While knee-jerk Senator Jesse Helms did his unlevel best to ensure that America at-large most remembered the more pornographic work of Robert Mapplethorpe, we of sounder mind know that the lensman contained many multitudes. In addition to shooting kittens and children and mountains and coconuts and all sorts of floral exotica, Mapplethorpe shot portraits, largely of the most influential people of his time. What’s cool about the collection culled in Mapplethorpe X7, a magnificent recent release from teNeues, is that it’s curated by seven of the keenest eyes of all time. There’s David Hockney, who errs on the side of visualists (Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Warhol, et al), and Cindy Sherman, who digs things up close and very personal, whether wardrobed or disrobed. Robert Wilson seems to want to stir up some controversy all over again, or perhaps the playwright simply wishes that everyone see the real cause for hot fuss was Mapplethorpe’s grasp of exquisite beauty. And only a fool would want to legislate against that.
Back in March the Vienna-based WestLicht Museum of Photography purchased the International Polaroid Collection from the Swiss Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, saving it from being sold off piecemeal with the rest of the bankrupt company’s holdings. Made up of 4,400 photos by 800 international artists, including such well-known names as Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Andy Warhol, this massive body of work was shot primarily in the ’70s and ’80s using special custom made cameras and film that was not available on the market — all provided by Polaroid’s founder, Edwin Herbert Land. Beginning today, 350 of the images will go up on display in Austria; click through to view a selection of highlights from the collection, including our absolute favorite — ANDY SNEEZING.
In an interview about his newest film, Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen declared, “I wanted to show the city emotionally, the way I felt about it. It didn’t matter to me how real it was. I wanted it to be Paris through my eyes.” Inspired by the king of fantasy destination films (Vicky Christina Barcelona anyone?), we’ve created a highly subjective list — not of art that is necessarily directly representative of a specific city, nor art that is necessarily created in that city (though there are a few of each on our list), but of art that feels like our favorite cities to us, that calls up the same responses and urges, the same colors and sense memories. Please feel free to chime in with your own choices, feelings and ruminations in the comments!
Tuner Prize winner Gillian Wearing is a master of disguise. These silicone masks and costumes are uncanny! With her varied, oeuvre-spanning show now open at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, we’re drawn to her tribute self-portraits as idols Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Wearing has also recreated photos of her mother, her brother, and herself as a three-year-old child with unsettling authenticity. She calls it “liberating.”
For her new video piece Secrets and Lies, Wearing liberated others by posting an open-call online and recording the intimate confessions of strangers hidden under grotesque masks. Check out some of the artist’s best disguises, starting with this portrait of doll-like supermodel Lily Cole wearing a chipped Lily Cole mask. How meta!
A citizen from each state in the country picked a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph from an archive of 2000 for a fascinating exhibit that opens tonight at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. A California artist is attracted to nostalgia (and Blondie’s Deborah Harry). A New York domestic abuse prosecutor is drawn in by a Mapplethorpe model’s vulnerability, while a Kentuckian is intoxicated by the “sexual quality” of his flowers. They come from diverse ages, races, occupations, backgrounds and familiarity of Mapplethorpe’s work, but together they re-contextualize his legendary oeuvre for the 21st century.
Click through our slideshow of a few of Mapplethorpe’s works selected by Americans representing their state and a few clues about why these images spoke to them. For all 50 sets of insightful reflections, check out Robert Mapplethorpe: 50 Americans.
From Ansel Adams’ American West landscapes to Alex Prager’s cinematic technicolor stills, the AIPAD Photography Show, opening tomorrow in New York City, presents the best in both vintage and contemporary fine art photography from across the nation and abroad. Artists include revered masters such as Robert Adams, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Andre Kertesz, Helen Levitt, and Man Ray, as well as contemporary photographers like Sally Mann, Roger Ballen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andrew Bush, Esko Männikkö, Sally Gall, and Simen Johan. And this year’s event brings with it some surprises. Gary Edwards Gallery from Washington, DC, shows a 1963 portrait of Chairman Mao by an unknown photographer from the Xinhua Agency. One hundred million copies of the portrait, it is rumored, have been printed, and it was the inspiration for the monumental image of Chairman Mao hanging at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing and Andy Warhol’s 1972 Mao screenprints. Whether or not you can make the event, check out a sample of the highlights — including the photo of Chairman Mao — and see why AIPAD is one of the most important international photography events occurring today.
“The way I was with Judy, I was with no one else,” writes Patti Smith in photographer Judy Linn’s, new book, Patti Smith 1969-1976. “We didn’t fit in. But in our world the prom queen had nothing on us.” As friends who met through their boyfriends (Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Barnowsky) in late-’60s Brooklyn, Smith and Linn developed an intimacy and trust that suffuses photos that show Patti applying eyeliner in the mirror, talking on the phone in her underwear, or locked in a kiss with Sam Shepard.
Along with Smith, Linn includes several images of Mapplethorpe, looking innocent and vulnerable despite his skull necklaces and leather pants. Tom Verlaine, Gerard Malanga, and Richard Sohl make cameos. Also fascinating: a wall of photos that looks like a shrine to Smith’s heroes: Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Jean Genet.
The Scissor Sisters, who opened for Lady Gaga in New York last night, are infatuated with Robert Mapplethorpe — so much so that the band featured his photography on its Night Work album and related single covers and interpreted his imagery in a recent video. An iconic artist, who both shocked and wooed art lovers with his powerful pictures of sensual nudity, unsettling sadomasochism, and obscure objects of desire, Mapplethorpe followed his own creative path, while always maintaining a magical sense of mystery.
Great news for those of us on the right (as in, correct, not conservative) side of the culture wars: The LA Times reports that the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have teamed up in a joint purchase of 2,000 Robert Mapplethorpe photographs from the late artist’s foundation. This is big news because the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation had saved final prints of many photos — including the infamous XYZ Portfolio – for just such an acquisition.
The deal also gives the Getty Research Institute dibs on the Mapplethorpe archive, comprised of 200 artworks, 120,000 negatives, 3,500 Polaroids, and all of the artist’s correspondence. And yes, that includes his correspondence with Patti Smith. Here’s hoping a great book comes out of this and that Patti gets to write the intro.
Throughout history, artists have been inspired by the presence of certain other people in their lives that motivated them to create their best work. The source of inspiration could be a man, a woman, or even a pet, but it is almost always a being that also possesses great talent and an expressive imagination. From the model for Édouard Manet’s Olympia and Pablo Picasso’s mistress in the heyday of surrealism to Francis Bacon’s drunken pal and David LaChapelle’s doll-face girlfriend, we’ve uncovered the most influential muses of modern times. Click through our choices and let us know who would be on your list.
