America is a country that has always thrived on dramatic battles between "good" and "evil", God and the Devil. Demonising may have Puritan roots, but it remains a particularly American obsession. The photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe, whose sexually explicit images shocked many of his compatriots, drew much of his strength from exploiting the chasm that divides the self-righteously "pure" and the darker forces of revolution. He embodied the shadow of his country more radically than any other artist of his time, and cultivated a devilish notoriety that ensured him the fame and financial rewards that he set his heart on.
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s documentary provides a fascinating account of Mapplethorpe’s life: an inexorable and astonishing rise from God-fearing Catholic suburbia to a life of excess, in which nights at the celebrated Mine Shaft featured every possible form of sado-masochistic pain-and-pleasure-seeking. The film is impeccably researched, and the story told by a show-stopping cast of contributors, from lovers and models to collectors and gallerists and journalists. So this is not a film for the faint-hearted, for – quite rightly - it doesn’t avoid the more sexually orientated images that Mapplethorpe made with such loving care and a perfectionist aesthetic.
The often very moving film is well edited and paced, a little too long, and sometimes marred by the unnecessary use of minimalist music, a drone-like presence that features all too often in contemporary documentaries. But this is a must-see for anyone interested in the margins of contemporary art, the resonances of a Catholic upbringing in one man’s extraordinary image-making, and what it takes to become famous and rich in the New York art world. Mapplethorpe’s dedication to the priapic - not least the penises of black men - reflects in many ways his own phallocentric ego-mania, driven by an ambition that the film reveals with great skill, and a mixture of awe, humour and a little disgust.
Overleaf: watch the trailer to Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
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