Robert Mapplethorpe

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Robert Mapplethorpe (born November 4, 1946 in Floral Park , New York , † March 9, 1989 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American photographer and visual artist .

Life

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 as the third of six children to a Catholic working-class family. After graduating from school, he went to the Pratt Institute at the request of his parents . There he came into contact with the 1968 movement . During his studies, he also met Patti Smith and fell in love with the then unknown musician and poet. The two moved in together, and Mapplethorpe deepened his work on his own works of art.

He finally graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts . His first works did not yet contain any photos of his own, but often pictures he had taken from books or magazines. Soon afterwards he began to work with his first own pictures, which he took with a Polaroid camera . He later said of this time: "I began to understand that photography could be art."

Mapplethorpe lived a very excessive life, which was marked by drugs and numerous homosexual and heterosexual relationships. When it became known that Mapplethorpe had been infected with the HI virus , the prices for his photos soared. In December 1988, he sold photos worth 500,000 US dollars . In 1988 the artist founded the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Mapplethorpe died in early March 1989 of complications from his AIDS illness at the age of 42.

Artistic creation

From the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe was noticed by a larger audience , initially mainly in New York . Many personalities were portrayed by him, including Andy Warhol , Deborah Harry , Richard Gere , Peter Gabriel , Grace Jones , Paloma Picasso and Patti Smith . It became “in” to have Mapplethorpe photograph you. Together with the bodybuilder Lisa Lyon , he produced a series of pictures from 1980 to 1982, which he published under the title Lady Lisa Lyon in 1983. The majority of his recordings were made in his own studio or in one of the countless New York lofts . His photos were always plain, photographed against a white or black background.

In contrast to his pictures, in which he shows still lifes with flowers or portraits of socially recognized actors and artists , Mapplethorpe also or especially chose controversial topics.

His nudes often showed homoerotic motifs, ranging from more classic poses to BDSM scenes. Mapplethorpe was best known for its Portfolio X series. One of the frequently discussed photographs is a self-portrait showing the artist with a bull whip inserted into his anus . Particularly in Anglo-Saxon led the American US by the National Endowment for the Arts (National Foundation for Arts and Cultural Promotion ) financed touring exhibition The Perfect Moment (1988-1990) to a controversy after the conservative, Republican Senator Jesse Helms through the exhibition catalog had become aware of the exhibition.

The photo on the album cover of Horses , Patti Smith's 1975 debut album , was from Mapplethorpe. It is considered "the most famous picture of Patti Smith".

Controversy and censorship

Mapplethorpe's work has often been shown in publicly funded exhibitions in the United States. Many conservative and religious groups, such as B. the American Family Association , protested regularly against promoting such works of art. In this area, the artist moved into the focus of public discussion in the USA on the subject of art funding and art censorship, as a representative of the overall topic.

In 1990, just a year after Mapplethorpe's death, a retrospective titled The Perfect Moment in Cincinnati sparked controversy. The trigger was seven photographs of Mapplethorpe from the X portfolio. As a result of the exhibition, there was a fruitless attempt to convict the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director Dennis Barrie in a court case for the exhibition of obscene material (pandering obscenity) . The Miller test was used here. The events were filmed with James Woods in the role of museum director under the title Dirty Pictures in 2000.

In Japan, it wasn't until 2008 that the Supreme Court found that Mapplethorpe's erotic images were not in violation of the prohibition on pornography, and released a volume of Mapplethorpe photographs that had been confiscated for eight years.

Individual works

literature

  • Patricia Morrisroe: Mapplethorpe: A Biography. Da Capo Press, 1997, ISBN 0-306-80766-1 .
  • Arthur C. Danto : Playing with the Edge: the Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe. University of California Press, 1996.
  • Gary Banham: Mapplethorpe, Duchamp and the Ends of Photography. 2002.
  • Mark Jarzombek: The Mapplethorpe Trial and the Paradox of its Formalist and Liberal Defense: Sights of Contention. AppendX, No. 2, Spring 1994, pp. 58-81.
  • Paul Martineau, Britta Salvesen (eds.): Robert Mapplethorpe: Die Photografien 1969–1989, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8296-0747-6 .
  • Allen Ellenzweig: The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu / Delacroix to Mapplethorpe. Columbia University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-231-07536-7 .
  • Gordon Baldwin: Robert Mapplethorpe: Portraits. Palm Springs Art Museum , Palm Springs , California , USA 2009, ISBN 978-0-9816743-1-5 .
  • Robert Mapplethorpe - The Black Book. New edition in English / German. Schirmer / Mosel Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-8296-0460-4 .
  • Patti Smith: Just Kids. Patti Smith's autobiographical account of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe. German at Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-462-04228-3 .

Movies

  • 2000: Dirty Pictures (English only) (The film is based on the Cincinnati trial)
  • 2016: Mapplethorpe: Look at the pictures , directed by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (documentary)
  • 2018: Mapplethorpe , film biography

Exhibitions

  • 2009: Robert Mapplethorpe: Portraits , Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California, USA.
  • 2010: Robert Mapplethorpe , NRW-Forum , Düsseldorf
  • 2011: Robert Mapplethorpe. Retrospective , C / O Berlin , Berlin

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Retrieved March 12, 2017 .
  2. Figure under uscb.edu ( Memento from July 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  3. Douglas McLeod, Jill MacKenzie: Print Media and Public Reaction to the Controversy over NEA funding for Robert Mapplethorpe's "The Perfect Moment" Exhibit, . Ed .: J&MC Quarterly. Vol. 75, 1998, pp. 281 .
  4. Zeit Magazin No. 11, March 11, 2010, p. 20.
  5. Zeit Magazin No. 11, March 11, 2010, p. 18.
  6. ^ Judith Tannenbaum: Robert Mapplethorpe. The Philadelphia Story . Vol. 50, 1991, pp. 71-76 .
  7. Japan allows Mapplethorpe pictures. Queer.de, February 20, 2008.
  8. Film information for the Berlinale 2016, accessed online on February 16, 2016