Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946, the third of six children. He
remembered a very secure childhood on Long Island, which he summed up by
saying, “I come from suburban America. It was a very safe environment,
and it was a good place to come from in that it was a good place to
leave.” He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he
produced artwork in a variety of media. He had not taken any of his own
photographs yet, but he was making art that incorporated many
photographic images appropriated from other sources, including pages
torn from magazines and books. This early interest reflected the
importance of the photographic image in the culture and art of our time,
including the work of such notable artists as Andy Warhol, whom
Mapplethorpe greatly admired.
Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter, using a
Polaroid camera. He did not consider himself a photographer, but wished
to use his own photographic images in his paintings, rather than
pictures from magazines. “I never liked photography,” he is quoted as
saying, “Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the
photographs when you hold them in your hand.” His first Polaroids were
self-portraits and the first of a series of portraits of his close
friend, the singer-artist-poet Patti Smith. These early photographic
works were generally shown in groups or elaborately presented in shaped
and painted frames that were as significant to the finished piece as the
photograph itself. The shift to photography as Mapplethorpe’s sole means
of expression happened gradually during the mid-seventies. He acquired a
large format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle
of friends and acquaintances. These included artists, composers,
socialites, pornographic film stars and members of the S & M
underground. Some of these photographs were shocking for their content
but exquisite in their technical mastery. Mapplethorpe told ARTnews in
late 1988, “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’ I’m looking
for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before…I was
in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.”
During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe’s photographs began a shift toward
a phase of refinement of subject and an emphasis on classical formal
beauty. During this period he concentrated on statuesque male and female
nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and
celebrities. He continued to challenge the definition of photography by
introducing new techniques and formats to his oeuvre: color Polaroids,
photogravure, platinum prints on paper and linen, Cibachomes and dye
transfer color prints, as well as his earlier black-and-white gelatin
silver prints.
Mapplethorpe produced a consistent body of work that strove for balance
and perfection and established him in the top rank of twentieth-century
artists. In 1987 he established the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to
promote photography, support museums that exhibit photographic art, and
to fund medical research and finance projects in the fight against AIDS
and HIV-related infection. |
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