Mapplethorpe’s magnificent buttocks

Nude photograhpy of Robert Mapplethorpe

text: Jasper Krabbé

Article

No. 6 • June 2017

Robert Mapplethorpe couldn’t help but provoke. Everything in his universe was charged with sexuality. And yet, his provocative nudes were bathed in a soft, almost tender light.

Robert Mapplethorpe was not only one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, but he was also controversial. A fallen angel, whose rare sovereign vision and admirable technical mastery elevated his photography to the status of high art in the 1970s.

Fig 1. Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-Portrait (1975) | Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Mapplethorpe found his own voice in a distinctly sober, stylized photography in which he intensified reality through theatrical lighting, much like the heroic models captured by photographer George Hoyningen-Huene. He loved well-formed, sculpted bodies, especially those of Black men. And he sought perfection in the way the Greeks did. He photographed skin in a way that made it appear like marble, and marble until it resembled skin. He sculpted with light, thus honoring the bodies he adored.

Fig 2. Robert Mapplethorpe, Lowell Smith (1981)

Photography and sex, according to Mapplethorpe, had much in common: both were enigmas. Everything in his universe was sexually charged. He presented the sublime beauty of a lily or a penis (both favorites) with the same obsessive gaze. SM and soft porn were introduced into art photography by him – harsh images, yet bathed in soft, almost tender light. Like in one of his early self-portraits where he looks devilishly at us with a whip in his anus. Or in the photo of his lover Milton Moore in a polyester suit, with the open zipper revealing the evidence of being well-endowed. He couldn’t help being provocative; it was simply his habitat – nightclubs and New York perversities where punks, leather queens, transvestites, pimps, and night butterflies played leading roles.

Long before his coming out, Mapplethorpe had a relationship with singer Patti Smith, a soulmate in life and art. An unconditional love that endured as a deep friendship until his death. (Smith wrote the beautiful book Just Kids about it). They lived together in a run-down room in Brooklyn, where she sold homemade necklaces or stole their food, while he prostituted himself on the decaying piers along the West Side Highway.

Raised in a strict Catholic upbringing, Mapplethorpe was deeply spiritual. He once said that his work and his life were nourished by holding God’s hand. Despite his wild lifestyle, he never let go of that hand and was even guided by it. Through beauty, he found redemption. In doing so, he gave us a glimpse of the divine behind things.