| Dates: | 1946, 4 November - 1989, 9 March | | Active: | US | | Gender: | Male |
American photographer who experimented with Polaroid images and in the 1970s he switched to large and medium format shots to take homo-erotic and sado-masochistic images. He also took series of still-lifes, studio shots of flowers and portraits of exquisite beauty.Preparing biographies
Biography provided by Focal Press
Mapplethorpe achieved saturated recognition for his elegant photographic still life, portraits, and nudes, before dying tragically of AIDS. Born in New York to a Catholic family, he studied at Pratt Institute (drawing, sculpture) before becoming a photographic artist (he had considered a career as a musician). His interest in camera images was piqued by access to closed collections maintained by John McKendry (curator at Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Sam Wagstaff. He started taking Polaroid images and was influenced by Warhol’s art. Early portraits were of Lisa Lyon and Patti Smith. Mapplethorpe’s work was presented in a relatively modernist, aesthetisized style and his best known photographs featured nudes of black males and images with overt homoerotic subjects. The Corcoran Gallery canceled a solo exhibit, The Perfect Moment, by Mapplethorpe in 1989 due to pressure from groups voicing opposition to depictions of homosexual eroticism and the fact that the artist had received some funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The show was put on in Cincinnati in 1990 and this resulted in litigation over obscenity charges (subsequently, charges against the show sponsors resulted in an acquittal). The death of the artist from AIDS just before this brought about a clamorous collision between art, reality, morality, and legal issues. At the same time, the "culture wars" between liberal and conservative viewpoints flared up in many arenas. As an indirect consequence of Mapplethorpe’s photographs, public funding for the arts suffered drastic curtailment in the 1990s but the art world, for the most part, became more steadfast as a defender of freedom of expression.
(Author: Ken White - Rochester Institute of Technology)
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409]
(Used with permission)
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Danto, A. C., 1996, Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) [Δ]
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 1980, Robert Mapplethorpe: Black Males, (Amsterdam: Galeria Jurka) [Text by Edmund White.] [Δ]
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 1983, Lady: Lisa Lyon, (New York: St. Martins) [Δ]
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 1999, Pictures: Robert Mapplethorpe, (New York: Arena Editions) [Edited by D. Levas.] [Δ]
Marshall, R., Howard, R. & Sischy, I., 1988, Robert Mapplethorpe, (New York: Whitney Museum of Art) [Δ]
Morrisroe, P., 1995, Mapplethorpe, (New York: Papermac) [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com | |
Family history
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