Tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe | Delerium

Masters of Photography
Tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989)
20th Death Aniversary (1989 - 2009)
"The sulphurous praise of shapes"

Music: Flowers Become Screens
by Delerium
Featuring Rani Kamal, from "The Best of Delerium"
http://delerium.ca/

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. This is just a tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe and Delerium. So if anybody has a problem with this video, please tell me and I will take it down immediately.

Robert Mapplethorpe (Long island, November 4, 1946 - Boston, March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and naked men. The frank eroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks. Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic of English and Irish heritage in Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Floral Park, Queens, New York. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts. Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe's first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. In the 1980s Sam Wagstaff gave him $500,000 to buy the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he lived and had his shooting space. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom. Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital from complications arising from AIDS; he was 42 years old. His ashes were buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked 'Maxey'.
Nearly a year before his death, the ailing Mapplethorpe helped found the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. His vision for the Foundation was that it would be "the appropriate vehicle to protect his work, to advance his creative vision, and to promote the causes he cared about". Since his death, the Foundation has not only functioned as his official estate and helped promote his work throughout the world, it has also raised and donated millions of dollars to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV infection.

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Robert Mapplethorpe (Long Island, 4 novembre 1946 - Boston, 9 marzo 1989) è stato un fotografo statunitense. La maggior parte delle sue foto sono realizzate in studio. I suoi temi più comuni furono ritratti di persone in seguito diventate famose (tra cui Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, e Patti Smith), soggetti che ritraevano da vicino e senza filtri l'ambiente omosessuale di New York di cui Mapplethorpe stesso faceva parte e studi di nudo spesso maschili e omoerotici, con la notevole eccezione della serie di nudo femminile della culturista Lysa Lion. Il fotografo ha spesso spezzato deliberatamente il confine tra foto d'arte e foto commerciale destinata al mercato pornografico, adottando soggetti e temi tipici della "pornografia" nel contesto di immagini d'arte. Questa rottura deliberata di confini codificati da decenni fu la principale ragione dell'ostilità nei confronti del suo lavoro. Fu però soprattutto per merito suo se in fotografia è caduta la barriera artificiale fra "arte" e "pornografia". Come ha scritto di lui Adriano Altamira: « l'operazione che sta dietro al mondo figurativo e all'imagerie di Robert Mapplethorpe è piuttosto trasparente: trasporre soggetti omoerotici nel territorio eletto e squisitamente formale della classicità, usare la natura morta come un genere allusivo, e infine fare del nudo indifferentemente maschile o femminile una forma di studio botanico. » In Italia Mapplethorpe è invece, prudentemente, ricordato soprattutto per le serie di primi piani di fiori. Queste foto estremamente raffinate e stilizzate ripetono in senso inverso il lavoro già fatto col corpo umano, sottolineando il fatto spesso dimenticato che i fiori sono gli organi sessuali delle piante, e che anche nel loro caso Bello Artistico e Sesso non possono essere arbitrariamente separati e collocati in due sfere separate.

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[Red Nacional de Estudiantes de Sociología]

Without cocks, it is not Robert.

Sorry.

[minuicch]

I do not agree with you! Robert is much more than cocks!

[JenR1]

I think that Robert would have loved this showing of his work. He WANTED people to see it SO desperately if you read Patti Smith's new book that it is out "Just Kids" about the two of them. It's a Memoir to him. Tells a lot about her but that puts all of this into even more sense. I think the song is so appropriate for this showing of his work and all of it is just gorgeous beyond words.

[minuicch]

Thank you very much for your wonderful comment. I' am truly honored to have well presented the amazing art of Robert Mapplethorpe...

[2xmi]

Formidable video sobre algunas fotografías de Mapplethorpe. pienso que se encuentra entre lo prosaico y lo sublime, entre lo profano y lo sagrado entre lo dionisíaco y lo apolíneo. Me hace acordar muchísimo a una fotógrafa alemana que filmó ,as Olimpíadas de 1936 cuyo nombre lamentablemente no recuerdo, ella admiraba muchísismo las formas y el uso de la luz en la foto otra genia a pesar de haber trabjado para un dictador. Muchas gracias por compartir tu video.

[minuicch]

La fotógrafa alemana al que usted se refiere se llama Leni Riefenstahl...

Muchas gracias por su visita!

[Creativitymadness]

Robert is just a master catching beauty and balance the man is a master.

[anthonynewsome]

love this video - I am reading JUST KIDS a very beautiful account of Patti & Robert - thanks for posting this great video tribute to an amazing artist -

[Yorgo Nestoridis]

Simply awesome!

[BlushingMocha741]

ugh...Perfection!

[Sir9real]

MASTERY.

[helenkrump]

Mapplethorpe lives up to his hype, love the array of photos in this montage--I find the floral photos every bit as sexually alluring, & dynamic as the nudes--so many of his images are just stunning.

[jeanpaulbourgeau]

fantastique Mapplethorpe, les fleurs, les blacks et les antiques sont des sommets

[kotrab83]

Un artista meraviglioso!!