Another year, another Mapplethorpe show. But hell, you can’t really go wrong with Robert Mapplethorpe. His elegant, edgy works are as relevant today as they were in the thirty years ago. They hit that easy-uneasy juxposition between unnerving and welcoming. And that is about as close to perfect as you could get.While you’d be forgiven for assuming that all of Mapplethorpe’s work was fastidiously conceived, you’d be wrong. During the early seventies, at a time when a young Mapplethorpe was shifting into his own sexual persona, he produced a large batch of Polaroids; shots that represent his later works, capturing well-known friends and lovers like Patti Smith, Marianne Faithful, Ozzie Clark, Candy Darling, or Sam Wagstaff, alongside everyday happenings, erotica, and all sorts of nudity.
In association with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and curated by Sylvia Wolf, ‘Polaroids: Mapplethorpe’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art comes fast on the heels of Polaroid’s February announcement that they’re binning instant film. With its obvious cultural significance, this is an appropriate send-off, exhibiting around hundred pieces of intimacy from Mapplethorpe’s world. Indeed, many of these shots, which were taken during 1970-1975, are on public view for the first time. So, in actual fact, this show, is far from being more of the same.
“Polaroids: Mapplethorpe” is showing the Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021, from May 3, 2008-September 7, 2008.
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