Robert Mapplethorpe, Katherine Cebrian, 1980, Silver print, 40.6 x 50.8 cm.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Honey, 1976, Silver print, 40 x 40 cm.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Kitten, 1983, Silver print, 40 x 40 cm.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Texas Gallery, 1980, Silver print, 40 x 40 cm..

Robert Mapplethorpe, Marisa Berenson, 1983, Silver print, 40 x 40 cm.

Galerie Thaddeus Ropac
7 Rue Debellyme
+ 331 4272 9900
Paris
Robert Mapplethorpe
Curated by Sofia Coppola
November 25, 2011-January 7, 2012

Following collaborations with Robert Wilson and Hedi Slimane, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac has invited Sofia Coppola to curate a new Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition.

This exhibition uses the same approach as the show Robert Mapplethorpe: Eye to Eye, which was curated by American artist Cindy Sherman in New York in 2003, and Robert Mapplethorpe Curated by David Hockney, presented in London in 2005. The idea is to have a contemporary artist bring his or her take on an œuvre as significant as that of Robert Mapplethorpe’s.

Celebrated American director Sofia Coppola selected the images from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York — with whom the gallery has collaborated for this exhibition. By using rarely seen and little-known images taken by Mapplethorpe, Coppola has created an installation very much in step with her world. Always inspired by images, the director uses photographs to orient the visual concept of her films. She draws inspiration from images pulled from magazines, taken by iconic photographers, and even snapped with her own camera. Whether done consciously or not, from a single glimpse of the photographic ensemble, the viewer could easily imagine the photos to be a mood board for a future film. However, there is no “narrative” that weaves the selection of images together: the viewer has the freedom to invent fictional characters within the nuances of gray.

Sofia Coppola extracted gentle images from Robert Mapplethorpe’s archive: contemplative moments from which a delicate tension emerges. Known for his erotic and provocative images and the metaphysical nature he often imbues his subject matters with, the viewer is able to discover a nearly-unexplored side of the artist. Mapplethorpe’s portraits of children are taken with an intense gaze: Honey (1976), Andes (1979). He photographs animals languidly sprawled out: Muffin (1981), Kitten (1983). His portraits of charismatic women seize the intimacy of introspective moments: Annabelle’s Mother (1978), Paloma Picasso (1980). Mapplethorpe is also famous for his still life photographs of flowers. All of these stock-still people and things, replete with grace and candour, are presented through the gaze of a creative woman: Coppola’s innate sense of beauty is something she has in common with Robert Mapplethorpe. She knows how to emphasize, in the silence of suspended moments, the tenderness and emotion present in the artist’s work.

Sofia Coppola’s selection includes four loans from prestigious museums: Katherine Cebrian (1980) and Waves (1980) are part of the permanent collection of London’s Tate Modern, Melia Marden (1983) is part of the Guggenheim collection and Fireplace with Flowers (1986) belongs to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 in Floral Park, NY and died in 1989. He took his first photographs using a Polaroid camera. Among snapshots of still lifes and other subjects, many of his early polaroids are self-portraits and portraits of close companions, such as singer/artist/poet Patti Smith. Some of his early work includes unique presentations of his photographs, displayed in self-created frames that morph his photography into sculptural objects. Mapplethorpe later acquired a Hasselblad camera and photographed his circle of friends and acquaintances, notably artists, composers, socialites, porn film stars and members of the underground S&M scene. Certain photographs are considered shocking to some, due to the explicitness of their content, but they are also extremely elegant in terms of technical mastery. At the beginning of the 1980s, Mapplethorpe began to photograph very classical images: sculptural nudes of men and women, still life floral scenes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities.

Sofia Coppola was born in 1971 in New York. She is a film director, screenwriter, and producer. After studying fine art at the California Institute of the Arts, she directed her first film, The Virgin Suicides in 1999. She received an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards for her 2003 film, Lost in Translation. Her 2006 film Marie Antoinette, shot on location in Versailles, received an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. Coppola’s most recent film, Somewhere (2010) received the Golden Lion of the 67th Venice Film Festival.

Sofia Coppola lives between New York and Paris with her husband, Thomas Mars and their two daughters.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Horse #5, 1982, Silver print, 40 x 40 cm.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Melia Marden, 1983, Silver print, 50 x 40 cm.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Jack Walls, 1983, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1978, silver gelatin print, 50.8 x 40.6 cms.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1980, Silver Gelatin Print, 40.6 x 50.8 cms.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Snakeman, 1981, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

Alison Jacques Gallery
16-8 Berners Street
+44 (0)20 7631 4720
London
Robert Mapplethorpe.
A Season in Hell
October 14-November 21, 2009

Robert Mapplethorpe. A Season in Hell presents a new interpretation of the work of the acclaimed and controversial American artist. Bringing together a range of works in a variety of media, including rarely seen collages as well as photography, the exhibition focuses on the hitherto neglected roles of religious themes and imagery that informed much of Mapplethorpe’s practice throughout his career. Since Mapplethorpe's tragically early death from complications arising from AIDS in 1989, the artist has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in museums worldwide and is now considered one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. This new exhibition offers a timely reappraisal of the diversity of Mapplethorpe’s work, and the significance of the sacred and profane in his art.

Alison Jacques has represented the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe in the UK since 1999; for this exhibition she has assembled a number of important works which reveal the significance of religion, of Catholicism and Satanism and the extremes of these opposites, in Mapplethorpe’s life and work. For the first time in a European gallery, five major early works will be exhibited, a series of collages from 1968-69 when the artist was living with the poet and rock singer Patti Smith at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Drawing on the Catholic culture of his upbringing, Mapplethorpe was inspired to make shrine-like works out of a broad range of materials, from men’s underwear to prayer cards. However these works, both formally and substantially, become transformed more into objects of fetish than images of devotion, revealing the incessant influence of his religious background on Mapplethorpe’s life and art, and his irreverent and rebellious relationship to it. As Mapplethorpe himself said “A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child … It still shows in how I arrange things. It’s always little altars.”

Later in his career Mapplethorpe became more renowned for his photography, yet the themes of Heaven and Hell, the sacred and profane, still filtered through in to his practice and are very much in evidence throughout the corpus of his work. The photographs in the exhibition bear witness to the recurrent impact of Catholicism on Mapplethorpe’s craft, such as the use of the Crucifix as a compositional device in the photographs, a framing motif or as an actual sculpture. Mapplethorpe’s influences were not, however, limited to Christian imagery; darker religious motifs, such as images of Pentagrams, references to witchcraft and shocking depictions of sexuality also feature in his work, and left Mapplethorpe mired in controversy in both life and death. Iconoclastic and aesthetically exhilarating, allusions to the sacred such as halos in portraits, the use of traditional iconographic symbols such as lilies, representations of a crown of thorns, and depictions of Patti Smith as the Madonna and Lisa Lyon as an angel, contrast powerfully with the devil imagery, of serpents and of smoke. Mapplethorpe himself in one of his most famous self-portraits assumed the aspect of Satan, complete with devil’s horns.

In 1986, a newly translated version of French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s 1873 extended poem A Season in Hell was published with photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. The book exemplified intriguing connections and parallels between the unorthodox and prematurely brief lives of Rimbaud and Mapplethorpe. They shared an often defiant and libertine excess in their personal lives, born partly of their queer sexualities and partly of innately rebellious spirits. This resistance to, and fascination with, the norms and strictures of bourgeois culture, also led to exploring through art the darker side of humanity’s private life, in all its emotional, physical and sexual complexity. To mark Rimbaud’s October birthday and the 20th Anniversary of Mapplethorpe’s death, Patti Smith, a passionate devotee of both artists, will perform especially dedicated music and poetry at the opening of the exhibition in London. In 2010, Patti Smith will publish her memoir about Mapplethorpe, a diary of their love and friendship called “Just Kids.”

Robert Mapplethorpe's (1946-1989) work features in the collections of many major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and Tate, London. A new publication of A Season in Hell by Morel Books will accompany Patti Smith’s performance and Mapplethorpe’s exhibition at the gallery.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Hand in Fire, 1985, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled (invitation to Light Gallery opening), 1973. Embossed gelatin silver print with adhesive dot and Polaroid film sleeve, 4 1/8 x 5 1/5", Collection of Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled, 1973/75. Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), 5 1/8 x 4 1/8", Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York; gift, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled (Marianne Faithfull), 1974. Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), 5 1/8 x 4 1/8", Private Collection.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled, 1970/73. Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), 4 1/4 x 3 1/4", Collection of Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled (Patti Smith), 1973. Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), 5 1/8 x 4 1/8", Collection of Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Whitney Museum
of American Art
945 Madison Avenue
at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
800-944-8639
Sondra Gilman Gallery
Polaroids: Mapplethorpe
May 3-September 7, 2008

A little-known body of early work by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89) is presented in Polaroids: Mapplethorpe. Curated by Sylvia Wolf, recently named Director of the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the exhibition, features approximately one hundred works — many never exhibited before — including self-portraits, figure studies, still lifes, and portraits of Mapplethorpe’s lovers and friends such as Patti Smith, Sam Wagstaff, and Marianne Faithfull.

Best-known for the highly stylized and neoclassically inspired works he made between the late 1970s and his death in 1989, Mapplethorpe’s mature work was in fact preceded by an important but largely unknown body of over 1,500 photographs made with Polaroid cameras between 1970 and 1975, when Mapplethorpe was in his twenties. Unlike the carefully controlled images that Mapplethorpe would later come to stage in the studio, the artist’s Polaroids reveal remarkable spontaneity and creativity. Many of these small, intimate photographs convey tenderness and vulnerability, while others depict a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. In these images, in the words of curator Sylvia Wolf, we can witness “Mapplethorpe learning to see photographically.”

As Mapplethorpe explained in 1988, photography “was the perfect medium, or so it
seemed, for the ‘70s and ‘80s, when everything was fast. If I were to make something that took two weeks to do, I’d lose my enthusiasm. It would become an act of labor and the love would be gone.” Polaroid cameras, in particular, provided rapid results, allowing Mapplethorpe to see his photographs as he was making them, which in turn gave free access to feeling and thinking. This visual responsiveness to the moment is one of the distinguishing characteristics of this body of work. The results are disarming pictures that give early evidence of the artist’s avid curiosity about light, composition, and design. Polaroids: Mapplethorpe allows an examination of an important aspect of Mapplethorpe’s career, and provides an invaluable glimpse into the artist’s creative development.

A fully illustrated publication by Sylvia Wolf, Polaroids: Mapplethorpe, published by Prestel, places Mapplethorpe’s early work in the context of his life-long artistic production. The book contains 183 plates (all Polaroids) and 43 figure illustrations, including works by a range of other artists, from Mantegna to Schiele, which place Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids in an art historical context.

Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946-March 9, 1989) was known for his large-scale, highly stylized black & white portraits, photos of flowers and male nudes. The frank, erotic nature of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks.

Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic of English and Irish heritage in Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Floral Park, New York, a neighborhood of Long Island. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts.

Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe's first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. In the 1980s Sam Wagstaff gave him $500,000 to buy the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he lived and had his shooting space. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom.

Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital from complications arising from AIDS; he was 42 years old. His ashes were buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked 'Maxey'.

Mapplethorpe worked primarily in the studio, particularly towards the end of his career. Common subjects include flowers, especially orchids and calla lilies; celebrities, including Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, and Patti Smith (a Patti Smith portrait [2] from 1986 recalls Albrecht Durer's 1500 self-portrait[3]); homoerotic and BDSM acts, and classical nudes. Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio series sparked national attention in the early 1990's when it was included in The Perfect Moment, a traveling exhibition funded by National Endowment for the Arts. The portfolio includes some of Mapplethorpe's most explicit imagery, including a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus.[4] Though his work had been regularly displayed in publicly funded exhibitions, conservative and religious organizations, such as the American Family Association seized on this exhibition to vocally oppose government support for what they called "nothing more than the sensational presentation of potentially obscene material."[5] As a result, Mapplethorpe became something of a cause celebre for both sides of the American Culture war. The installation of The Perfect Moment in Cincinnati resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and its director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of "pandering obscenity".

His sexually-charged photographs of black men have been criticized as exploitative.[6] Such criticism was the subject of a work by American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, Notes on the Margins of the Black Book (1991-1993). Ligon juxtaposes several of Mapplethorpe's most iconic images of black men appropriated from the 1988 publication, Black Book, with various critical texts to complicate the racial undertones of the imagery.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled (self-portrait), 1972. Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), 3 1/4 x 4 1/4", Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; gift, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1978, Gelatin silver print, 40.6 x 50.8 cm, framed, edition of 10 + 2 AP, AP #2, signed Estate verso, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Used by Permission.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon, 1980, Gelatin silver print, 40.6 x 50.8 cm, framed, edition of, 15, # 9, signed, dated and numbered verso, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Used by Permission.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lawrence Weiner, 1982, Gelatin silver print, 40.6 x 50.8 cm, framed, edition of 10, # 5, Estate signed, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by Permission.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Cock, 1986, Gelatin silver print, 50.8 x 61 cm, Framed, edition of 10, # 3, signed verso, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by Permission.

May 36 Galerie
Rämistrasse 37
+41 (0)44 261 68 80
Zürich
Robert Mapplethorpe.
Works 1975-1988
August 30-October 18, 2008

Robert Mapplethorpe is regarded as one of the most important and provocative photographers of his time. He celebrated his greatest successes in the 1980s, in which he produced the then shocking, erotic and sometimes pornographic photographs. At the same time, he was admired for his technically masterful execution. He took portraits of many famous personalities, including Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Grace Jones and Patti Smith. They were technically sophisticated portraits free from all superfluous details. The persons portrayed are provocatively direct and yet inapproachably present, thus emanating a tremendously strong impact. With these portraits, Mapplethorpe created genuine icons of the contemporary art scene.

Robert Mapplethorpe studied painting, sculpture and graphic art at the Pratt Institute of Fine Arts in Brooklyn from 1963 to 1969. In 1972 he made the acquaintance of Sam Wagstaff, formerly curator of the Detroit Institute of Arts, who not only became his lover but who also promoted him. Thanks to Wagstaff's support, Mapplethorpe was able to present his first solo exhibition, which may be regarded as the starting point of his brilliant career, in the Light Gallery in New York in 1973. In 1977 and 1982 he took part at the documenta 6 and 7 in Kassel. In 1988, when his health was noticeably deteriorating, Mapplethorpe's first American Museum retrospective was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. On 9 March, the artist died of the results of an HIV infection in a Boston hospital. One year later an exhibition of his seven sadomasochist portraits shown under the title of The Perfect Moment in Cincinnati led to violent controversy, not only about the pictures but also about the much-discussed freedom of art. As a result of the exhibition, there was an unsuccessful attempt to convict the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director Dennis Barrie for exhibiting obscene material.

Mapplethorpe's sometimes highly erotic to obscene nudes and his aesthetic, subtly arranged still lifes of flowers in a reduced black-and-white palette became known to a wide public. Particularly striking is the discrepancy between the photographs of sadomasochistic scenes and tattooed 'leather-clad gays' and his endeavours to do justice to the formal beauty of a motif. Mapplethorpe achieved this by reducing the motifs to sculptural silhouettes, true to his dictum of photography as a perfect method of producing sculptures. In addition, the minutely planned compositions and the subtly balanced black-and-white spectrum contributed to lending the photographs a certain hardness. Even when Mapplethorpe concentrated on the self-stylisation of his model, he captured his motives without alienating staging. By positioning them in front of a white or black background, he created strikingly simple pictures of his subjects. A volatile mixture of different factors is what gives these photographs their irresistible appeal.

—Text: Dominique von Burg
— Translation; Maureen Oberli-Turner