Robert Mapplethorpe

The cover of Patti Smith's first album, Horses, featured a Robert Mapplethorpe photo.

Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black & white portraits, photos of flowers and male nudes. The frank, erotic nature of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks.

Biography

Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic in Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Floral Park, New York, a neighborhood of Long Island, New York, of English and Irish heritage. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts.

Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter, using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a large-format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, socialites, but it wasn't until he met Benjamin Green the pornographic film star, that he truly became inspired to push the envelope of sexuality and photographing the human body. Mapplethorpe was once quoted as saying, "Of all the men and women that I had the pleasure of photographing, Ben Green was the apple of my eye, my unicorn if you will. I could shoot him for hours and hours and no matter the position, each print captured the complete essence of human perfection" (New York Times). It was this relationship that inspired him during the 1980s, to refine his photographs with an emphasis on formal beauty. He concentrated on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities.

His work

Mapplethorpe made most of his photographs in the studio. Common themes were flowers, especially orchids; portraits of famous individuals, including Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, and Patti Smith (Patti Smith's portrait [1]was inspired by Durer's 1500 self-portrait [2]) and nude works that include homoerotic imagery from classic nudes to sadistic and masochistic acts. Mapplethorpe is best known for his Portfolio X series, which sparked national attention because of its explicit content and the funding of the effort by the NEA, including a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus. [3] [4] [5] His photographs of black men have been criticized as exploitive.[6] [7]

Mapplethorpe's work was regularly displayed at publicly funded exhibitions. Conservative and religious organizations, such as the American Family Association opposed supporting his kind of art, and he became something of a cause celebre for both sides in the National Endowment for the Arts funding debate. His The Perfect Moment exhibit in 1990 which included seven sadomasochistic portraits in Cincinnati resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and its director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of "pandering obscenity".

When it became known that Mapplethorpe was infected with HIV, the prices for his photos increased dramatically. In December 1988 his photos collected $500,000 each. Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital from complications arising from AIDS; he was 42 years old. His ashes were buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked 'Maxey'.

UCE Controversy

In 1998, the University of Central England was involved in a controversy when a book by Mapplethorpe was confiscated. A final year undergraduate student was writing a paper on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and intended to illustrate the paper with a few photographs. Unwisely she took the photographs to the local chemist to be developed and the chemist informed West Midlands Police because of the unusual nature of the images. The police confiscated the library book from the student and informed the university that the book would have to be destroyed. If the university agreed to the destruction then no further action would be taken.

The book in question was Mapplethorpe, published by Jonathan Cape 1992. The university Vice-Chancellor, Dr Peter Knight, supported by the Senate took the view that the book was a legitimate book for the university library to hold and that the action of the police was a serious infringement of academic freedom. The Vice-Chancellor was interviewed by the police, under caution, with a view to prosecution under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act. This Act defines obscenity as material that is likely to deprave and corrupt. It was used unsuccessfully in the famous 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' trial. Curiously the police were not particularly interested in some of the more notorious images, nor any of the images of children, which could have been covered by other legislation. They focused on one particular image, 'Jim and Tom, Sausalito 1977'.

After the interview with the Vice-Chancellor a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service as the Director of Public Prosecutions has to take the decision as to whether or not to proceed with a trial. After a delay of about six months the affair came to an end when Dr Knight was informed by the DPP that no action would be taken as 'there was insufficient evidence to support a successful prosecution on this occasion'. The original book was returned, in a slightly tattered state, and restored to the university library.

Posthumously

In 2003, Arena Editions published Autoportrait, a collection of black and white Polaroid self-portraits that Mapplethorpe took between 1971 and 1973. This was the first time these early works became available for widespread viewing since the 1970s.

In 2006, a Mapplethorpe print of Andy Warhol was auctioned for $643,200, making it the 6th most expensive photograph ever sold.

References in popular culture

• In Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy, an episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson accidentally grabs a racy photography book by Robert Mapplethorpe at a bookstore.
• Wes Anderson's 1996 film Bottle Rocket features a character with the name Bob Mapplethorpe.
• Mapplethorpe is satirized in the Family Guy episode, A Picture Is Worth a 1,000 Bucks. In the episode, Mapplethorpe is shown as an artist at an amusement park who draws caricatures. When a child comes to have his caricature drawn, Mapplethorpe asks who the child's favorite athlete is, and proceeds to state that he will draw him defecating on the child's chest.
• In The Birdcage, Republican Senator Kevin Kealey (Gene Hackman) is told that his daughter's future father in law (Robin Williams) is a cultural attaché, to which he responds: "are they the ones who funded the Mapplethorpe exhibit?"
• In the webcomic Questionable Content, Dora refers to Marten's mother, a fetish porn star, as someone who must be a fan of Mapplethorpe.

See also

• List of photographers known for portraying males erotically
• List of most expensive photographs

Bibliography

• Patricia Morrisroe (1995) Robert Mapplethorpe: A Biography (Papermac: London and New York)

• Arthur C. Danto (1996) Playing with the Edge: the Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (University of California Press: London and Los Angeles)

• Gary Banham (2002) "Mapplethorpe, Duchamp and the Ends of Photography" Angelaki 7.1

• Mark Jarzombek. "The Mapplethorpe Trial and the Paradox of its Formalist and Liberal Defense: Sights of Contention," AppendX, No. 2 (Spring 1994), 58-81

• Allen Ellenzweig (1992), "The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe" (New York: Columbia University Press)

External links

• The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation website
• Exhibitions with Robert Mapplethorpe
• Biography from the Guggenheim Museum
• Robert Mapplethorpe at IMDb
• Robert Mapplethorpe at Findagrave.com