In collaboration with the J. Paul Getty Museum, the LACMA presents The Perfect Medium, a major retrospective examining the work and career of Robert Mapplethorpe with over 300 of the artist’s works on view.
0rganized in five thematic sections and galleries, the travelling exhibition brings an overview of Mapplethorpe’s early drawings and collages of the late 60’s, his first Polaroids of the 70’s pointing out a recurring interest in the (self-) portrait, from the provocative glimpse he offered throughout the 70’s and 80’s into an urban gay culture and an intriguing community of fetish and nudity, to the commissioned portraits from the mid 80’s onwards.
Rarely seen correspondence, books, and other ephemera demonstrate Mapplethorpe’s personal connections to his sitters, his ability to manage a successful studio, and his ambition to elevate photography to the status of art, and together with the works on display provide insight into such key genres as portraiture, the nude, and still life.
Independently of the exhibition but coinciding with it, HBO presents Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, the first feature-length documentary about the artist since his death, and the most comprehensive film on his life and work to date.
Robert Mapplethorpe - The perfect Medium
Los Angeles
20.3.2016 – 31.7.2016
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
/ by Kim Poorters /
