ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

Carlota Lopez
Oct 17, 2017
1 min read

Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most significant and controversial artists of the ‘70s and ‘80s. He was very peculiar.

He started by shooting his circle of friends but as he became more known he also started photographing artists (Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Grace Jones, Patti Smith, Richard Gere), socialites, celebrities and pornographic film stars.

He had a crazy life, had multiple lovers and was unstopabble, nothing was THAT important except himself and his work. He was definetly in love with looks, money and the glamorous life and he never tried to hide it.

His body of work is very diverse, but his main focus and the greater part of his work is homoerotic imagery and close-ups of flowers like orchids and lilies. For him a lily and a flaccid penis were more alike than unalike.

My favorite part of his photos is the geometry, the formalism. He was fixated with pure form, with authenticity.

Robert Mapplethorpe established a Foundation in 1988 to promote photography, support museums of art and to fund medical research in the fight against HIV.

He would turn into art things that no one else would dare. As Patti Smith Said in her book Just Kids, “He was not looking to make a political statement. He was presenting something new, something not seen or explored (…). As Cocteau said of a Genet poem, "His obscenity is never obscene."

His ambition didn’t had limits and that’s one of the reasons why he reached the top, at least my top.