Mapping Mapplethorpe
I stumbled, by chance, onto there being a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition in Sheffield, as part of the Tate/National Galleries of Scotland Artists Room tour - of which Beuys at Bexhill was a part. Having got all excited about a Richard Dadd exhibition at Dulwich, only to find the thing was cancelled made me suspicious of a lack of mention of the event on the Graves Gallery website. Searching around the innards, there was a news story, but no other mention - and the Artists Room website, which now should be covering events into 2011, left a little to be desired. I used the contact-us form but heard nothing back from Sheffield, and somehow never found time to ring. Ah well, I thought, at least the Comedians exhibition will be of interest.
It might be that the good people of Sheffield - perhaps - took fright at a exhibition of a photograph who had taken a self-portrait with a whip handle stuck up his own (excuse me), and whose section in the Barbican sex exhibition was hedged with even more warnings than any of the, yanno, female nudes elsewhere. But surely such things would be checked out in advance?
Let's go to Sheffield, anyway.
I seem to have lost my city fu - or the map available on a Blackberry is misleading. There's a tendency for you to be able to find your location, and when you serah for your destination you lose your location, or it moves off the edge of the map. The directions are for cars, and involve huge diversions. I keep being sent the wrong way (and the iPod maps are superior). The gallery is meant to be about 80 m from the hotel - which was itself fun to find. There are maps on street corners, but one of these had a large blank area where Tudor Square ought to be, inches from the you are here arrow. Tere are next to no directions signposts.
Eventually I find a building, which contains the library and the gallery, butthere is nothing that is obviously dedicated as an entrance. At least I see a poster, so that's one thing sorted. I risk a staircase into the building and see a sign on a lift. Gallery, second floor. Thisn is misleading - the gallery has a space on the second floor, but the gallery itself is on the third, although no sign directs you there. I guess. And later see I misread the lift sign, which is ambiguous.
The first room is portraits - mostly of the famous people Mapplethorpe associated with, such as Warhol, and in turn Patti Smith and William Burroughs. Most of them are taken against neutral backgrounds - white with slight shifts for extra light, and black that absorbs coats and jumpers into nothingness. Heads and hands emerge out of nowhere. The second room is portraits, although we get our first (and, indeed, only) penis, on a dancer. There's the famous portrait of two leather men, a man's head covered in clothes peg and a leatherman in what may be a dungeon. These are the most obviously sexualised images, but aren't immediately interpretable.
There is an attempt at labelling, but it's a little naive and hit an miss - a number inform us that Mapplethorpe was brought up Catholic, as if only Christians have religious iconography in their work. Close ups are a technique used by surrealists.
Most bizarre is the label for this famous image, taken a few months before Mapplethorpe died of an AIDS related condition:
This is him as himself, we're told, unlike the other performance portraits. Here he isn't posing. Black and a skull on a wlaking stick? No symbolism there, then.
There were few black mail nudes, no flowers, and nothing hard core. But perhaps that is as well. I note that there is a Mapplethorpe exhibition coming to the Towner in Eastbourne next year - I wonder if it'd be the same.
In the next two rooms are the Comedians, and in some ways you'd have expected keeping the two areas distinct. This is National Portrait Gallery stuff - and was so-so. It seems as if there were no female comedians prior to Victoria Wood - when you expect there would be images of the music hall stars and Gracie Fields and so forth. It's not as if there were no obscure figures - but I think they needed more early stuff.
But it also strikes me that I'm not that interested in portraiture - the Gay Icons exhibition at the NPG was okay, but could have been (and was) a book - but I'm not sure it adds anything to my knowledge of the world. There's no real information on who was taking the pictures - they were credite, but who were they - who were the artists? I don't think it quite ticks my boxes, and I take few portraits myself.
It might be that the good people of Sheffield - perhaps - took fright at a exhibition of a photograph who had taken a self-portrait with a whip handle stuck up his own (excuse me), and whose section in the Barbican sex exhibition was hedged with even more warnings than any of the, yanno, female nudes elsewhere. But surely such things would be checked out in advance?
Let's go to Sheffield, anyway.
I seem to have lost my city fu - or the map available on a Blackberry is misleading. There's a tendency for you to be able to find your location, and when you serah for your destination you lose your location, or it moves off the edge of the map. The directions are for cars, and involve huge diversions. I keep being sent the wrong way (and the iPod maps are superior). The gallery is meant to be about 80 m from the hotel - which was itself fun to find. There are maps on street corners, but one of these had a large blank area where Tudor Square ought to be, inches from the you are here arrow. Tere are next to no directions signposts.
Eventually I find a building, which contains the library and the gallery, butthere is nothing that is obviously dedicated as an entrance. At least I see a poster, so that's one thing sorted. I risk a staircase into the building and see a sign on a lift. Gallery, second floor. Thisn is misleading - the gallery has a space on the second floor, but the gallery itself is on the third, although no sign directs you there. I guess. And later see I misread the lift sign, which is ambiguous.
The first room is portraits - mostly of the famous people Mapplethorpe associated with, such as Warhol, and in turn Patti Smith and William Burroughs. Most of them are taken against neutral backgrounds - white with slight shifts for extra light, and black that absorbs coats and jumpers into nothingness. Heads and hands emerge out of nowhere. The second room is portraits, although we get our first (and, indeed, only) penis, on a dancer. There's the famous portrait of two leather men, a man's head covered in clothes peg and a leatherman in what may be a dungeon. These are the most obviously sexualised images, but aren't immediately interpretable.
There is an attempt at labelling, but it's a little naive and hit an miss - a number inform us that Mapplethorpe was brought up Catholic, as if only Christians have religious iconography in their work. Close ups are a technique used by surrealists.
Most bizarre is the label for this famous image, taken a few months before Mapplethorpe died of an AIDS related condition:
This is him as himself, we're told, unlike the other performance portraits. Here he isn't posing. Black and a skull on a wlaking stick? No symbolism there, then.
There were few black mail nudes, no flowers, and nothing hard core. But perhaps that is as well. I note that there is a Mapplethorpe exhibition coming to the Towner in Eastbourne next year - I wonder if it'd be the same.
In the next two rooms are the Comedians, and in some ways you'd have expected keeping the two areas distinct. This is National Portrait Gallery stuff - and was so-so. It seems as if there were no female comedians prior to Victoria Wood - when you expect there would be images of the music hall stars and Gracie Fields and so forth. It's not as if there were no obscure figures - but I think they needed more early stuff.
But it also strikes me that I'm not that interested in portraiture - the Gay Icons exhibition at the NPG was okay, but could have been (and was) a book - but I'm not sure it adds anything to my knowledge of the world. There's no real information on who was taking the pictures - they were credite, but who were they - who were the artists? I don't think it quite ticks my boxes, and I take few portraits myself.