An exhibition in Düsseldorf is showing the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. Critics have described them as the "most shocking and dangerous images in modern photography."
Robert Mapplethorpe, who was born in 1946 and died of AIDS-related complications in 1989, is one of the few artists to have achieved fame far beyond the borders of the art world. He dominated the photography scene at the end of the 20th century and paved the way for photography to be recognised as an art form, anchoring the homosexual subject in mass culture; in photography, he created a classicist image of the mostly male body that found its way into commercial photography.
Controversial discussion
Now the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf is showing a comprehensive museum exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs after the major international tours that stopped in Germany in 1981 in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and 1997 in Stuttgart; in 1992 the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle showed the exhibition "Mapplethorpe versus Rodin".
In the USA in particular, Mapplethorpe's work was the subject of controversy during his lifetime and posthumously; exhibitions of his photographs were boycotted, censored or closed until the end of the 20th century. His radical depictions of nudity and sexual acts were always controversial. Photos of sado-masochistic practices in particular led to protest rallies at exhibitions and museum directors being sued. In Japan, it was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court ruled that Mapplethorpe's erotic images did not violate the ban on pornography and thus released a volume of Mapplethorpe photographs that had been confiscated for eight years. For the American critic Arthur C. Danto, Mapplethorpe created "some of the most shocking - and dangerous - images in modern photography or even art history".
Now worthy of a museum
In Germany, on the other hand, Mapplethorpe's photographs were part of the "aesthetic socialisation" of the generations growing up in the 80s and early 90s. The photographs were distributed as posters at the time and the "black" portraits in particular were a fixture in almost every flat share. What was primarily the subject of censorship in the mid-1980s has now become worthy of a museum and is no longer the subject of legal disputes, but of sociological and formal-aesthetic analyses.
The exhibition at the NRW-Forum encompasses all areas of Mapplethorpe's work, including portraits and self-portraits, homosexuality, nudes, photographs of flowers and, as a quintessence, the photographic images of sculptures; it also includes the early Polaroids. The exhibition organises the photographs according to themes such as self-portraits, including the infamous shot of him with a bullwhip inserted into his anus, and almost poetic shots of his companion Patti Smith; the photographs of black men versus white women, such as the bodybuilder Lisa Lyon; the juxtaposition of penises and flowers, and finally those shots of classical beauty inspired by Renaissance sculptures, as well as the impressive portraits of children and celebrities of his time.
Robert Mapplethorpe
6 February - 15 August 2010
NRW-Forum Culture and Economy, Ehrenhof 2, 40479 Düsseldorf,
Opening hours: Tue - Sun: 11 a.m. - 8 p.m., Fri: 11 a.m. - midnight
www.nrw-forum.de
