I am looking for perfection in form. I do that with portraits. I do it with cocks. I do it with flowers.
Born in 1946 to a middle-class Catholic family in Long Island, Robert Mapplethorpe s elevation to the status of major artist only began in earnest when he started shooting with a Polaroid camera in 1972. Living with Patti Smith at that time, he was responsible for three of the singer-songwriter s highly distinctive album sleeves those for Horses, Wave and Dream Of Life.
Indicative of Mapplethorpe s distancing from the mainstream was the fact that he shared a group show of original work with Andy Warhol in 1973. The quest to merge photography and classical sculpture permeates much of his work, nonetheless, resulting in more conventional shots of well-known subjects like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigourney Weaver, Lisa Lyon and Donald Sutherland. Away from the mainstream, however, Mapplethorpe was being increasingly drawn into a sado-masochistic, male homosexual subculture.
I went into photography because it seemed like a perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today s existence, he told Time Out in 1983. I m trying to record the moment I m living in and where I m living, which happens to be New York. I am trying to pick up the madness and give it some order. As a statement of the times, it s not bad in terms of being accurate. These pictures could not have been done at any other time . . . I don t photograph things I ve not been involved with myself.
One of the criticisms levelled at Mapplethorpe s work has been his depiction of well-hung black males, beautifully photographed, but open to accusations of being stereotypical and racist. It is a point which the artist himself once acknowledged.
I think it is racist, he countered. It has to be racist. I m white and they are black. There is a difference somehow, but it doesn t have to be negative. Is there any difference in approaching a black man who doesn t have clothes on and a white man who doesn t have any clothes on? Not really, it s form and what you see into that and do with it. I do the same thing. I m not trying to do it in a different way.
It can also be argued that if Mapplethorpe truly wished to be revolutionary, he would ve completely covered the black models while portraying the likes of Sutherland and Schwarzenegger with their appendages hanging out.
It s a point, says Christine Redmond of The Gallery Of Photography in Temple Bar, which is currently hosting the second phase of the Mapplethorpe exhibition, but his work is pushing the boundaries in a small, personal way because at the end of the day, art is a personal interpretation and it has to say something to the viewer. We re showing the work in a context where some of the explicit sexual work is an exploration of his own sexuality, yet is shown alongside his portraits and floral images. It is a body of work.
Has the Gallery received any complaints regarding the more explicit images?
To be quite honest, I m utterly amazed at how considered and mature the media coverage has been, with the notable exception of one tabloid newspaper, says Christine. We ve had schoolboys in who were interested in its artistic merit, genuinely, and we gave them a guided tour. On the other hand, I was talking to someone the other day who said he d been in a locker-room after squash and was horrified listening to a couple of men talking about the show. They were so homophobic, yet in the next sentence were talking about their wives in an equally demeaning way.
It seems fitting and right to us, she adds, as the leading light in photography in Ireland, and in great new premises in Temple Bar, it was a good exhibition to bring here to highlight our existence. n
Part two of the Mapplethorpe Exhibition at the Gallery Of Photography runs until January 31 and focuses on his later work, right up to his death from AIDS in 1989.