Robert Michael Mapplethorpe ( ; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer and artist. Best known for his black-and-white photographs, his work encompassed celebrity portraits, self-portraits, erotic photographs, and still lifes of flowers.
Mapplethorpe initially worked in collages, sculpture, and jewelry design, incorporating photography into his collages before adopting it as his primary medium. During the 1970s, he became known for photographs documenting New York City's gay male BDSM subculture, while his portraits brought together subjects from different social and cultural circles. He continued to work until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1989.
His posthumous exhibition The Perfect Moment in 1989 became the focus of a national controversy over public funding for the arts, censorship, and the legal treatment of sexually explicit imagery. The controversy contributed to broader debates in the United States over artistic freedom.
Mapplethorpe's photographs are held in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. His life and work were the subject of the 2016 documentary film Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016) and the biographical film Mapplethorpe (2018).
Early life and education
Childhood Mapplethorpe was born on November 4, 1946 at Irwin Sanitarium in Hollis, Queens. His mother Joan Dorothy "Maxey" belonged to the Rosary Society and a bowling league and his father Harry Irving Mapplethorpe, an electrical engineer, worked at Underwriters Laboratories. He was of English, Irish, and German descent and grew up as a Catholic.
As a child, his family moved to the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens. The third of six children, he had three brothers and two sisters. One of his brothers, Edward Mapplethorpe, later worked for him as an assistant and became a photographer as well.
Mapplethorpe attended Martin Van Buren High School, where he graduated in 1963. That summer, he worked as a messenger at National City Bank.
Pratt Institute and early art In 1963, Mapplethorpe enrolled at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in Graphic Arts. He first met Patti Smith toward the end of the spring semester of 1967, while he was living at St. James Place. Smith had been searching for a friend from New Jersey, but had mistakenly been given Mapplethorpe's address. Their paths crossed again several months later in Greenwich Village. Smith, who was on a date with a man making unwanted sexual advances, spotted Mapplethorpe in Tompkins Square Park and asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend. The two were immediately attracted to one another, and Smith subsequently moved in with Mapplethorpe, who was then sharing an apartment with Pat and Margaret Kennedy on Waverly Avenue in Brooklyn.
In November 1967, Mapplethorpe and Smith moved to a brownstone on Hall Street in Brooklyn, where they created an unconventional bohemian living and working environment. Both were aspiring artists while working at FAO Schwarz on Fifth Avenue, where Smith was a cashier and Mapplethorpe worked as a window trimmer. They spent their evenings working on their respective art projects. Mapplethorpe experimented with marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD, which he used while working on his art and he stopped attending classes.
In September 1968, Mapplethorpe returned to Pratt Institute using money from a student loan and moved back in with Pat and Margaret Kennedy on Waverly Avenue. During the winter intersession, he traveled to San Francisco, telling his friend Judy Linn, "I have to find out if I'm gay once and for all." He stayed in a commune with people he had met on the journey and later described the experience as a turning point in his life. After returning to New York, he became involved with a young man named Terry, whom he had met through Linn. Smith later recalled that Mapplethorpe's interest in homosexuality seemed to emerge suddenly.
Mapplethorpe also began incorporating homoerotic imagery into his art, making collages from gay pornography and creating sculptures that explored male sexuality. One of his works from this period consisted of a pair of jeans stuffed at the crotch with socks and wired to create a pulsating effect.
Mapplethorpe was scheduled to graduate from Pratt in June 1969 but failed his psychology final, leaving him one course short of completing his degree. After five years at the institute, he left without graduating and moved to a loft on Delancey Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His arrival in Manhattan coincided with the Stonewall riots, which became a pivotal event in the gay rights movement.
Life and career
Networking After spending several months in Paris, Smith returned to New York and moved into the Delancey Street loft where Mapplethorpe was living as a house sitter. After a neighbor was murdered in the building, the two fled the loft, taking only their art portfolios with them, and checked into the Allerton Hotel on West 22nd Street. Mapplethorpe was suffering from a severe infection and developed a high fever, but they could not afford medical treatment. After several days, Smith carried him down the hotel's fire escape and took him by taxi to the Chelsea Hotel in July 1969.
At the Chelsea, Smith persuaded hotel manager Stanley Bard to give them a room in exchange for her artwork as collateral. They were given room 1017, where they stayed together and continued to pursue their artistic ambitions. After Mapplethorpe recovered from his illness, he and Smith began actively networking among artists and other residents. Smith returned to her job at Scribner's while continuing to support Mapplethorpe financially. The two became known at the hotel for their distinctive clothing and bohemian style. Among the Chelsea residents they befriended was filmmaker and photographer Sandy Daley, who introduced them to people and places in the Chelsea and downtown New York.
Daley brought Mapplethorpe and Smith to Max's Kansas City, the Park Avenue South restaurant and bar that had become a gathering place for artists, musicians, celebrities, and other figures of New York's downtown cultural scene. The venue had close associations with Pop artist Andy Warhol and his circle, and Mapplethorpe was particularly interested in making connections with them. He and Smith regularly spent evenings at Max's, which eventually led to an invitation from rock promoter and writer Danny Fields to join his table. Smith and Mapplethorpe regarded as an important breakthrough in their networking efforts.
Because their room at the Chelsea Hotel was too small to serve as a studio, Mapplethorpe and Smith rented a loft at 206 West 23rd Street. They initially continued sleeping at the Chelsea while working in the loft, but moved there permanently when the entire space became available in spring 1970. Mapplethorpe and Smith divided the loft into separate workspaces and concentrated on their art when they were not networking at Max's Kansas City.
Early artistic ventures In spring 1970, one of Mapplethorpe's denim jackets, adorned with symbolic charms, was included in Clothing as Art, a group exhibition organized by Stanley Amos at the Chelsea Hotel. He also began selling his jewelry to clients associated with the Max's Kansas City scene. His handmade jewelry combined found materials with beads, dice, feathers, rabbit's feet, silver skulls, and crosses, reflecting his Baroque sense of style. His jewelry was modeled by Warhol superstars Ultra Violet, Jay Johnson, and Joe Dallesandro. Although his jewelry attracted attention and a potential financial backer offered to provide seed money for a jewelry business, Mapplethorpe declined, preferring to pursue his work as an artist rather than establish himself as a jewelry designer.
During this period, Mapplethorpe continued to develop drawings and collages while experimenting with photography. Influenced in part by Marcel Duchamp's concept of the readymade, he constructed assemblages from discarded objects and incorporated religious and sadomasochistic imagery into his work.
On Memorial Day 1970, Mapplethorpe met model David Croland, who was staying with his friend Tinkerbelle at the Chelsea Hotel. Mapplethorpe initially kept his relationship with Croland from Smith, but Tinkerbelle eventually told her about it. Shortly after, Mapplethorpe collaborated with Daley on the film Robert Having His Nipple Pierced, which documented a nipple-piercing performed by Dr. Herb Krohn, the Chelsea Hotel's resident physician. Daley conceived the film as a "happening," with Mapplethorpe and Croland as its central figures.
Mapplethorpe began using Daley's Polaroid camera to photograph himself and later Croland. Mapplethorpe's earliest public statement on gay sexuality appeared in 1970 on the cover of Gay Power, which called itself "New York's First Homosexual Newspaper." His collage Bull's Eye depicts a man in leather boots with his genitals covered by a red dot and his face obscured by a black strip.
Emergence as a photographer In July 1971, Croland, introduced Mapplethorpe to John McKendry, curator of photographs and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who became his first significant benefactor. Through McKendry, Mapplethorpe gained access to influential figures in the art and fashion worlds, including Henry Geldzahler, who introduced him to David Hockney, and photographer Francesco Scavullo. Mapplethorpe acknowledged that he deliberately cultivated connections to advance his career, describing his approach as "subtle aggressiveness."
In September 1971, McKendry invited Mapplethorpe to accompany him on a trip to London, and arranged for him to stay with Catherine Tennant at her flat on King's Road. McKendry encouraged Mapplethorpe to photograph members of Britain's aristocracy, envisioning him as a successor to Cecil Beaton as a portraitist of high society. During his three-week stay in London, however, Mapplethorpe made relatively few photographs, but met artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. He also had a sexual encounter with McKendry in London, and photographed him in a bathtub at Alexis de la Falaise's farmhouse in Wales.
When McKendry returned to New York, Mapplethorpe traveled to Paris, where he stayed with fashion designer Fernando Sanchez and socialized with Loulou de la Falaise and fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent took an interest in Mapplethorpe's handmade fetish jewelry, incorporating similar designs into his collections. Mapplethorpe spent his 25th birthday in Paris on November 4, 1971. Concerned that his career was losing momentum, he told McKendry that he would not return to New York until he had taken more photographs. He remained in Paris, where he began a relationship with a Frenchman named François, whom he photographed several times over the following years.
On November 24, 1971, Robert Having His Nipple Pierced premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, following efforts by Daley to persuade the museum to screen the film. Later that year, McKendry gave Mapplethorpe a Polaroid camera for Christmas, replacing the borrowed and unreliable cameras he had previously used. In a letter, Mapplethorpe expressed his gratitude to McKendry and his wife Maxime de la Falaise for their support, and wrote that was confident that his work would eventually have an influence.