SUBJECT OBJECT IMAGE: Robert Mapplethorpe at Alison Jacques Gallery
By Matilda Kay
This winter, London gallery Alison Jacques presented “SUBJECT OBJECT IMAGE”, marking twenty-four years of collaboration between the gallery and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. The exhibition presents the work of iconic American artist Robert Mapplethorpe (b. 1946 – d. 1989), exploring his curious way of approaching the world and the people around him. Hedonistic, perverse, ecstatic – however you describe Mapplethorpe’s work, what cannot be denied is his fearless artistic approach and unwavering policy of honesty.
Mapplethorpe was born in Queens, New York into a rigorously Catholic suburban household. As an openly gay artist with a proclivity for the divine but also the depraved, Mapplethorpe led a life plagued by contradictions and engaged in vicious culture wars. The timeline of the exhibition begins in 1976 when Mapplethorpe had outgrown polaroids, shifting instead to the Hasselblad 500 camera, and concludes with images taken in the year before his premature death in 1989 from AIDS. As presented on the wall of the gallery, Mapplethorpe’s own words most aptly communicate the premise of the exhibition: “It’s a different subject, same treatment, same vision, which is what it’s all about – my eyes as opposed to someone else’s…”. It is Mapplethorpe’s persistent and unapologetic objectification of his subject that is the vein of this exhibition.
The space opens with Mirror (c. 1971) [Fig. 1], one of Mapplethorpe’s first sculptural pieces. A mirror latticed with iron mesh held in a simple wooden frame, it invites the viewer to see how they go from a subject to an object, and finally become an image sculpted in Mapplethorpe’s eye. Like entering a confessional booth, I had an unexpected moment of personal reckoning. Faced with my own fractured reflection, the anonymity with which I entered the space was simultaneously threatened and then destroyed – I was gifted a moment of Mapplethorpeian transfiguration.
[Figure 1] Robert Mapplethorpe, Mirror, c. 1971, wire mesh and wooden frame, 91.4 x 66 cm, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.
Aesthetic perfection was Mapplethorpe’s telos – plagued by the ugly and banal, he chased the magical, the divine, and the painfully beautiful. He rendered his subjects, sentient or not, as if they were gods. The trio of black and white photographs on the wall adjoining Mirror of Lisa Lyon (1982), Orchid (1985), and Patti Smith (1979) [Fig. 2] shows Mapplethorpe’s effort to extract the sculptural essence from forms and people. It reflects Mapplethorpe’s working mind – his equal treatment of all subjects, be it a woman, a penis, or a flower. He attended all with equal grace and attention, seeking the same sculptural seduction in each. Images such as this make it clear that is useless to try to ascribe set meanings and patterns to his work as we cannot seriously understand someone who is governed by ritualistic impulse. His stance is illusive, and the beauty of his works should remain as such. Mapplethorpe seeks to wrap his vison of beauty around all that he sees, raising the plainest of objects out of the ashes. Like Midas, he turns everything to gold.
[Figure 2] Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1979, silver gelatin print, 50.8 x 40.6, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.
There is certainly a pressure to be shocked by Mapplethorpe’s work – by his larger-than-life depictions of genitalia and what may be seen as blasphemy – a devil in a stand-off with a phallus. I believe, however, that his work’s proximity to sexuality isn’t purely sexual but rather humorous. To me, Cock and Devil (1982) [Fig. 3] is steeped in humour. It’s a joke that Mapplethorpe tries to construct between himself and the viewer. It poses as an inside joke, some of these are created with hilarity in mind yet many are disgusted. Mapplethorpe knew that some viewers would miss half the point and revelled in it.
Exhibited works like Aijitto (1981) a landscape-esque view of the sitters’ buttocks, or Veronica and Boyfriend (1982), an image of two tongues dancing onto one another, trouble us because they beg questions about our own sexuality and pent-up desire. They present that dreaded moment of personal reckoning. Mapplethorpe’s overt desire intimidates those who abuse their own by stifling it. It asks, “what happens when we approach the world and ourselves with total honesty?”. It is unsettling because simultaneously we are shocked and excited. Genitalia or not, these are tantalising images. The knowledge that there are those out there such as Mapplethorpe who can approach others with such nuance and depth is at once wonderous and terrifying.
[Figure 3] Robert Mapplethorpe, Cock and Devil, 1982, silver gelatin print, 50.8 x 40. 6 cm, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.
White Gauze (1984) [Fig. 4] lends a moment of cohesion. It is immensely tender and characteristic of Mapplethorpe’s persistent sensitivity. Although the provocative Mapplethorpe was branded as a sexual outlaw, I believe White Gauze offers a different perspective. He is trying to balance these opposing forces that governed him, the innocence and depravity that swelled within his life. Here desire is remiss, but form and pose are pivotal. It shows off his formalist abilities; his mastery of light and space whilst playing with our societal perception of masculinity. What is offered here is tenderness and permeability. He is just as concerned with moments of cohesion as he is with fractious power play.
Mapplethorpe approaches the murky water of sexuality with sophistication, and - I think - kindness. When you strip it back, Mapplethorpe’s work concerned with mortality, legacy, desire, and masculine beauty. Is this so shocking? These men are not strangers, randomly objectified on a whim. They are his lovers and friends so there is an autobiographical and confessional element – Mapplethorpe is not a voyeur, rather an active participant who wants to dive in and divulge the secrets of love and passion.
[Figure 4] Robert Mapplethorpe, White Gauze, 1984, silver gelatin print, 50.8 x 40. 6 cm, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.
In the second room, the largest wall [Fig. 5] is a constellation of celebrity portraits rotating around the central Steve Strange (1981). These are the friends and lovers that revolve around Mapplethorpe’s star-studded world. Whilst this exhibition explores memento mori, the inevitability of death posed in the flowers of Rose (1989), and Tiger Lily (1987), it is also a celebration of the potential that life has to offer. This is a microcosm of the artistic giants who defined the New York cultural landscape in the 70s and 80s – Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, to name a few. Mapplethorpe tends to look inward, into his own desires, but this exhibition shows his outward glance – his conscious preservation of the legacy of New York.
[Figure 5] Installation view courtesy of Alison Jacques Gallery.
There is a true sense of mortality, of a fleeting personality held within the frame. In the four-part series Arnold Schwarzenegger (1976) you sense how Mapplethorpe goes beyond the subject’s muscles and explores the fragility of his personality. You sense Schwarzenegger’s apprehension of the photographic space, his very human shyness of the camera’s eye. Mapplethorpe is so attentive to his subject, especially within these portraits that he can draw out the very fabric of their being. I truly do not believe that any other photographer can do this in the same way that he did. His images seem to pulse with a power so indisputable that it’s mythic. He has a strange and enviable ability to take the titans of his contemporary culture and render them human. Humans made, like him, of equal parts passion and fragility. Mapplethorpe catches everything and shies away from nothing. I do not think that many of us can say that we accept the totality of life in full in the way that Mapplethorpe did.