Mapplethorpe is one of the most popular photographers of the second half of the 20th century. His stylistic influence is widespread, particularly on advertising, a field he returned to late in his career. He made news when a print of “Man in a Polyester Suit” sold for close to a half-million dollars at Sotheby’s last year.
Why is Robert Mapplethorpe so important?
Not only has Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography had an indelible influence on the world of art, but Mapplethorpe’s message of homosexual rights and AIDS awareness continues to resonate.
What is the Mapplethorpe Foundation?
He established the Foundation in 1988 to promote photography, support museums that exhibit photographic art, and to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV-related infection. Musician and poet Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe had a unique relationship: they were friends, lovers, artistic collaborators and soul mates.
What is the significance of Mapplethorpe's tragic end?
Mapplethorpe's tragic end enacts the allegory of artist as cultural hero. He is remembered as one of the first celebrity victims of AIDS, and because of this, his legacy is often used to symbolize the struggle for gay liberation. Born in 1946, Robert Mapplethorpe was the third of six children.
What is Mapplethorpe's assemblage?
The assemblage is one of Mapplethorpe's earliest surviving works and he created several similar works of briefs stretched to wood frames.
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Who was Robert Mapplethorpe and what was his relation to the culture wars?
Artist Robert Mapplethorpe found himself at the center of the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s for his best-known work, homoerotic and often explicit photographs that drew the ire of federal lawmakers. Now two major Los Angeles museums have mounted a retrospective of his work, asking viewers to take another look.
Who was Robert Mapplethorpe inspired by?
Influenced by artists such as Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, he also experimented with various materials in mixed-media collages, including images cut from books and magazines. In 1969, he and Patti Smith, whom he had met three years earlier, moved into the Chelsea Hotel.
When did Mapplethorpe become famous?
Mapplethorpe first gained widespread notice in the late 1970's for his elegantly composed, beautifully printed black-and-white photographs of the male figure, many of which were explicitly homoerotic.
What were Mapplethorpe's artistic goals?
“Mapplethorpe always said that his goal was to achieve perfection in form, which is of course an ideal that links him to Michelangelo,” said Jérôme Neutres, the head curator of the Grand Palais retrospective.
Why is Mapplethorpe controversial?
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989), a highly regarded if controversial photographic artist, gained notoriety for his portrayal of sexually explicit images.
What type of photographer was Robert Mapplethorpe?
Photograp...PhotographRobert Mapplethorpe/Forms
What are some interesting facts about Robert Mapplethorpe?
Used by permission.Robert Mapplethorpe didn't begin his career as a photographer. ... His early photography was deeply rooted in 1970s New York. ... Mapplethorpe's work was often controversial. ... Mapplethorpe was a go-to photographer for celebrity portraits. ... There is a strong sense of classicism throughout his work.
Who inherited Mapplethorpe estate?
In his will he left bequests of $100,000 each to the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the New York Public Library, as well as $10,000 and the family silver to his sister, Mrs. Jefferson, and $10,000 to each of her three children. “She's enormously rich,” said Mapplethorpe about Mrs. Jefferson.
Where was Mapplethorpe born?
Queens, New York, NYRobert Mapplethorpe / Place of birth
What cultural conventions did Mapplethorpe challenge?
What cultural conventions did Robert Mapplethorpe challenge in his photographic portrait of female bodybuilder, Lisa Lyon? Russian Social Realism. What type of line does Ellsworth Kelley use to imply the illusion of leaves occupying real space?
What was the attitude of the Dadaists and how was this reflected in their art?
Dada artists produced works which were nihilistic or reflected a cynical attitude toward social values, and, at the same time, irrational-- absurd and playful, emotive and intuitive. Less a style than a zeitgeist, Dadaists typically produced art objects in unconventional forms produced by unconventional methods.
What was Dada's main focus?
The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestos, art theory, theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.
Who influenced Herb Ritts?
For his fashion photographs, Ritts drew inspiration from painting, sculpture, film, and the work of such leading fashion and portrait photographers as George Hurrell, Horst P. Horst, Louise Dahl Wolfe, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon.
What are some interesting facts about Robert Mapplethorpe?
Used by permission.Robert Mapplethorpe didn't begin his career as a photographer. ... His early photography was deeply rooted in 1970s New York. ... Mapplethorpe's work was often controversial. ... Mapplethorpe was a go-to photographer for celebrity portraits. ... There is a strong sense of classicism throughout his work.
What was Antony Gormley's inspiration?
As an art student, Gormley had been influenced by an earlier generation of American sculptors – Minimalists like Carl Andre and Donald Judd, who used found objects or industrial materials, and Land Artists like Robert Smithson, who took sculpture out of the gallery and into the natural world.
Who gave Mapplethorpe his first camera?
John McKendryWith his first camera, a Polaroid SX-70 provided by the late curator of prints and photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, John McKendry, Mapplethorpe was able to produce photographic images of his own. Later he would acquire a 4-by-5-inch view camera, and finally a Hasselblad.
What did Mapplethorpe do?
Mapplethorpe will be remembered historically as a traditional black and white photographer, but he also worked in sculpture, combines, films, and was hired to photograph celebrities for magazines. It is now considered common for artists to dabble across mediums and find one that best suits their message.
What was Mapplethorpe interested in?
Mapplethorpe was interested in universal values like symmetry and beauty, and approached all of his subjects with the same discerning eye through sublime composition, use of color contrasts, and cinematic lighting. He is considered a formalist for his sculptural use of photography and often listed Michelangelo as a primary influence.
What is Michelangelo's primary influence?
He is considered a formalist for his sculptural use of photography and often listed Michelangelo as a primary influence. For him, photography was a means to an end in a search for original self-expression. His utilitarian use of the medium resulted in a revolution for art photography.
Where did Robert Mapplethorpe grow up?
Mapplethorpe grew up in a conservative Catholic household nestled in the quiet Queen's suburb of Floral Park. Mapplethorpe described his hometown as too safe to stay, "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." The Mapplethorpe family attended Mass every Sunday and Robert served as an altar boy and occasionally made art for their family priest. His father, an amateur photographer himself, had a dark room in his basement. However, Mapplethorpe did not show an early interest in photography.
What is the assemblage of Mapplethorpe?
The assemblage is one of Mapplethorpe's earliest surviving works and he created several similar works of briefs stretched to wood frames.
Why is Mapplethorpe's tragic end important?
He often said that he would work in marble if it weren't so time consuming. Mapplethorpe's tragic end enacts the allegory of artist as cultural hero. He is remembered as one of the first celebrity victims of AIDS, and because of this, his legacy is often used to symbolize the struggle for gay liberation.
Did Robert Mapplethorpe make art?
The Mapplethorpe family attended Mass every Sunday and Robert served as an altar boy and occasionally made art for their family priest. His father, an amateur photographer himself, had a dark room in his basement. However, Mapplethorpe did not show an early interest in photography. Read full biography.
What is Robert Mapplethorpe known for?
Robert Mapplethorpe is best known for his powerful black-and-white portraits and self-portraits. His photographs both challenge us and present us with images of classical beauty.
What did Mapplethorpe do in the 1980s?
Mapplethorpe’s career flourished in the 1980s and he continued to explore and refine his techniques and formats. He also worked on commercial projects, creating album cover art for the musician Patti Smith and the band Television, as well as a series of portraits and party pictures for Interview Magazine.
Why did Mapplethorpe compose his photographs?
Mapplethorpe consciously composes the images to emphasise their structure and geometry. In many of his portraits and self-portraits, the sitter is shown from the front and presented in perfect symmetry. Mapplethorpe’s photograph Patti Smith 1976, like many of his photographs of Smith, is taken outside the studio.
What album did Mapplethorpe take for Patti Smith?
The last album cover photograph that Mapplethorpe took for Patti Smith was for her 1988 album Dream of Life. Patti Smith wrote the foreword (an introduction that often appears at the beginning of a book) for one of Mapplethorpe’s final projects, Flowers, a book of his flower studies.
Why did Mapplethorpe buy a camera?
In 1970 he bought a Polaroid camera so he could take photographs to use in his collages. But he began to appreciate the quality of Polaroid photographs in their own right and his first solo exhibition, in 1973 at the Light Gallery in New York City, was called Polaroids. Two years later Mapplethorpe bought a more sophisticated camera, a Hasselblad medium format camera, and began photographing the people he knew. Artists, musicians, pornographic film stars, and other members of the edgy New York underground scene were all captured on Mapplethorpe's camera.
Why are Mapplethorpe's photographs controversial?
Mapplethorpe’s photographs of children have sometimes proved controversial because of the question of whether they wanted to be photographed and also because of the subject of some of Mapplethorpe’s other work.
When did Robert Mapplethorpe have his first major exhibition?
Despite (or perhaps because of) being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, he accelerated his creative efforts, undertaking increasingly ambitious projects. In 1988, a year before his death, he had his first major exhibition at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Robert Mapplethorpe. Self Portrait 1988.
