Robert Mapplethorpe: Portrait of the artist

Before his death from Aids at the age of 42, Robert Mapplethorpe challenged the stigma of being gay, and left a rich body of artistic photography, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

PHOTOGRAPHER Robert Mapplethorpe sure is hot right now, more than a quarter of a century after he died from Aids on March 9, 1989. There is a biopic, starring Doctor Who star Matt Smith, in the works. Also, a HBO documentary about his life, entitled Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, premiered to acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is set to broadcast in April.

The Getty Research Institute will publish Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive, as well as a companion book Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs later this month. The institute will also host an exhibition in two Los Angeles museums to coincide with their publication.

Frances Terpak, co-author of Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive explains the enduring appeal of his work: “He understood that, in the 20th century, the art world had a very blinkered view of the world and people. He tried to break down in particular the stigma of being gay. He even made his contemporary artists recognise that while some of his work had a shock value it needed to be out there and represented.

“He was trying to make the male image as prominent as the female image in the 20th century. He had a great respect, as many scholars have shown, for the work of Michelangelo. When he looked at a Michelangelo sculpture or the Sistine Chapel [he could see] that Michelangelo was undoubtedly gay and he didn’t have any trouble in his own lifetime to be who he was and to do the art he wanted to do.”

Before Mapplethorpe embraced his homosexuality, he fell in love with the singer-songwriter Patti Smith, a love affair and lifelong friendship that was captured in her 2010 memoir, Just Kids. Smith provides the opening essay in the archive book, which also includes Mapplethorpe’s photographs, self-portraits, jewellery, letters, invites, personal ephemera and other essays.

Self-Portrait, 1974, gelatin silver print from Polaroid negative (produced as multiple). Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mapplethorpe's picture for the cover of Patti Smith's classic album, Horses. 

Polaroid test short of the interior of Mapplethorpe’s West Twenty-third Street loft, taken for House & Garden, June 1988. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Ken Moody and Robert Sherman, 1984, platinum print. Jointly acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with funds provided by the David Geffen Foundation, and The J. Paul Getty Trust.

Photograph of a Mapplethorpe mixed-media assemblage (ca 1972) at his Bond Street loft, ca. 1973, Kodacolor print. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. 

Untitled (London), 1973, Polaroid print. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Photograph of a Mapplethorpe mixed-media assemblage (ca 1972) at his Bond Street loft, ca. 1973, Kodacolor print. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Untitled, 1968, collage on paper with graphite, colored pencil, thread, and pastel in artist’s frame. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The pair met for the first time in New York on July 3, 1967. They were only 20 years of age, penniless but full of artistic ambition and both from out of town; Mapplethorpe, having trucked in from a Catholic enclave in Long Island, which accounts for the heavy religious imagery in his early work. They became inseparable. They found a tiny apartment, cobbling together a living quarters with furniture and found objects left out on Brooklyn’s streets on garbage night, the strange flotsam that surfaced in Mapplethorpe’s early work, including Tie Rack, a present he made for Smith’s birthday in 1969.

Mapplethorpe drifted away from his drawings and sculptural collages and became consumed with photography in the early 1970s after getting the loan of a Polaroid camera for a project. He had found his calling.

It was his relationship with the art curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, who became his partner and benefactor, which launched his career. They met at a party in 1972 and stayed together until Wagstaff’s death from pneumonia in 1987; Aids also struck him down.

“Sam Wagstaff’s cachet in the art world was very well established,” says Michelle Brunnick, co-author of Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive.

“He helped Robert immensely. Bob Colacello, editor of Interview magazine in the 1970s and 1980s, mentioned that Andy Warhol, who ran the magazine, didn’t want to work with Robert because he thought he was weird, but once Andy found out that Robert was with Sam, he brought him on as a regular photographer for the magazine, which turned into a lucrative career in itself, generating many of his prints and his relationships with royalty all over the world.”

Mapplethorpe’s celebrity photos — among them Talking Heads and Grace Jones — are renowned, most notably his iconic 1975 cover shot for Patti Smith’s album, Horses, which captures her in a nonchalant pose, tie undone, jacket slung over her shoulder.

The most striking aspect of Mapplethorpe’s personality when it came to the business of art was his resolve. He was relentless in pursuing his artistic vision. Even when he was diagnosed with Aids, he upped his output. Terpak suggests that because Mapplethorpe died mid-career he may have taken special care in pulling together the archive because he knew it would tell a fuller story of his life as an artist.

She adds an interesting anecdote to illustrate his tenacity. Alfredo Santiago ran a magazine for models called The Agency. “Santiago told me that Mapplethorpe pursued him to get this commission,” says Terpak. “Mapplethorpe pursued him by getting invited to a party that Santiago was at, and then getting Santiago to give him an interview the next day. He was determined to get that next commission, which he got. Santiago said that when that particular pamphlet came out, they kept disappearing; they were being stolen. Subscribers would get them and they’d have to ring back and ask for another one because they wanted Mapplethorpe’s images so much, and they weren’t circulating amongst fashion people, but amongst the art crowd.”

Mapplethorpe’s gay sadomasochism artwork caused outrage in the drawing rooms of America’s political right in the 1980s; in particular it provoked a denunciation by Senator Jesse Helms who objected to Mapplethorpe receiving support for a photographic exhibition from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“For Jesse Helms, I think it was fear — fear of sexuality,” says Brunnick. “He couldn’t give a good reason other than it was not art but in fact porn, but it still doesn’t justify the outrage when pornography proliferated on its own. There’s never been a good reason for it. It’s very personal and subjective. I think Mapplethorpe knew that many people had that leaning and he wanted to push him the other way or at least make as many as possible question that position.”

It’s just one of his many successes.

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive by Frances Terpak and Michelle Brunnick and Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs by Paul Martineau and Britt Salvesen are published by the Getty Research Institute. See www.getty.edu.