Robert Mapplethorpe, Alison Jacques Gallery | reviews, news & interviews
Robert Mapplethorpe, Alison Jacques Gallery
Robert Mapplethorpe, Alison Jacques Gallery
The man with a bullwhip up his bottom sculpts with his photos
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Peter Reed, clenching his buttocks, by Robert MapplethorpeAlison Jacques Gallery
The first thing to make clear is that Robert Mapplethorpe, notorious for his photograph of himself with a bullwhip up his arse, is not really a photographer: he is a sculptor who works in the medium of photography. What else can explain the marble and ebony of his chiselled subjects, or the fact that most of the works selected for this show as responses to Mapplethorpe are sculptures?
The first thing to make clear is that Robert Mapplethorpe, notorious for his photograph of himself with a bullwhip up his arse, is not really a photographer: he is a sculptor who works in the medium of photography. What else can explain the marble and ebony of his chiselled subjects, or the fact that most of the works selected for this show as responses to Mapplethorpe are sculptures?
Instead of the flexing athletes and surprised goddesses of the Greeks, Mapplethorpe is extending sculpture to modern humans
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