Robert Mapplethorpe

 

 

Born – New York City, USA 1946

Died – Boston, USA 1989

 

Robert Mapplethorpe is recognized as a photographer of outstanding technical ability – and notoriety. His homo erotic imagery and representations of sexuality through portraiture have established him as one of the most controversial artists to come to prominence during the 1970s and 1980s. From 1963 to 1970 he studied at the Pratt Institute, New York. In his earliest work he was “playing with charged imagery”; he was also assembling sculptural pieces from banal or found objects and collage. Experiments with Polaroid photographs followed, the seriality of images being as important as each composition itself. Through such explorations of the medium he developed a mastery of technique that enabled him to concentrate on his primary interest, which was to make pornographic imagery artistically beautiful. The similarity of approach by other gay artists, such as David Hockney and the illustrator Tom of Finland, encouraged Mapplethorpe to realise his idealized, romanticised preoccupation with erotic fantasy images. He specialised in stereotypical visions of male sexuality in addition to “straight” portraits of known individuals – Lord Snowdon and Louise Bourgeois, for example. His pictures of flowers, such as Calla Lily are astonishing portrayals of natural beauty, often depicted as sexually charged as his human subjects.

 

Masterpieces:

  • Easter Lilies
  • Derrick Cross

Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.