Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe was a controversial American photographer who was known for his small-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and naked men. Some of his common artworks include flowers especially orchids and calla lilies; celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry and Patti Smith, homoerotic acts and classical nudes. Why he is most famous today is because of the frank homosexual eroticism of some of the work and the controversy about the public funding of the artwork.
Often the photographs explicitly depicted sexual organs and bondage equipment. Yet Mapplethorpe's art always revealed the humanity and emotions of his subjects behind their leather, spikes, and chains. This unique style of art I feel is still art because it is not about the nakedness of the pictures rather the beauty of the body. Mapplethorpe’s style is influenced by Edward Weston who produced hundreds of studies of the naked human form, examining its curves and crevices. There was so much to Mapplethorpe’s art such as the creative light and shadow that he uses. Mapplethorpe was raised in a strictly Catholic family and was influences by the rigidity of his religion seen in some of him later works. In his famous “Andy Warhol” where he is photographed inside a square shaped cross, his style of cross imagery and accompanying symmetry is apparent. The Washington Post claimed that “Mapplethorpe was very conscious of these religious undertones and was quoted in one interview as saying: I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars." The symmetry is also seen in his nudes and flowers as well. In “Thomas” it shows a muscular man enclosed in a circle with his arms stretched 180 degrees pushing on the cage. In most of the flower portraits there are only one or two flowers and often in shadow.
Not all the works in his portfolios are explicit; however, they do contain his infamous self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus as well as many photographs of penises and men engaging in homosexual acts. Mapplethorpe's primary goals were to shock the public in order to sensitize them to gay issues. The Washington Post argued that, ” The Perfect Moment is exactly that: a study of the point where sex merges with sensuality, eroticism merges with the edges of pornography, fear of the camera merges with revelation of the inner self. Simply put, it is an extraordinary collection of work by an extraordinary man.” After looking at his work one can see the real art and emergence of all of these emotions and feelings which are what Mapplethorpe wanted to portray.