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Self-Portrait, 1975
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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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