Robert Mapplethorpe — Les Galeries nationales du Grand Palais — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 26 → July 13, 2014

Robert Mapplethorpe — Grand Palais S’il est relativement court, le parcours consacré à Robert Mapplethorpe au Grand Palais n’en est pas moins riche avec une concentra... 2 - Bien Critique

The exhibition presents over 250 works making it one of the largest retrospective shows for this artist ever held in a museum. It covers Mapplethorpe’s entire career as a photographer, from the Polaroids of the early 1970s to the portraits from the late 1980s, touching on his sculptural nudes and still lifes, and sadomasochism.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Thomas, 1987 Épreuve gelatino-argentique — 61 × 50,8 cm © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

The focus on his two muses Patti Smith and Lisa Lyon explores the theme of women and femininity and reveals a less known aspect of the photographer’s work. The challenge of this exhibition is to show that Mapplethorpe is a great classical artist, who addressed issues in art using photography as he might have used sculpture. It also puts Mapplethorpe’s art into the context of the New York art scene in the 1970-1980s.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon, 0 Épreuve gelatino-argentique — 50,8 × 40,6 cm © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

In his interview with Janet Kardon in 1987, Mapplethorpe explained that photography in the 1970s was the perfect medium for a fast-paced time. He did not really choose photography; in a way it was photography that chose him. Later in the same interview, he said “If I had been born one hundred or two hundred years ago, I might have been a sculptor, but photography is a very quick way to see, to make a sculpture. Lisa Lyon reminded me of Michelangelo’s subjects, because he did muscular women.” Mapplethorpe positioned himself from the outset as an Artist, with a capital A. Unlike Helmut Newton, who as a teenager already wanted to be a fashion photographer, and imposed his vision of the world and photography, making it an art in its own right, Robert Mapplethorpe is a sculptor at heart, a plastic artist driven by the question of the body and its sexuality and obsessed by the search for perfect form.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 0 Épreuve gelatino-argentique — 50,8 × 40,6 cm © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Like Man Ray, Mapplethorpe wanted to be “a creator of images” rather than a photographer, “a poet” rather than a documentarist. In the catalogue for the Milan exhibition which compared the two artists, Bruno Cora recalls the parallels in their lives and works:

“Before becoming masterly photographers, Man Ray and Mapplethorpe had both been painters and sculptors, creators of objects; they both lived in Brooklyn in New York; they both made portraits of the intellectuals of their time; and they were both incisive explorers of the nude form, its sculptural qualities and the energy emanating from it.”