Twenty-five years since the photographer’s posthumous exhibition – which included images of homosexual S&M – became a point of debate,what have we learned?It might be ill-advised to reduce an artist’s life and work to a single observation, the magic key that unlocks everything, or but in the case of Robert Mapplethorpe there is a pronounced duality – in the themes and subjects depicted in his “icy”,graphically stylized black-and-white photographs; in the unlit-angel personae he cultivated; and in the controversies all of these facets wittingly or unwittingly sparked during his short lifetime. Lets inaugurate with the pictures. An exhibition at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York earlier this year, titled Saints and Sinners, and paired works selected for certain contrasts and similarities: a unlit shrouded figure next to a light shrouded figure; Frank Diaz holding a ram’s horns to his head next to Lisa Lyon with a scorpion between her legs; a blond Amanda Lear next to a brunette Mapplethorpe in drag. The black-and-white of the photographs was emphasized by an installation featuring black stripes on white walls,the stark contrast of which undergirded a theater of light S&M play and religious irreverence. Mapplethorpe’s tight orchestration of his photographs – arrangement, lighting, and composition – lends a perpetual chilling effect to a full spectrum of erotic subjects.
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Source: theguardian.com