MAPPLETHORPE

The talk-radio in London was buzzing about this exhibition.... two photographs were removed from it because of complaints that they were corrupting, offensive and pornographic. Various groups gave interviews decrying the content of the exhibition and calling for it to be banned.
I therefore fully expected to be confronted by a protest when I arrived at the Hayward Gallery. From a distance I saw a crowd, but as I got nearer I was rather disappointed to see that it was just people queueing to buy tickets. It seems that many protest groups feel that media interviews replace any need for an actual physical presence. I like a good argument, so this was something of a let-down!

Mapplethorpe was never a stranger to controversy. His last retrospective, The Perfect Moment, which toured the US just before his death from AIDS in 1989, had provoked obscenity charges and the resignation of a prominent gallery director, as well as record attendances.
Inside the exhibition my companion and I were greeted by a sign:--

The exhibition contains a number of sexually explicit images which some visitors may find disturbing. It is not recommended for children.

There are over 200 images which, though explicit, could not be described as erotic. I am not even sure that the word sexual could be applied to them as they were so clinical.... clinical, precise, and controlled.

His focus on bodily perfection led him to photograph athletes, models, dancers and body builders, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and the first world champion of female body-building, Lisa Lyon. It is clear from his work that he was aware of the link between some of his art and a classical tradition of idealising the beauty of young men. Indeed, he reproduces classical images within his work.There is a definite contrast between this work and that which draws on modern homosexual sub-culture. His Ajinto of 1981 has a symmetery and simplicity which is beautiful. It is not explicit, nor designed to shock; nor is it obsessive in the way that others of his photographs are. This obsessive, unbalanced approach in much of his work didn't shock me. It just was something I couldn't understand, something which distanced me from whatever he was trying to communicate -- assuming he  was actually trying to communicate, rather than just express. These images to me were just ugly. Ugly, not because they depicted men but because of the  way in which they depicted men. Many feminists have criticised the objectification of women in pornography; here we had the objectification of men.

His portraits of Andy Warhol, Isabella Rossellini and Susan Sarondon, and a series of pictures of his one-time partner Patti Smith were impressive. He moved easily between New York's sexual underworld and its cultural elite. The pictures of flowers (such as Tulips, 1988) were beautiful as well as sexually charged.
My favourite photograph was an unusual one for Mapplethorpe. It showed a tattered American flag flying. He had captured the sun just behind the stars on the flag. A beautiful, positive, hopeful image. No one who could appreciate and record that image could be entirely bad.... even though he depicted himself as a devil more than once!

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Who was Robert Mapplethorpe?  He was born in 1946 on Long Island, New York, into a Roman Catholic family. He studied painting and sculpture at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Without any formal photographic training, he started taking pictures with a polaroid camera, and operated primarily in the photographic medium from 1972 onwards. He first exhibited his photographs in 1973, in a group show with Andy Warhol. Mapplethorpe worked with a Hasselblad camera from 1976. Since 1977 his work has been shown in solo exhibitions all over the world. He died in 1989, aged 42.

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