unadulterated classicism,”
[5]
and enthusiastically acclaimed him “a priest of the Classical ideals of balance and serenity.” Curator
Janet Kardon echoed these sentiments and carefully detailed the sculptural dimensions of the artist’s
neoclassical enterprise, observing a serene “stillness” which surrounded images that, to her, “appear as
[6]
if they might have been chiseled.” In 1985, author and well-known photography scholar Susan
Sontag went as far as to eliminate the accidental and/or spontaneous from Mapplethorpe’s purview
[7]
altogether, arguing that his camera could capture only what could be posed and made perfect. Yet
through it all, through these and similar arguments from the artist and his onlookers alike, from
virtually the beginning of his career to its very last throes, a converse current sporadically bubbled to
the surface of his photographs. Recognition of this current (to be elaborated below) is not meant to
disavow a classical reading of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre as incorrect or even misleading, but rather to
contest its totalizing implications with a group of photos that complicate previous assumptions and
The works in this exhibition, although short in number compared to the multitude of examples
that articulate the aforementioned aspects of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre, are arguably the most
representative of the turmoil that simmered throughout the artist’s life and work. Against the stasis
photographs, each, in its own way, marks a passage of time. This passage tempers classical tenets with
unexpected contingency and blurs Mapplethorpe’s famed aesthetic pinnacle of “the perfect moment”
[8]
into momentum. For in every case the immobilizing gaze of the artist runs headlong into elements of
chance and unpredictability, creating images that slide in artificial suspension – their dynamic potential
momentarily paused, but never precluded from changing in the next instant.
For example, while Mapplethorpe pictured many of his human subjects in the same stone-bound
eternity of the ancient marble sculptures he also photographed, it is a modern-day version of
contrapposto that animates the playful prance of Melia Marden (Fig.1) and the penetrating forward step
of Raymond (Fig.2) as he ruptures his compositional frame. The artist spoke passionately about
comparing the look of his nudes to bronze or marble, and created a pantheon of immortals using an
array of classical formulae, but it is the nascent movement in these two images that presses against
previous parameters and suggests action that does not terminate in the instant. In two much earlier
works, the mischievous actions of the artist as he intrudes into the frame with outstretched arm (Fig.3)
and then exits it on outstretched toe (Fig.4) “move” in a parallel manner, using cropping and framing
techniques to create a sense of spontaneous action that supplants the timelessness of formal posture and
Moving from these pictorial devices that suggest movement, to the direct pursuit of moving elements,
compositional stillness evaporates further in the smoky, swirling exhalation of Jack Walls (Fig.5) and
the deep inhalation of a figure escaping (or perhaps entering) the binds of mummifying white gauze
(Fig.6). For with each, Mapplethorpe’s photography of visible breathing invokes air currents into
otherwise airless arenas, poetically representing life inside the subject, and outside the moment. In
other works picturing Gregory Hines (Fig.7), Molissa Fenley (Fig.8), Puerto Rican children (Fig.9) and
even himself (Fig.10), this dynamic combination of motion and life appears as blurring. And while
each ghostly blur – inscribing physical shifts that took place as Mapplethorpe clicked the shutter – is
admittedly frozen in frame, they nevertheless dissipate linear contours of shape and form as
Mapplethorpe’s impeccable focal sharpness succumbs to the messy dynamism of movement. Like the
stabbing knife thrust of Raymond (Fig.11), seen in profile as his hand, wrist and forearm merge into a
single slurry of light, these photos cut into the stony anatomy of the artist’s classicism and bleed echoes
The element of light continues to play an integral role in many of the works making up
momentum, extending the ramifications raised by “blurring” into several other dimensions of
Mapplethorpe’s compositional structure. In this section of works, the careful studio lighting that
Mapplethorpe arranged to articulate the physical idealism of sculptural form, is adjusted and displaced
along with the figures it consequently affects. As a case in point, the chiseled musculature of Lisa Lyon
(which reminded Mapplethorpe of Michelangelo’s stolid female forms) is softly melted by adjacent
torchlight (Fig.12), casting her body in a grainy, shadowed haze as both she and the surrounding
torches dance and blur. In a related manner, rigid geometric form is bent by the play of light in both
Television (Fig.13) and the crouch of Dennis Speight (Fig.14). In the former, the heavy, boxed frame
of a television that is bolted to the wall and chained to its podium (by padlock), is almost alchemically
lightened by the face of an anonymous actress whose ephemeral flicker across the screen challenges all
the weight around her. In the latter, Speight’s initially compact, frozen crouch is made dynamic by
shadows that extend out from all sides, creating a sense of imminent (or just completed) motion as a
shadowy head and torso rise above him, and flanking, Futurismo-like lines simultaneously push his
In other works of this vein, studio and/or artificial lighting is replaced altogether by sunlight that
Mapplethorpe allowed to penetrate his aesthetic parameters, traipsing its way in and out of his
controlling gaze. The result is a series of images where the temporal intertwines with the stationary,
fusing them in matrices that simultaneously evoke elegant compositional skills and the energy of
unpredictability. In one instance, the fate of Medusa’s stare (that so often befalls the subjects of
Mapplethorpe) is eased, if not erased, by daubs and dashes of sunlight that frolic across a man’s bare
chest (Fig.15). In other related photos, as the sun backlights a ragged, timeworn American flag
(Fig.16), illuminates a passage through an ancient Venetian tunnel (Fig.17), and cuts into the timeless
realm of a modernist gallery space with an ad hoc sundial cast gently upon the floor (Fig.18), the artist
subtly transforms socio-cultural symbols of longevity and presence into fragile, shifting sites of
transition.
A similar transformation would also touch organic forms in the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, creating
stirring, and sometimes tragic tableaux where the inevitable, and ultimately inescapable effects of
nature take their fated course. In some of these photographs, the power and beauty of elemental forces
are allowed to flash before our eyes with a minimum of mediation, fighting against the domineering
gaze of the camera’s eye. The lines between vitality and violence subsequently blur as the crashing
waves of the sea explode into electric light-bursts under a low horizon (Fig.19), and a forceful surge of
tropical wind sweeps through the fronds of a palm tree, turning its foliate crown into a vibrant web of
Yet from the perspective of Mapplethorpe, attuned as he was to the temporality of existence after being
afflicted with AIDS, it was arguably the unstoppable passageway from life to death where nature
became most powerfully manifest. In this respect, as in the oeuvre of this artist, flowers are afforded a
special status by their ability to simultaneously convey expressive content and elegant formal beauty.
Long considered a preeminent “still life” subject, made eternally vital and vivid by artists of all eras in
[9]
all disciplines, they are here made icons of a provisional existence. This is not to say that
Mapplethorpe was not a major contributor to the aforementioned still life tradition of flowers, but
rather to highlight a body of his works where lilies (Fig.21) and tulips (Fig.22) wilt under the weight of
time, feeling the severance from an earth their once vibrant blossoms now fall to in withering death. In
both these photographs, dying and still-turgid flowers are juxtaposed in vases, but the implied passage
from one state to the other is perhaps most poignantly communicated in another pair of tulips
photographed by Mapplethorpe in 1984. In this work (Fig.23), the tulips take on a compelling
anthropomorphic quality, poised on the verge of an intergenerational embrace as one blossom ascends
in new life, and the other droops with a life nearing its end. In this momentary pause, the otherwise
vacant space between the pair of tulips becomes a charged intersection of imminent, but enigmatic
intensity.
From anthropomorphism to the actual article, momentum rounds the loop of the infinity sign and
returns to its origin as the human body descends from its artificially suspended pedestal of classical
stasis, and becomes an icon of duration, life and change. The dramatic pose of Thomas (Fig.24) offers a
transitional case, where his otherwise powerful, muscular body is turned into a tense, clock-like
component as his hands and arms literally hold back the relentless crush of a circular frame reminiscent
of the clocks that devour our time on a daily basis. Moving away from the classical body but retaining
his focus on time, Mapplethorpe delivers a more subtle, but perhaps more accurate emblem of
movement through life with the cigarette ashes that teeter precariously over the grasping fingers of
Iggy Pop (Fig.25). In this 1981 photograph, a fragile tower of smoldering ash consumes the attention of
this vivacious musician, making his eyes grow wide with apparent trepidation as previously fiery
matter prepares to crumble and inflict its painful, searing aftermath. Yet fear did not completely fill
Mapplethorpe’s eyes as he felt the cold grip of AIDS breaking down his immune system and pushing
him towards death. Like the previously described pair of tulips, this exhibition articulates the energy he
found in passage rather than endpoint. This is evident throughout the collection of photographs
gathered here, but especially so in a final case that pairs a portrait of Mary Beth Hurt with her baby
along with Mapplethorpe’s last self-portrait, in which he hauntingly clutches a death’s head cane (Fig.
26). For while both are iconic representations of shifting life stages in their own right, one symbolizing
the joy of regeneration among a mother and daughter clad in white, and the other of looming mortality
where the artist’s body disappears into the blackness of the background, together they are something
[10]
infinitely more – something seen only across time, in motion.
He communicated serenity, control and stillness in his artwork, but struggle and tension ultimately
shaped the life and practice of Robert Mapplethorpe. Momentum brings together a collection of images
that explore this reality, presenting photographs where the subject matter pushes back against the
artist’s immobilizing gaze and classicist values. In each tenuously suspended instant, and even more so
in combination among one another, the emphasis shifts to passage, transition, and that which escapes
the perfect moment. The profound dynamism that results is as much an emblem of the uncontrollability
of life, as it is of Mapplethorpe’s courage to venture into unfamiliar territory and confront his own
methods.
SM 2003
[1]
Robert Mapplethorpe as cited in Janet Kardon, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, (Philadelphia, PA:
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1988), 25.
[2]
In the introductory text in his book Mapplethorpe (Milano: Electra, 1992), Germano Celant highlights “the
reassuring and purifying values” brought forth by Mapplethorpe’s aesthetic harmony (p.11).
[3]
Mapplethorpe as cited in Kardon, 27.
[4]
Charles A. Riley II, “Instant Apotheosis,” in Chantal Michetti-Prod’hom (Curator & Foreword),
Mapplethorpe: exposition du 9 novembre 1991 au 15 mars 1992, (Pully/Lausanne: FAE Musée d’Art
Contemporain, 1991), 11.
[5]
Ibid., 6, 11.
[6]
Kardon, 29.
[7]
Susan Sontag, “Sontag on Mapplethorpe,” Vanity Fair 48 (July 1985), 68-72.
[8]
This title of the now infamous and highly controversial Mapplethorpe retrospective curated by Janet Kardon is
of-ten associated with the artist’s photography and has come to stand as a synecdochical phrase for his aesthetic
aims.
[9]
Richard Howard, “The Mapplethorpe Effect,” in Richard Marshall, Robert Mapplethorpe, (Boston: Whitney
Museum of American Art in association with Bullfinch Press, 1988), 153.
[10]
Charles A. Riley II provides a stirring description of this 1988 self-portrait on pg. 14 of his previously cited
essay (note 4), where he highlights the parallel gazes of skull and artist, Mapplethorpe’s pale white hand tightly
grasping the cane, a wounded depression below the artist’s right eye, and his “absent” body. I add that this work
echoes the back & forth effect seen in the photo of Dennis Speight’s crouch (0496), as the inevitably of
Mapplethorpe’s passing projects forward into the skull, and then back again into his ghostly, disembodied
countenance.
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Galleries
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Unique
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Unique
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Unique
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The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Unique
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http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes3.html07/11/2004 0:38:39
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes4.html07/11/2004 0:38:45
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes5.html07/11/2004 0:38:48
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes6.html07/11/2004 0:38:53
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes7.html07/11/2004 0:38:56
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes8.html07/11/2004 0:39:05
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes9.html07/11/2004 0:39:12
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Nudes: Female
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/femalenudes10.html07/11/2004 0:39:17
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
Orchids, 1985
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers2.html07/11/2004 0:43:02
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers3.html07/11/2004 0:43:06
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
Poppy, 1988
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers4.html07/11/2004 0:43:11
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
Anthurium, 1988
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers5.html07/11/2004 0:43:14
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers6.html07/11/2004 0:43:21
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers7.html07/11/2004 0:43:25
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers8.html07/11/2004 0:43:31
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers9.html07/11/2004 0:43:34
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. | Selected Works- Flowers
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/flowers10.html07/11/2004 0:43:41