Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for “obscene” artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.
Table of Contents
- 1 Biography
- 1.1 Death
- 1.2 Foundation
- 1.3 Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
- 1.4 Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs
- 1.5 Mapplethorpe: A Biography
- 1.6 Robert Mapplethorpe
- 1.7 Robert Mapplethorpe: Polaroids
- 1.8 Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive
- 1.9 Mapplethorpe
- 1.10 Robert Mapplethorpe: Flowers (CINEMA - MUSIQU)
- 1.11 Black White + Gray
- 1.12 Mapplethorpe The Complete Flowers (Photography)
Biography
Mapplethorpe was born in the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens, New York, the son of Joan Dorothy (Maxey) and Harry Irving Mapplethorpe, an electrical engineer. He was of English, Irish, and German descent, and grew stirring as a Catholic in Our Lady of the Snows Parish. Mapplethorpe attended Martin Van Buren High School, graduating in 1963. He had three brothers and two sisters. One of his brothers, Edward, later worked for him as accomplice and became a photographer as well. He studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in Graphic Arts, though he dropped out in 1969 before attainment his degree. Mapplethorpe lived subsequently his girlfriend Patti Smith from 1967 to 1972, and she supported him by committed in bookstores. They created art together, and maintained a close friendship throughout Mapplethorpe’s life.
Mapplethorpe took his first photographs in the late 1960s or to the fore 1970s using a Polaroid camera. In 1972, he met art curator Sam Wagstaff, who would become his mentor, lover, patron, and lifetime companion. In the mid-1970s, Wagstaff acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and Mapplethorpe began taking photographs of a wide circle of associates and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. During this time, he became connections with New Orleans artist George Dureau, whose do something had such a highbrow impact on Mapplethorpe that he restaged many of Dureau’s in advance photographs. From 1977 until 1980, Mapplethorpe was the follower of writer and Drummer editor Jack Fritscher, who introduced him to the Mineshaft (a members-only BDSM gay leather bar and sex club in Manhattan). Mapplethorpe took many pictures of the Mineshaft and was at one dwindling its credited photographer (… “After dinner I build up the Mineshaft.”)
By the 1980s, Mapplethorpe’s subject event focused upon statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower yet lifes, and severely formal portraits of artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe’s first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. In the 1980s, Wagstaff bought a top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street for Robert, where he resided, also using it as a photo-shoot studio. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom. In 1988, Mapplethorpe agreed Patricia Morrisroe to write his biography, which was based on more than 300 interviews subsequent to celebrities, critics, lovers, and Mapplethorpe himself.
Death
Mapplethorpe died on March 9, 1989 at the age of 42 due to complications from HIV/AIDS, in a Boston hospital. His body was cremated. His ashes are interred at St. John’s Cemetery, Queens in New York City, at his mother’s grave-site, etched “Maxey”.
Foundation
Nearly a year past his death, the ailing Mapplethorpe helped found the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. His vision for the Foundation was that it would be “the take possession of vehicle to guard his work, to minister to his creative vision, and to make known the causes he cared about”. Since his death, the Foundation has not on your own functioned as his endorsed estate and helped broadcast his do something throughout the world, but has plus raised and donated millions of dollars to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV infection. In 1991 the Foundation traditional the Large Nonprofit Organization of the Year tribute as allowance of the Pantheon of Leather Awards. The Foundation donated $1 million towards the 1993 creation of the Robert Mapplethorpe Residence, a six-story townhouse for long-term residential AIDS treatment on East 17th Street in New York City, in partnership gone Beth Israel Medical Center. The habitat closed in 2015 citing financial difficulties. The Foundation furthermore promotes Good art photography at the institutional level. The Foundation helps determine which galleries represent Mapplethorpe’s art. In 2011, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation donated the Robert Mapplethorpe Archive, spanning from 1970 to 1989, to the Getty Research Institute.
Last update 2021-08-06