What type of photography is Robert Mapplethorpe known for?
What type of photography is Robert Mapplethorpe known for?
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (/ˈmeɪpəlˌθɔːrp/; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images.
What was Robert Mapplethorpe known for?
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer known for his black-and-white portraits and for documenting New York’s S&M scene. He was concerned with Classical aspects of beauty, whether in his nudes, floral still lifes, or self-portraits—light, shadow, composition, and form were central to all his work.
How did Mapplethorpe become a photographer?
Mapplethorpe attended the Pratt Institute in New York City (1963–70). After experimenting with underground filmmaking in the late 1960s, by 1970 he was creating photographs using a Polaroid camera, often arranging them into collages or showing them as series.
Who was Robert Mapplethorpe inspired by?
One of the main artistic figures that influenced and informed Mapplethorpe’s early artistic style and personal goals was Andy Warhol. He became fascinated with Warhol and the growing counterculture lifestyle prevalent in New York during in the early 1970s.
What lens did Mapplethorpe use?
He only owned two lenses: an 80 mm and a 150 mm. He considered the 80 to produce too much distortion, and liked having a lot of space between himself and the sitter – so much so that they often couldn’t hear his quiet voice.
Why is Mapplethorpe important?
His vast, provocative, and powerful body of work has established him as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Today Mapplethorpe is represented by galleries in North and South America and Europe and his work can be found in the collections of major museums around the world.
Who gave Mapplethorpe his first camera?
Wagstaff
In 1975, Wagstaff gave Mapplethorpe a Hasselblad 2¼-inch camera, a model often used by studio photographers to make highly detailed portraits.
What lenses did Mapplethorpe use?
He used semi-matte Ilfobrom or, for dark-skinned people, the warmer-toned Portriga Rapid. He only owned two lenses: an 80 mm and a 150 mm. He considered the 80 to produce too much distortion, and liked having a lot of space between himself and the sitter – so much so that they often couldn’t hear his quiet voice.
Why is Mapplethorpe controversial?
Mapplethorpe was caught up in what seemed like a debate about arts funding and censorship, but this was really a pretext for connecting sex to disease to a general sense of cultural decay — Helms called artists like Mapplethorpe “human cockroaches” — and blaming it all on LGBT people, a convenient minority scapegoat.
How much was Mapplethorpe worth?
The inheritance, believed to be in the neighborhood of $7 million—some say more, depending on the value of his art and silver collections—made the already much-talked-about Mapplethorpe, a famed figure of the night in the netherworld of New York, even more talked about, especially when the will was contested by the …
Who inherited Mapplethorpe estate?
In his will he left bequests of $100,000 each to the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the New York Public Library, as well as $10,000 and the family silver to his sister, Mrs. Jefferson, and $10,000 to each of her three children.
What happened to Milton Moore Mapplethorpe?
Mapplethorpe died of AIDS in 1989. But interest in the artist has grown as his persona has become increasingly linked to issues of sex, race and censorship which have never been resolved.
Where did Robert Mapplethorpe live as a child?
His father, Harry, worked as an electrical engineer while his mother, Joan, stayed at home raising their six children. Mapplethorpe grew up in a conservative Catholic household nestled in the quiet Queen’s suburb of Floral Park.
How did Robert Mapplethorpe use clothing in his art?
Mapplethorpe understood that clothing is used to mark sexual identity and independence, and he used art to provide a context for erotic display. Untitled declared Mapplethorpe’s artistic thinking as an emerging artist and pointed to his future artistic style.
When did Robert Mapplethorpe get a Polaroid camera?
Mapplethorpe acquired a Polaroid camera in 1970 from artist and filmmaker Sandy Daley and began producing his own photographs to incorporate into the collages, saying he felt “it was more honest.” Mapplethorpe quickly found satisfaction taking Polaroid photographs in their own right and indeed few Polaroids actually appear in his mixed-media works.
When did Robert Mapplethorpe become interested in S & M?
In the late 1970s, Mapplethorpe grew increasingly interested in documenting the New York S & M scene. The resulting photographs are shocking for their content and remarkable for their technical and formal mastery. Mapplethorpe told ARTnews in late 1988, “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’
