Robert
Mapplethorpe
Until November 5; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
The latest offering from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
(SNGMA) doesn’t have a commercial sponsor, and it’s not
hard to guess why. The allegedly obscene content of a similar show
in 1990 prompted a notorious legal battle in America, which eventually
concluded that homosexual freedom of expression was a constitutional
right.
The material in question is the photographic work of Robert Mapplethorpe,
1980s New York bad boy. Not only was he one of the first photographers
to celebrate the male nude, but he was also brutally honest about
the city’s sadomasochistic scene.
The SNGMA, proud to host the first Scottish Mapplethorpe show in over
20 years, saves the more lurid images for rooms painted in deep, lustful
purple. The rest of the 79 photographs – mostly portraits of
New York’s grooviest art stars – occupy a more neutral,
museum-like space.
No matter what Mapplethorpe photographed, it became laden with sex,
death, religion or sheer, exquisite beauty. Many times it was dripping
with all four at once. Sadomasochistic desires are not a mile away
from the Roman Catholic taste for orgasmic visions of pain and torture,
and for Mapplethorpe, once a devout Catholic, the link is explicit.
Whether re-enacting St Peter’s upside-down crucifixion, or assuming
the role of the devil (with tail fixed firmly in place), Mapplethorpe
wrestles with the contradictions of his faith and his most basic desires.
Many of his portraits are surprisingly saint-like, posing secular
stars in the manner of monks and martyrs. Few portraits match the
solemn presence of William Burroughs, filling the frame in an attitude
of pious prayer.
As if to cement Mapplethorpe’s role in art history, the wall
captions assert repeatedly the careful geometry of the artist’s
photographs. Architect Philip Johnson forms a triangle. Patti Smith’s
naked limbs are arranged to line up with the radiator to which she
clings. Marianne Faithful’s arms “form the hypotenuse of
a right-angle triangle”.
No matter how highly charged the content of Mapplethorpe’s photographs
were, he was always in clear control of their composition. First and
foremost a studio artist, he applied classical principles to the creation
of his works, lining them up with informed precision; not capturing
the world as it floated by.
Even the flowers he shot were selected, cut and laid out indoors.
And even they seem somehow erotic. He called them his “New York
flowers” because of their decadence, and they didn’t escape
the workings of his one-track mind. “My approach to photographing
a flower,” he said, “is not much different than photographing
a cock. Basically, it’s the same thing.”
In the end it’s this narrow vision that detracts from the impact
of Mapplethorpe’s work. After a certain number of muscular nudes
in the shape of equilateral triangles, and artists posed as saints,
his work becomes pretty predictable. A trip across town to the City
Art Centre’s Albert Watson show, in all its exuberant variety,
leaves Mapplethorpe in the shade.
Catrìona
Black, Sunday Herald 06.08.06