Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now - Gugeenheim Exhibition

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Lisa Lyon, 1983 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

The Guggenheim Museum in NYC is holding a new exhibition for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe from January 25th-July 10th 2019, and July 24th 2019-January 5th 2020. Read more about the exhibition here: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/mapplethorpe

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Ken Moody and Robert Sherman, 1984, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, 1993

Mapplethorpe's array of work provides an insight into the questions the Western world grapples with, questions about sexuality, identity, values, and openness. Mapplethorpe managed to demonstrate the journey of an openly gay man through the 60's to the late '80s. Beginning with grand explorations of gender and sexuality, the challenging of previously held Western beliefs and attitudes. Who are the fetishizers of certain images? The Voyeur of a work of art? It turns out to be you, me, everybody. Instead of the assumed white-male gaze, Mapplethorpe showed us that this is a construct of our own, in truth we are a vast audience. His art need not be controlled by the expectations of the heterosexual white male-dominated art world, instead, it combats the ideals of such a point of view and in doing so pushes a recognization of the self. A recognization of our own faults and fantasies, values and fetishes.

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Robert Mapplethorpe, Ken and Tyler, 1985, courtesy © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe died of AIDS in 1989, and was present for the terror that the AIDS crisis caused. The loss of many friends, as well as a loss of sexual freedom in the gay community, was suffered by many in those years. His later portraits, close to his death, accumulate is earlier efforts at questioning identity, self-presentation, and idealism. In these portraits he is vague, fading, dressed in black. 

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Self Portrait, 1988, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

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Self Portrait, 1985, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation


For more examples of Robert Mapplethorpe's work and an artist biography, visit www.mapplethorpe.org

Comments

  1. ElaineMarch 6, 2019 at 4:46 PM

    You might enjoy reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, a wonderful memoir of the intimate friendship between Smith and Mapplethorpe in downtown New York in the sixties. https://www.amazon.com/Just-Kids-Patti-Smith/dp/0060936223

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