Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
Director: Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey
Talent: Debbie Harry, Fran Lebowitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Brooke Shields
Released: 22nd April
This feature length documentary from HBO was released to coincide with a new major exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. Mirroring that retrospective, the film charts Mapplethorpe’s life from his emergence as an artist while living in the Chelsea Hotel with Patti Smith to his peak as a chronicler of New York’s underground BDSM scene in stark monochrome portraits. But while the film adopts a fairly standard talking head approach, it doesn’t flinch away from most confrontational aspects of Mapplethorpe’s pictures. His male nudes, often with the penis erect and in close-up or engaged in fetishistic sex acts – there’s one self-portrait of the artist seen from behind with a leather whip rammed up his ass – are placed right at the fore. Even in the internet generation when much harder porn than this is only a click away, the idea that such images could be presented as art still has transgressive power. And by opening up a conversation around these images, this film makes a strong argument for their artistic validity.
Words: Bernard O’Rourke
