Robert Map­plethor­pe: Look at the Pictures

Although he pro­duced work that still pro­vokes a num­ber of diver­gent, some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry read­ings, the late Robert Map­plethor­pe trans­formed the pro­fane into the exquis­ite and the exquis­ite into the pro­fane. In the spir­it of his pho­to­graph­ic project of using the cam­era as an unflinch­ing lev­eller of human, ani­mal and nat­ur­al forms, this doc­u­men­tary pro­file by Fen­ton Bai­ley and Randy Bar­ba­to offers an sim­i­lar­ly unvar­nished, mul­ti-dimen­sion­al search for the soul of this vir­tu­osic talent.

The film argues that it would be erro­neous to describe Mapplethorpe’s work as con­fronta­tion­al, as that would sug­gest some kind of con­scious desire to dec­i­mate polit­i­cal and social taboos. It sug­gests that by using art as a truth­ful out­let for inte­ri­or desires, he was able to forge his own niche and, slow­ly but sure­ly, rise through the ranks of the New York art world. It also attempts to make con­nec­tions between Mapplethorpe’s event­ful pri­vate life and the work itself, though nev­er push­ing it so far as to sec­ond guess his moti­va­tions or try to ascribe rhyme and rea­son for his way­ward impulses.

We learn ear­ly on that Map­plethor­pe grew up in a con­ser­v­a­tive sub­urb, that his father was an avid ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er (of build­ings and land­scapes) and that young Robert was rather mean with a pogo stick. His years, his time at the Pratt Insti­tute in Brook­lyn allowed him to indulge his pas­sions as an artist, though he despised his pho­tog­ra­phy mod­ule, even pass­ing off pop’s hokey exper­i­ments as his own. After becom­ing bosom bud­dies with Pat­ti Smith and col­lab­o­rat­ing with her on var­i­ous exper­i­men­tal film and art projects, he devel­oped his Polaroid fix­a­tion and the rest, as they say, his history.

Aside from offer­ing a robust, lin­ear biog­ra­phy of Map­plethor­pe and his career, the film offers a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into the art world (how it oper­ates, how it’s paid for) as well as the cul­tur­al habits of urban-dwelling Amer­i­cans in the roar­ing ​’80s. It upends the old sto­ry of mon­ey lead­ing to increased debauch­ery, as Map­plethor­pe had easy recourse to cor­po­re­al indul­gence both with and with­out cash.

Some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view sub­jects are those who only had a very periph­er­al posi­tion in the artist’s cir­cle, such as the two women charged with organ­is­ing his work­space. They joke that their con­stant prox­im­i­ty to his sex­u­al­ly explic­it work desen­si­tised them of any feel­ing that what he was mak­ing could be con­ceived of as obscene.

The film also high­lights the retroac­tive humour in po-faced excess: one of Mapplethorpe’s first mod­els, David Croland, is pre­sent­ed lop­ing into a white room wear­ing noth­ing but a black gown and exclaim­ing: ​“I’m not a mod­el any more – I’m just an object.” You could imag­ine his sub­se­quent inter­view work­ing word-for-word, inflec­tion-for-inflec­tion in a Christo­pher Guest movie. Plus, we see an ear­ly form of hype mar­ket­ing in an high­ly exclu­sive invite to a gallery open­ing which is a giant cock tri­umphant­ly hang­ing down from an unzipped fly.

It’s an absorb­ing and even-hand­ed work, one that nev­er toad­ies towards its sub­ject or attempts to explain away his often bit­ter, antag­o­nis­tic tem­pera­ment. Van­i­ty was part and par­cel of the Map­plethor­pe brand, and his sub­se­quent fame led to legions of celebri­ties queu­ing up for por­trait ses­sions. It empha­sis­es how ahead of the curve he was in an artis­tic sphere, as his work only sparked a cen­sor­ship shit­storm in the year of his death from AIDS: 1989.