Robert Mapplethorpe: Photography & a new gay sensibility.

[Shelter]

Hi Gorgik - once again many, many thanks for your great work about "your" hero Mapplethorpe. You have written too about the last movie which I've watched as well and which was the reason to ask you to write this report. I was fascinated from this film and I'll understand now your points of criticism. So I think the life of this remarkable artist will be made never correct in a movie of 102 minutes. It is my opinion that for such a life a series would correspond much more and better!

 

[gorgik9]

Hi Gorgik - once again many, many thanks for your great work about "your" hero Mapplethorpe. You have written too about the last movie which I've watched as well and which was the reason to ask you to write this report. I was fascinated from this film and I'll understand now your points of criticism. So I think the life of this remarkable artist will be made never correct in a movie of 102 minutes. It is my opinion that for such a life a series would correspond much more and better!

Thanks Shelter! It seems we have about the same opinion - it's an OK biopic and Matt Smith is great, but the idea to hoppety-hoppety-hop on every little biographic detail while at the same time excluding things of really central importance for his development as a human being and as an artist isn't a very good idea.

And the idea to give the audience the impression that Robert and Patti didn't meet until 1969 - well, thats just wacko! Patti Smith's autobiographical Just Kids has been a bestseller all over the world and translated into so many different languages - millions of people from all over knows that they met in 1967. I mean you could let the movie start in 1969 - there are lot's of good reasons to do so - and at the same time make a simple voice-over saying something like "They had already met two years earlier" or something like that.

Well, I've got a lot of more posting to do in this thread. Maybe I'll try to end the Mapplethorpe-part tomorrow and get on with George Dureau and all the others - we'll see.

 

[gorgik9]

Cocks, flowers and all the post-mortal commotion, part 1.

I've decided to cut this post up in two parts of which the first will be dominated by pictures, while the second part will be more text dominated.

* * * * * * *

Mapplethorpe was spectacularly productive and it's impossible to cover all his fields of activity - my thread would go on eternally. Hence, I've decided to exclude his many portraits of New York socialites, European aristocrats, Hollywood actors, pop stars and fellow artists (like: Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Louise Bourgeoise, Willem De Kooning etc.) and I'll only include Robert's portraits of Patti Smith and Sam Wagstaff, which will be posted later in their own posts in this thread.

Many photographers working at the same time as Robert made great portraits of the rich and the famous; I want to concentrate on things more particular for him and his artwork. So in what follows I want to look at his pictures of cocks and explicit homosexual activity, followed by his flower studies. In part 2 of this post I'll talk about The Perfect Moment-retrospective which became the center of violent political controversies the months after his death.

Cocks.




























Flowers.



How on earth do you get from Mapplethorpe's cocks to his flower studies? In his own eyes this was easy - there's no big difference between photographing cocks and shooting flowers, both are a matter of light and form.

And flowers are the reproductive organs of plants.







Mapplethorpe often highlighted that his flowers weren't just sweet and cute: "-My flowers are New York flowers, they're flowers with an edge."


Visualizing the invisible.

I recently found a great essay by art historian and queer theorist Jonathan D. Katz titled "Mapplethorpe's queer classicism: The substance of style.", giving a good summary of Mapplethorpe's complete artistic, political and existential project.

In my first Mapplethorpe-post I had a quote where he talked about his feelings when he as a young teen saw some men's magazines on 42nd Street and how much he wanted to get this powerful feeling across into art. Katz quotes Robert from a 1983 interview with David Hershkovits:

"I want to publish a pornographic magazine. I want to reach 42nd Street. I want to see how close I can come to real pornography. Play with the edge. I want to see if you can take some of those pictures I've taken and put them in the context of a pornographic magazine. In other words, can somebody jack-off to a photograph that, in fact, is better than pornography? The idea of doing a smut magazine that is also art. Having a magazine on 42nd Street also be a catalogue for an art show."

Katz makes plain the central position pornography had in his conception of art, arguing that "[p]ornography and art, in Mapplethorpe's formulation, shared the pursuit of beauty and the solicitation of desire - and any dividing line between these two kinds of looking was specious."

He was engaged in a quest for a new kind of art, one that refused to defend or acknowledge any distinction between different kinds of aesthetic experiences. When his work was aggressively accused just a few months after his death for confusing art with pornography, the accusers - like Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan - got it in a sense right. But we could also imagine Mapplethorpe's defiant response from beyond the grave: "-Just what I wanted - why wouldn't I ?"

Katz shows that Mapplethorpe's art is an analytical exposure of the generally invisible, but controlling, substrata of values and relations that structure the social norm and reproduce its configurations of power. It's an analysis centered on the contrasting relation of the penis and the phallus - the penis is of course the patently vulnerable piece of flesh all men have, and which is usually socioculturally invisible; the phallus, on the other hand, is a cultural construct endowed with illusions of invulnerable authority and power.

And the phallus is as visible as the penis is normally invisible, so we have - to give some famous examples of phalloi in various cities and countries - the Empire State Phallus in New York, the Sears Phallus in Chicago, the Eiffel Phallus in Paris, France, and the Turning Torso Phallus in Malmö, Sweden.

But Mapplethorpe showed - again and again - what in our culture should be kept hidden. The penis, this vulnerable piece of flesh. Of course all hell broke loose just after his death.

 

[gorgik9]

...and all the post-mortal commotion, part 2.


"The Perfect Moment"; or: shouting at a dead man from the US Senate floor.



There were two large retrospectives of Mapplethorpe's art planned for 1988: 1) the retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art;

2) Robert Mapplethorpe, the Perfect Moment, which was the more comprehensive of the two and planned to go on tour to a number of US museums, beginning at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (December 1988-January 1989) and then travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

So far so good - the critical response was enthusiastic and the attendance robust. The problems and brawls began when Christina Orr-Cahall, director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., on June 12, 1989, decided to cancel the exhibition in her venue just a few weeks before its announced opening. Mapplethorpe had been dead for three months and US society was moving into the epoch of "the cultural wars" where conservative politicians became the sworn enemy of avant-garde art. (The projection on the walls of the Corcoran [above] was part of a public protest against Orr-Cahall's decision to cancel the exhibition.)

It's easy to forget that the situation had been quite different less than 10 years earlier: Andy Warhol had been invited by president Reagan (together with Warhol's secretary Bob Colacello) to the state dinner for Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos at the White House, and this happened just a few years after Andy had completed a painting series using urine and another series of same-sex acts and male torsos.

In December 1981 Nancy Reagan was on the cover of Interview, the magazine founded and published by Warhol, and this particular issue featured photos of Mapplethorpe out on the town, homoerotic pictures by George Platt-Lynes and Herbert List, and on top of it all was an illustrated interview with popsinger Prince, provocatively posed almost naked.

So the cultural landscape had changed profoundly from 1981 to 1989 - what the fuck was going on? Why did it happen? The first eruption of what would become known as "the culture wars" didn't focus on Mapplethorpe at all - it was about Andres Serrano's 1987 artwork Piss Christ denounced in April 1989 by Donald Wildmon (founder of the American Family Association) as a vicious piece of anti-christian bigotry and Wildmon's sentiment was echoed in the Senate by Republican Alfonse D'Amato of New York.


Andres Serrano: Piss Christ

It has its own interest to note, that Serrano shook his head at the accusations, declaring that he had no intention to be blasphemous and offensive: "I've been a Catholic all my life, so I am a follower of Christ."

The guy to fully forge that evil equation in political rhetoric Art=Gay=AIDS was - however - the Republican Senator from North Carolina Jesse Helms (1921-2008), the Joe McCarthy of the late 20th century. But the emerging big quarrel wasn't really about art at all - it was all about homosexuality, and what made the argument so explosive was - of course - AIDS.

Think about the global political situation in 1989-90: the Berlin wall had fallen, the Warshaw Pact was in total demise and the US had lost its bitter enemy since 1945. So what do you do when you've bitterly lost your enemy? The obvious - you construct a new one, an evil internal enemy! The new enemy - AIDS and homosexuality.

But the bridgehead from which Helms and the other conservatives could launch their attac was the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the only federal-level funding body in the US. The helmsians were all brimstone and fire over any NEA support for art in any way thematizing sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular, arguing - with pretty much success - for new amendments making such support impossible in the future.

My analysis of the violent arguments over Mapplethorpe's art after his death and the following culture wars mainly follows Jonathan D. Katz essay " 'The Senators Were Revolted': Homophobia and the Culture Wars.", published in A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945. Ed. Amelia Jones, 2006.

What I cannot follow is Katz' strong tendency to reduce Mapplethorpe's art to a sign with Gay Identity as its single signified, and this for mainly two reasons:First because of the tendency to misuse the concept of identity (which is a concept of reflection always presupposing difference) by reifying the concept, making it into a thing we can put on the table.

My second reason is that we easily find works of art utterly impossible to reduce to signs of Gay Identity. The following two pictures are both among his very late work and among the most emotionally moving pictures I know.

The first (below) could possibly be the very last photo Robert ever made before being hospitalized and soon thereafter passed away. It's a photo of the head of a mid 19th century neo-classicist sculpture of the Greek god Hermes, son of Zeus, brother of Apollo and Dionysos. Hermes was the great trickster and transgressor in Greek mythology, and an example of him as transgressor was his function to lead the souls of the recently dead down to the underworld, to Hades. As such he was given the name Hermes Psychopompos, "Hermes who leads the procession of the recently dead souls".

Mapplethorpe knew full well that he would soon, very soon, meet Hermes Psychopompos. He had the courage to look death in the eyes. This is a picture that makes me cry every time I look at it.



I'll end this chapter with an image of our common end - The End for all us humans...



All further discussion of identity - gay or not - doesn't really matter, it's utter futility. Shakespeare got it right: "So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men..."

* * * * * * *

In my posts next week I'll start moving on to Mapplethorpe's contemporaries. The first will be Georges Dureau.

 

[Billyo]

Patricia Morrisroe describes Mapplethorpe as a 'low key anti-semite'. So I would have to question such an 'artist'. Incidentally you should watch the doentary 'Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski ' on Netflix, as a case study of how these 'artists' with their very dark philosophies can hoodwink people into not just admiring them but even WORSHIPPING them.

Mapplethorpe was not a nice person. I have sympathy for how he died. But there is one sin he should not be forgiven and the same goes for Szukalski.

 

[gorgik9]

Patricia Morrisroe describes Mapplethorpe as a 'low key anti-semite'. So I would have to question such an 'artist'. Incidentally you should watch the doentary 'Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski ' on Netflix, as a case study of how these 'artists' with their very dark philosophies can hoodwink people into not just admiring them but even WORSHIPPING them.

Mapplethorpe was not a nice person. I have sympathy for how he died. But there is one sin he should not be forgiven and the same goes for Szukalski.

I haven't had time to re-read what Morrisroe says about Mapplethorpe as a "low key anti-semite" & I don't think that Mapplethorpe was always "a nice person".

But the idea that anyone who isn't a 100% bonafide "nice person" couldn't have produced top class artistic or philosophical or scientific work is absolutely impossible since what it means is to shut down and censor all kinds of work retrospectively - and how far back? 100 years back? 300 years back? 500 years? 1000 years? And who will be appointed grand inquisitor? And by whom?

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was undoubtedly one of the most important philosophers and mathematicians in the early 20th century AND he was a truly horrible antisemite. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was if possible an even worse antisemite AND one of the most important philosophers in the 20th century.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was a violent and dangerous man who commited at least one murder. He was a violent and dangerous man living in that extremely violent city of Rome, Italy, at the turn of the century 1600. AND he was possibly the greatest painter ever (if painting refers to oilpainting on canvas and woodpanel).

So even if the person behind a work is a genuine dickhead, this most certainly doesn't mean that the work is all shit. That's a rather horrible non-sequitur.

 

[Shelter]

I haven't had time to re-read what Morrisroe says about Mapplethorpe as a "low key anti-semite" & I don't think that Mapplethorpe was always "a nice person".

But the idea that anyone who isn't a 100% bonafide "nice person" couldn't have produced top class artistic or philosophical or scientific work is absolutely impossible since what it means is to shut down and censor all kinds of work retrospectively - and how far back? 100 years back? 300 years back? 500 years? 1000 years? And who will be appointed grand inquisitor? And by whom?

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was undoubtedly one of the most important philosophers and mathematicians in the early 20th century AND he was a truly horrible antisemite. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was if possible an even worse antisemite AND one of the most important philosophers in the 20th century.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was a violent and dangerous man who commited at least one murder. He was a violent and dangerous man living in that extremely violent city of Rome, Italy, at the turn of the century 1600. AND he was possibly the greatest painter ever (if painting refers to oilpainting on canvas and woodpanel).

So even if the person behind a work is a genuine dickhead, this most certainly doesn't mean that the work is all shit. That's a rather horrible non-sequitur.

:thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up:

I'm a great admirer of the music of Richard Wagner - am I now an anti-Semite???

 

[gorgik9]

George Dureau (1930-2014)

While there's a vast literature on Mapplethorpe today, the literature on George Dureau is still quite scarce - but make no mistake: Dureau was a very large planet in the Mapplethorpian solar system.

The first book about his photography was titled New Orleans published in 1985 by Gay Men's Press in London, but the second didn't occure until 31 years later and two years after Dureau's death: Philip Gefter's hauntingly beautiful book George Dureau published in 2016. Then there's a couple of interviews with Dureau by Jack Fritscher and a couple of other short texts - and that's not very much.

Mapplethorpe and Dureau resembled each others on a number of points: they were both gay, they both started their careers as artists using traditional media and methods (painting, drawing, sculpture) and neither had any original intention to get into photography but they did and at about the same time, Dureau in the late 1960s, Mapplethorpe a few years later into the 1970s.

They met in 1979, became good friends and influenced each other fundamentally - Robert went to New Orleans to visit George many times and bought quite a few prints from him (about 100 prints if I remember correctly). They both came to cultivate the male nude in their photography, and in particular the black male nude - and on this point Dureau was the pioneer, not Mapplethorpe. And they would go out at night to cruise the New Orleans gay bars together.

On the other hand they were also distinctly different in a number of ways. First of all, Dureau was 16 yers older and could well nigh have been Mapplethorpe's father. George was as much a fixture of the French Quarters in New Orleans as Robert was a New York boy and, more importantly, I think that Dureau related to his models in ways that differed quite a lot from the ways Mapplethorpe related to his models. When Dureau got a camera in the late 60s, he invited the underprivileged, multiracial teenagers to his studio and offered them something to eat if they would pose for him. As time went by, some of his models also became his lovers or fuckbuddies, some even lived in his house, some became close friends - for years, for decades.


George Dureau in his studio. Beneeth the big male nude painting there are two smaller portraits: a self-portrait to the left, a portrait of Mapplethorte to the right.


George Dureau: Portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Among the things to make you immediately see that we're walking into Dureau-country and not Mapplethorpe-country are all the portraits of disabled people, amputees and dwarfs - made so damn beautiful and sexy in George's pictures. He said when inteviewed in 2005 by Jack Fritscher: "My models are people who are beautiful and sexy and the fact that there's a stum where an arm or a leg should be doesn't mar their sexiness or their beauty. [...] You don't say 'Well, let's throw out the little Roman sculpture because it's partly broken." The picture above of Wilbert Hines is one of Dureau's most well known works from the 1970s.



The two following pictures are of B.J. Robinson, one of his most frequent models in the 1980s and 90s.





I think it's fair to say that compared to Mapplethorpe ( at least Mapplethorpe in his "Hasselblad period") Dureau's approache to his models was to photograph them in a simple and unstylized manner and didn't use much studio artifice (lighting, backdrop, props). He wanted the artifice to fall away as he photographed his subjects, as if the camera wasn't in the room. While Mapplethorpe had romantic relationships with some of his models, it was his general practice to keep a professional distance from most of the people he photographed.

Dureau - on the other hand - seems to always have been emotionally in touch with and touched by his models. He fed them when they posed for him, he provided shelter for them in his big New Orleans house if necessary - even paid their electric bills or their doctor's bills. I have a hunch Mapplethorpe didn't really have that kind of deep connection to his models...



















I don't know nearly as much about Dureau as I know about Mapplethorpe, but it strikes me that maybe in some sense George comes closer to my heart than Robert.

* * * * * *

In the next post it's time for Patti Smith!

 

[gorgik9]

:thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up::thumbs up:

I'm a great admirer of the music of Richard Wagner - am I now an anti-Semite???

Precisely!!! My opinion is that we must learn to wrap our heads around TWO incontestible facts: that Richard Wagner WAS quite a horrible anti-semite AND that he was one of the most important composers ever - I mean, where would film music be without Wagner?

Personally,Wagner isn't really my cup of tea - I'm more of a Schubert-Mozart-Bach kind of guy, but Wagner's importance is impossible to deny.

 

[Billyo]

I don't think that Mapplethorpe was always "a nice person".

I feel that if someone is an anti-semite, then by definition they are not a nice person.

But the idea that anyone who isn't a 100% bonafide "nice person" couldn't have produced top class artistic or philosophical or scientific work

I didn't say that. However we are quite entitled to exercise caution and look for any dark or insidious aspects to their work. Is the artist, or porported artist, manipulating us through their work and to what end?

the person behind a work is a genuine dickhead, this most certainly doesn't mean that the work is all shit.

Again, I didn't say that. The phrase I used was 'to question'. That's perfectly sensible.

I'm a great admirer of the music of Richard Wagner - am I now an anti-Semite???

Again, I didn't say that. However, consider that Wagner and Mapplethorpe lived in very different eras. Wagner was dead long before the world bore witness to the horrors of WWII. Mapplethorpe was born post-WWII. He was aware of the horror of the gas-chambers, of the monstrous 'scientific' experiments carried our on Jewish people. Of the industrialised gassing of millions with a machine-like glee. I wonder if Wagner had witnessed such things would he have repented of his anti-semitism? Would he have seen the error of his thinking? We'll never know. However, all the indications are that knowledge of it did not stop Mapplethorpe's hatred. He was anti-semitic despite his knowledge of WWII. Its worth reflecting long and hard on that.

Do you really feel Mapplethorpe's work is comparable to that of Wagner?

I don't.

I'm not saying that Mapplethorpe's work is completely without talent. But he can more easily be compared with Lady Gaga. If she undertook a photography class she would produce a body of work very comparable to Mapplethorpe's I'd wager.

But is it, being honest with ourselves, art?

Clever. Yes (if you want a short cut to fame).

Fine art. No.

 

[gorgik9]

Patti Smith (b. 1946)

Patricia "Patti" Lee Smith was born in Chicago in late December 1946, just a few weeks after a boy named Robert had been born in Floral Park, Queens, New York. They would meet in New York in 1967 - not in 1969 as the 2018 biopic "Mapplethorpe" for some strange reason erroneously wats us to believe - after Patti having arrived by bus from New Jersey, looking for a job. Below are a couple of photos of Robert and Patti in their early period together:


Gerard Malanga: Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe





Judy Linn: Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Patti Smith has commented on what many readers of her memoir Just Kids have said about the period she and Robert lived in Hotel Chelsea 1969-1972: "-Oh, gosh, you REALLY LIVED with all these celebrities, stars and famous people!" Her usual comment - somewhat tired - is that almost none of the people she knew was famous AT THAT TIME - she wasn't famous in 1970, Robert wasn't and not even her friend Allen Ginsberg was particularly well known then. Gregory Corso - another of the central figures in the Beat-movement besides Ginsberg - had hardly ever any money.

What follows are a few portraits of Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe, some of which are among the most famous of Mapplethorpe's portraits.

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Towards the end of the chapter "Hotel Chelsea" in Just Kids Patti Smith says that "one should love his art, that was the way to Robert's heart. But the only one who fully got that and who had the ability to love his art totally and fully was the man who also would be his lover, his benefactor and his friend for the rest of his life."

And that man was Sam Wagstaff - the center of my next post. I'll end the present post with a simple and warm picture of Robert, sitting nude on a chair in front of one of his most well-known portraits of Patti. It's a photo I'm very fond of.


'

 

[gorgik9]

I feel that if someone is an anti-semite, then by definition they are not a nice person.



I didn't say that. However we are quite entitled to exercise caution and look for any dark or insidious aspects to their work. Is the artist, or porported artist, manipulating us through their work and to what end?



Again, I didn't say that. The phrase I used was 'to question'. That's perfectly sensible.



Again, I didn't say that. However, consider that Wagner and Mapplethorpe lived in very different eras. Wagner was dead long before the world bore witness to the horrors of WWII. Mapplethorpe was born post-WWII. He was aware of the horror of the gas-chambers, of the monstrous 'scientific' experiments carried our on Jewish people. Of the industrialised gassing of millions with a machine-like glee. I wonder if Wagner had witnessed such things would he have repented of his anti-semitism? Would he have seen the error of his thinking? We'll never know. However, all the indications are that knowledge of it did not stop Mapplethorpe's hatred. He was anti-semitic despite his knowledge of WWII. Its worth reflecting long and hard on that.

Do you really feel Mapplethorpe's work is comparable to that of Wagner?

I don't.

I'm not saying that Mapplethorpe's work is completely without talent. But he can more easily be compared with Lady Gaga. If she undertook a photography class she would produce a body of work very comparable to Mapplethorpe's I'd wager.

But is it, being honest with ourselves, art?

Clever. Yes (if you want a short cut to fame).

Fine art. No.

If Mapplethorpe was such a horrible anti-semite, then where does it show IN HIS WORK? A short quotation from Morrisroe's biography certainly doesn't settle the matter; it was published in 1995 and so much research on Mapplethorpe and his work have been done and published the last 24 years.

But the central matter is of course an analysis of his work. Now while I don't find it incomprehensible that Mapplethorpe has been labeled a racist since there are a number of pictures by him that has been hotly debated ever since the 1980s, I must say that I've never been able to see traits of anti-semitism in his work - but please post an analysis of at least one of his pictures then I - and everybody else - could learn something. But just saying isn't any kind of evidence - it's badmouthing.

The question if Mapplethorpe's work is art - well, that's an easy one: Of course it is. I could start writing a very long thread to argue why this is the case - but as long as I haven't finished the thread I'm working on I just won't do that. I'm not prone to that kind of self-destruction. I will honour the work I've promised myself and others to do.

 

[Billyo]

If Mapplethorpe was such a horrible anti-semite

All anti-semites are horrible.

Morrisroe's biography certainly doesn't settle the matter

1) It was an authorized biography.

2) I am not aware that it was badly received, or debunked. It was balanced, and well researched.

Can you link to something that brings the biography into disrepute? Anything at all?

The question if Mapplethorpe's work is art - well, that's an easy one: Of course it is.

I have a different opinion. So it's not an easy one. Why would you think it is?

You haven't responded to the earlier point comparing him to Lady Gaga.

Do you disagree with the comparison? If so, why?

 

[Billyo]

Now while I don't find it incomprehensible that Mapplethorpe has been labeled a racist

Then surely you won't find it incomprehensible that he was also an anti-semite. Anti-semitism is racism.

As for his work, recurring themes are death and degradation. You are right to point to the criticism of his 'artistic' treatment of people of colour:

Early in his restless adulthood, she tells us, Mapplethorpe formed a symbiotic bond with Patti Smith, who eventually became a punk-rock star; after that he had a long relationship with Samuel Wagstaff, a wealthy older curator and collector who helped orchestrate Mapplethorpe's career. But his rapacious sexual appetite led him to other, less stable and sometimes downright dangerous liaisons. According to Ms. Morrisroe, he had a penchant for sadomasochistic, coprophiliac encounters with well-muscled black men he picked up in bars. A racist (who also seemed to dislike Jews), he called them "nigger" in love play and exacted from them servitude as photographic models. "His photographs would serve as a diary of his sexual adventures," Ms. Morrisroe writes. He was convinced that he had acquired AIDS from a black man, although he boasted of having had sex with at least a thousand male partners.
Source

Such 'treatments' of people of colour is not art. It is anti-art.

 

[gorgik9]

All anti-semites are horrible.



1) It was an authorized biography.

2) I am not aware that it was badly received, or debunked. It was balanced, and well researched.

Can you link to something that brings the biography into disrepute? Anything at all?



I have a different opinion. So it's not an easy one. Why would you think it is?

You haven't responded to the earlier point comparing him to Lady Gaga.

Do you disagree with the comparison? If so, why?

Sure enough, Morrisroe's biography was authorized (by Mapplethorpe himself) and it's a well researched book - but that doesn't change the fact that it was published 24 years ago, lot's of Mapplethorpe-material have been researched, analyzed and published in this time, lot's of materials Morrisoe couldn't have access to. You could at least help me with the relevant page number in her biography - then we could at least discuss the same Morrisroe-text.

But this still doesn't answer the question: Where does it show in Mapplethorpe's work that his work is anti-semitic? I urged you to make a relevant analysis of at least one of his pictures - don't tell me, show me!

And no, I'm not going to talk about Lady Gaga in this thread. And I'm going to bed as soon as possible.

 

[Billyo]

Sure enough, Morrisroe's biography was authorized (by Mapplethorpe himself) and it's a well researched book - but that doesn't change the fact that it was published 24 years ago, lot's of Mapplethorpe-material have been researched, analyzed and published in this time, lot's of materials Morrisoe couldn't have access to. You could at least help me with the relevant page number in her biography - then we could at least discuss the same Morrisroe-text.

But this still doesn't answer the question: Where does it show in Mapplethorpe's work that his work is anti-semitic? I urged you to make a relevant analysis of at least one of his pictures - don't tell me, show me!

And no, I'm not going to talk about Lady Gaga in this thread. And I'm going to bed as soon as possible.

Again, can you link to something that brings the biography into disrepute? Anything at all? You say 'lot's of materials Morrisoe couldn't have access to'. Name the research published after the authorized biography that brings the biography into disrepute? Do you have links?

Give us something substantial.

Then I might be able to look at e.g. photos by Mapplethorpe depicting uniformed guys and not be immediately reminded that in his private life he liked to dress up in an SS uniform and admire himself in the mirror.

At some point you have to question what these photos are really about, taking into account Mapplethorpe's racist perspective.

 

[Shelter]

Only a question Billyo: Where is the evidence that Mapplethorpe was an anti-Semit? I've tried to search in the internet about this accusation and found .... nothing. So please help me. Not only to suggest it - but give a proven record.

As well you've declared Mapplethorpe must be an racist because he photographed himself in a SS-uniform. Really a SS-uniform? Or only a leather costume that some gay people are wearing as an fetish. Are all these gay people now all in all "racists"? Because they are wearing a "uniform" which resembles such an SS-uniform? What is with Tom-of-Finland? Is he an racist too because his pics are mostly from this "leather" fetish?

And I think it is totally correct if you or others will decline Mapplethorpe's photos as non-art. For me, for instance, I dislike very much the pictures by Picasso. I never would pay only a penny for these pictures - but there are others which like them as high art. So I have to respect them. And it wouldn't be correct to enforce my opinion onto them - because then there would be again a dictatorship. You know the terrible word "degenerate art"? So everyone will understand if you dislike too this thread or better the pics of Mapplethorpe - but don't try to enforce your opinion onto all the others.

 

[Billyo]

help me with the relevant page number in her biography

Not sure what precise edition you are working with, but just check the index and look at relevant entries like 'racism' and 'nazi' (under leather).

E.g.

Mapplethorpe: A Biography, by Patricia Morrisroe, 1st Da Capo Press ed., 1997 (originally published, 1995).

See pages 73, 103, 146, 203, 233-34, 236, 248-49, 252, 254, 288, 290, 318, 325.

Hope that helps.

I must add that I am a little bemused that you cannot recall the vivid descriptions of his racism, especially as it worsened during his illness (AIDS). Perhaps as you say, you are not sure as to editions. But you did indicate earlier that you had read the authorized biography.

Only a question Billyo: Where is the evidence that Mapplethorpe was an anti-Semit? I've tried to search in the internet about this accusation and found .... nothing. So please help me. Not only to suggest it - but give a proven record.

The evidence is on the authorized biography. See above.

There are others, especially African-Americans who criticise his work. I will post something on that shortly.

As well you've declared Mapplethorpe must be an racist because he photographed himself in a SS-uniform. Really a SS-uniform? Or only a leather costume that some gay people are wearing as an fetish. Are all these gay people now all in all "racists"? Because they are wearing a "uniform" which resembles such an SS-uniform? What is with Tom-of-Finland? Is he an racist too because his pics are mostly from this "leather" fetish?

Oh a leather uniform is fine. However, I personally draw the line at people who dress up in replica SS uniforms, and who wear the swastika and other such N.A.Z.I. symbols. That is not just a mere fantasy. It is like someone who makes a suit with pictures of starving Ethiopians on it. And walks around eating cake as they wear it laughing. Fantasy my backside. It is sick.

Besides the uniforms he also ''lovingly' crafted elaborate jewelry incorporating the swastika, over and over again. Why on earth would he do that. If your grandmother was experimented on by men wearing this symbol, you might feel less forgiving and less inclined to put it down to mere fantasy. Often what supposedly starts as a fantasy becomes reality.

And I think it is totally correct if you or others will decline Mapplethorpe's photos as non-art. For me, for instance, I dislike very much the pictures by Picasso. I never would pay only a penny for these pictures - but there are others which like them as high art. So I have to respect them. And it wouldn't be correct to enforce my opinion onto them - because then there would be again a dictatorship. You know the terrible word "degenerate art"? So everyone will understand if you dislike too this thread or better the pics of Mapplethorpe - but don't try to enforce your opinion onto all the others.

I honestly don't see how Mapplethorpe's work is at the level of fine art. It is a series of gimmicks. A bit like Lady Gaga. Very clever, but not fine art.

I hope you don't feel enforced. But you see I am Jewish, so I feel strongly compelled to express my opinion on these matters. Of course, your opinions are very welcome too. That goes without saying.:cheers:

 

[gorgik9]

@ everybody commenting in this thread

Please respect that commentators should avoid political debate. Too much controversy means that this thread can be closed. This is a forum rule.

 

[Billyo]

Much of Hemphill's poetry and spoken word was autobiographical, and portrayed his experiences as a minority in both the African-American and LGBT communities.[20]

He wrote pieces such as "Family Jewels," which conveyed his frustrations about white bigotry, specifically within the gay community.[21] In his essay "Does Your Momma Know About me?" Hemphill criticizes photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's The Black Book, which showcased pictures of the penises of black men.[5] Hemphill argued that excluding the faces of the black male subjects demonstrated the fetishism of African Americans by whites in the gay community.[5]
Source