A portrait as explicit as its subject
Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s work is front and center in ‘ Look at the Pictures.’
In his life and especially in the stories told of his life, Robert Mapplethorpe has represented a multitude of identities and meanings.
He created elegant photographs of f lowers and celebrities and documented a sexual underground in pictures that helped ignite a battle over free expression that continued well after his death in 1989. He was an ambitious Catholic kid from Queens who, like his early lover and comrade Patti Smith, rose to fame as a creative force from the Boho squalor of New York City. And his reputation lives on as a still- controversial icon of the LGBT community.
“When you put them all together, the totality gives you Mapplethorpe,” says Randy Barbato, co- director of “Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures,” debuting Monday night on HBO. “There was an intensity to his honesty and his intimacy with all kinds of people.”
The documentary created by Barbato and longtime collaborator Fenton Bailey arrives amid a reexamination of the photographer sparked by ajoint exhibition at the Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The f ilmmakers insist their timing was coincidental to last month’s opening of “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium.” “Look at the Pictures” had its Los Angeles premiere March 15 on the big screen at LACMA.
“I can’t help but think that somehow we’re part of this master plan of his,” Bailey says playfully of the photographer, whose gifts included the shrewd marketing of his work and persona. Mapplethorpe’s self- portraits were central, portraying himself in various moods and guises, from street tough to sex toy or a demon in plastic novelty store horns to f inally, the fully realized artist facing premature death at age 42 from AIDS.
The full life of Mapplethorpe, who would have turned 70 this year, is told in the documentary, but it inevitably focuses significant time on the sexually charged images of his most personal work. It opens in 1989 with footage of GOP Sen. Jesse Helms angrily holding a Mapplethorpe photo in the U. S. Senate, enraged that federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts were involved with an exhibit of the work. He implored his colleagues: “Look at the pictures, just look at the pictures…”
The f ilm explores Mapplethorpe’s relationship with patron, lover and inf luential collector Sam Wagstaff and the connections between the artist’s personal life and crucial phases of his work. He was a perfectionist with incomplete technical skills but had ambitions for Warhol- like fame, nearly approaching his goal at the time of his death.
Among the f ilm’s almost 500 Mapplethorpe images are selections from his “X” portfolio, with pictures of bondage, male anatomy and sadomasochistic sex acts. By showing the work, the doc is as explicit as its subject. “He said it’s the most important pictures he ever took, so he put it front and center,” says Bailey. “That was a guiding principal in making the whole film. … He saw sex and photography both as magic.”
An early scene in the film features curators from the two Los Angeles museums carefully examining, with gloved hands, photographs and other artifacts from Mapplethorpe’s life. One item is a weathered membership card for the Mine Shaft, a bondage- themed gay sex club frequented by Mapplethorpe for a time and where he found subjects for his most explicit pictures. It is signed by the artist, right above the line: “a member in good standing.”
“We’re in a climate- controlled room at the Getty Institute, one of the most expensive architectural masterpieces of the 20th century, with the most incredible resources for preserving things. And all of us are all standing there looking at this card, and it’s sort of absurd,” recalls Bailey. “Yes, it’s funny, but that doesn’t mean it’s not serious.”
The idea for a Mapplethorpe documentary came during a meeting with HBO, which has commissioned Bailey and Barbato to create several films. There were no talks about what could or could not be shown, and they were not asked to remove anything from the f inished film. “We’ve made a lot of f ilms for HBO, so they’re usually very respectful. They knew who Mapplethorpe was and who we are as f ilmmakers,” says Barbato.
The culture has moved to a more open place since the Reagan ’ 80s and Clinton ’ 90s, and the battles over censorship and public funding for the arts. “S& M has become a fashion runway look,” says Bailey, but Mapplethorpe’s work still cuts through the noise.
“We have access to explicit imagery just by opening up our computer,” adds Barbato. “As sexually commodif ied as our culture is, we’re equally as puritanical. We have a split personality as a culture. That’s why Mapplethorpe is so exciting and interesting and important — especially now.”
In the ’ 80s, before settling on f ilmmaking, the duo had a New York- based underground dance- pop group called the Fabulous Pop Tarts. They were aware of Mapplethorpe’s presence but never saw him. The documentary was a chance to catch up. “Mapplethorpe was a particular passion that really took us away from things in a bigger way,” Barbato says of the project. “It felt more personal.”
One close Mapplethorpe collaborator not interviewed for the f ilm was Smith. Smith never made herself available. Instead, they used existing recordings of Smith speaking of their youth, the subject of her 2010 memoir “Just Kids.” “In a weird way, it became like a gift for us, because she is in the f ilm to the extent that she was in his life,” says Barbato. “We loved ‘ Just Kids,’ and we love Patti, but it really became apparent that we wanted him to narrate this f ilm, and she casts a long shadow. It was important that the true narrator of this f ilm was Mapplethorpe.”