Robert Mapplethorpe – Liaison with Patti Smith, early photographic works for Andy Warhol
Robert Mapplethorpe was born in Floral Park, New York on 4 November 1946. The third of six children, he grew up in a Catholic working family in modest circumstances, but after leaving school, attended the Pratt Institute at the wishes of his parents. There he came into contact with the ’68 movement which had a decisive influence on his further development. As a student he met the yet unknown musician Patti Smith with whom he was involved for several years and even shared a flat and it was whilst taking her portrait that he discovered his love for photography. Whilst still studying, Mapplethorpe worked for Andy Warhol. The Polaroid camera played an important role for his work from early on, with which he photographed acquaintances, friends and, increasingly, established and upcoming stars in intimate poses. He turned the female bodybuilder Lisa Lyons into the object of a whole series of pictures which quickly attracted attention and also provoked protest against his increasingly risqué motifs.
First Polaroid, then Hasselblad – but always erotic and intimate
Robert Mapplethorpe used the Polaroid camera for his first pictures not for artistic reasons but out of economic necessity: he was unable to afford a more sophisticated model. It was only years later that he received a Hasselblad from his then lover Sam Wagstaff, which he used from then on. His path often led to the sex club The Mineshaft where he found his male models, who often also served as lovers. Artistically he went his own way, even when he was still influenced in the beginning by Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Intimacy played a central role in his work; even when photographing flowers, he focused on their reproductive parts. With his dramatic depictions of homosexual and sadomasochistic practices, Robert Mapplethorpe became the much-discussed subject of numerous controversies and censorship efforts.
A life in exhilaration, AIDS illness, and early death
Robert Mapplethorpe lived as he photographed: His openly flaunted his promiscuity, had wild affairs with women and men, frequented the homosexual sadomasochistic milieu, and recorded his inclinations and experiences with his camera. At the same time, he was convinced that it did not just come down to photography and art, but to the way of life – and the most important thing in life, the photographer freely admitted, was sex. Work and life merged into one exhilaration for Robert Mapplethorpe, by which he let himself be driven. Whatever engaged him, he photographed, and whatever he photographed, engaged him. When it became known that Mapplethorpe had contracted HIV, his photographs saw a dramatic rise in value. He himself was well aware of his expiring lifespan and continued to photograph like a man possessed, not even shying away from documenting himself marked by approaching death.
Robert Mapplethorpe died in Boston, Massachusetts on 9 March 1989 at the age of 42 from AIDS.
Robert Mapplethorpe - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
