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ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE/ 2011
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits 3 | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0220 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
"Beauty and the devil are the same thing."
- Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe -
Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men. The frank homoeroticism 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 of English and Irish heritage in Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Floral Park, Queens, New York. His parents were Harry and Joan Mapplethorpe and he grew up with five brothers and sisters. He studied for a B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts,[1] though he dropped out in 1969 before finishing his degree.[2] Mapplethorpe lived with his partner Patti Smith from 1967–1974, and she supported him by working in bookstores. They created art together, and even after he realized he was gay, they maintained a close relationship.
Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still-lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe's first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. In the 1980s, his mentor and lifetime companion art curator Sam Wagstaff gave him $500,000 to buy the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he lived and had his shooting space. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom.
Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, 42 years old, in a Boston, Massachusetts, hospital from complications arising from AIDS. His body was cremated and the ashes buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked "Maxey".
Nearly a year before his death, the ailing Mapplethorpe helped found the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. His vision for the Foundation was that it would be "the appropriate vehicle to protect his work, to advance his creative vision, and to promote the causes he cared about".[3] Since his death, the Foundation has not only functioned as his official estate and helped promote his work throughout the world, it has also raised and donated millions of dollars to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV infection.[3]
Art:
Mapplethorpe worked primarily in the studio, particularly toward the end of his career. Common subjects include flowers, especially orchids and calla lilies, and celebrities, including Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, and Patti Smith. Smith was a longtime roommate of Mapplethorpe and a frequent subject in his photography, including a stark, iconic photograph that appears on the cover of Smith's first album, Horses.[4] Also, a Patti Smith portrait[5] from 1986 recalls Albrecht Dürer's 1500 self-portrait.[6]
Other work includes homoerotic and BDSM acts (including coprophagia), and classical nudes. Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio series sparked national attention in the early 1990s when it was included in The Perfect Moment, a traveling exhibition funded by National Endowment for the Arts. The portfolio includes some of Mapplethorpe's most explicit imagery, including a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus.[7][8][9] Though his work had been regularly displayed in publicly funded exhibitions, conservative and religious organizations, such as the American Family Association, seized on this exhibition to vocally oppose government support for what they called "nothing more than the sensational presentation of potentially obscene material."[10] As a result, Mapplethorpe became something of a cause célèbre for both sides of the American Culture war. The installation of The Perfect Moment in Cincinnati resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and its director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of "pandering obscenity".
His sexually charged photographs of black men have been criticized as exploitative.[11][12] Such criticism was the subject of a work by American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, Notes on the Margins of the Black Book (1991–1993). Ligon juxtaposes Mapplethorpe's 91 images of black men in the 1988 publication Black Book with critical texts to complicate the racial undertones of the imagery.
References:
1. ^ Glueck, Grace. "Fallen Angel", The New York Times, June 25, 1995. Accessed October 14, 2007. "Growing up in a blue-collar precinct of Floral Park and steeped in Catholicism, Mapplethorpe developed — to his alarm — an adolescent interest in gay pornographic magazines ... So, at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where his father had studied engineering and Robert majored in graphic arts (but stopped short of getting a degree) ..."
2. ^ Haggerty, George. "Gay histories and cultures"
3. ^ a b http://www.mapplethorpe.org/foundation.html Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation website
4. ^ Thorgerson, Storm; Aubrey Powell (November 1999). 100 Best Album Covers: The Stories Behind the Sleeves (1st American edition ed.). Dorling Kindersley. pp. 74. ISBN 0-789-44951-X.
5. ^ http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/Image-Library/Mapplethorpe/tate_photo-patti-smith-1975.jpg
6. ^ http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/Image-Library/Exempla/durer-self-portrait-1500-lg.jpg
7. ^ Self-Portrait (From The X Portfolio)
8. ^ Untitled (Self Portrait)
9. ^ Robert Mapplethorpe's extraordinary vision
10. ^ "Mapplethorpe's Photos Now an F.C.C. Issue". The New York Times. August 17, 1990.
11. ^ Imaging Sadomasochism: Robert Mapplethorpe and the Masquerade of Photography
12. ^ Mapplethorpe, Robert (1946-1989)
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe
Just Kids -
Just Kids is a memoir by Patti Smith, published on January 19, 2010. In the book, Smith documents her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.[1]
Critical reception:
Just Kids won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2010. It was a Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Best Books (2010), ALA Notable Book (2011), Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist (Current Interest, 2010), New York Times bestseller (Nonfiction, 2010), and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (Autobiography/Memoir, 2010).
Just Kids was featured on the January 19, 2010, episode of Fresh Air, with Smith being interviewed by Terry Gross.[2] Just Kids was also featured on KQED's Forum with Michael Krasny on January 28, 2010. It was the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from 1-5 March 2010, with Smith reading five 15 minute excerpts from her book.[3]
References:
1. ^ Bohemian Soul Mates in Obscurity The New York Times, January 17 2010
2. ^ Just Kids: Punk Icon Patti Smith Looks Back National Public Radio, January 19 2010
3. ^ Book of the Week: Just Kids BBC Radio 4, March 5 2010
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Kids
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