Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his sometimes controversial large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography.
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| Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-portrait 1980 |
His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits,
male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers.
His most controversial work is that of the underground bondage and sadomasochistic (BDSM) scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City. The homo-eroticism of this work fueled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.
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| X Portfolio |
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| Y Portfolio |
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| Z Portfolio |
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.
She wrote of him...
Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art. He
worked without apology, investing the homosexual with grandeur,
masculinity, and enviable nobility. Without affectation, he created a
presence that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace. He was
not looking to make a political statement or an announcement of his
evolving sexual persuasion. He was presenting something new, something
not seen or explored as he saw and explored it. Robert sought to elevate
aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism. As
Cocteau said of a Genet poem, "His obscenity is never obscene."
—Patti Smith, Just Kids [her memoirs]
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| Exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work (photo by Robert Marin) |
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