Mapplethorpe Notes

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946. He lived in the suburbs of New York and was born into a catholic family. When he was 16 he went to the Pratt institute and this was when he was introduced to photography and Patti Smith. After this he was seen as Americans most controversial photographer. He was well known for his portraits, flower images and his sexually explicit homosexual images which contained nudity. Robert Mapplethorpe liked to keep mystery within his images however his main themes throughout all of his images were sex, violence and race. During an interview Robert Mapplethorpe confessed that he took the image for his own pleasure and to express himself due to him being trapped within a catholic society which did not argue with homosexuality. Another reason he took images was for money. He would take portraits of rich and famous people during a free session however they will end up buying the images anyway. Robert Mapplethorpe also took self-portraits to express himself which can be found in museums. He was described as the photographer of the 70s and the 80s and was powerful and influential. Robert Mapplethorpe’s first portraits were of Patti Smith and had a theme of good and evil. His images were influenced by the catholic composition which was symmetry. However I wanted to create a sense of humor within his image and he wanted the people to see it. To sum up Mapplethorpe’s portraits I would say black and white, studio based, models being themselves, dark background and simple. When Robert Mapplethorpe needed more money he started to photograph flowers, this was when he started to move away from the community and start to make his images personal. Overall all of Robert Mapplethorpe images will always be shocking and fresh.His vast, provocative, and powerful body of work has established him as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Today Mapplethorpe is represented by galleries in North and South America and Europe and his work can be found in the collections of major museums around the world. Beyond the art historical and social significance of his work, his legacy lives on through the work of the Robert 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.