Robert Mapplethorpe

Tracing echoes of antiquity in Mapplethorpe's erotic, dramatic and exquisitely balanced black-and-white compositions

American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89) was an artist with a profound knowledge of art history, a sophisticated connoisseur who constantly sought to hold a dialogue with the past that would allow him to create innovative and contemporary images. His vision was influenced by Classicism, an artistic canon that Mapplethorpe not only studied but also copied, renewed and interpreted, translating into the medium of photography the principles of harmony, proportion and formal perfection that characterize classical sculpture.

This volume holds a direct dialogue between the most celebrated of Mapplethorpe's photographs of the perfect and eternal forms of ancient sculpture, and images whose subjects are the fleeting and sensual ones of male and female models that echo the poses or angles of the former, making a visual comparison between sculptural and photographic representation of the human body.

It is from such a perspective that this up-to-date monograph sets out to retrace the various stages of Mapplethorpe's career and artistic research, examining crucial phases in his production, from his early experiments with collage to his last works, passing through his iconic photographs of nudes, portraits and floral compositions.