The theme of flowers is woven throughout Robert Mapplethorpe's oeuvre, coming to signify some of his deepest concerns as an artist. The photographs in Flowers range from images of the early 1980's to many taken in the months just before his death.
The theme of flowers recurs throughout Robert Mapplethorpe's work, coming to signify some of his deepest concerns as an artist. While his flower images have until now been best known in black-and-white, Flowers reveals his genius in color. 52 full-color illustrations.
Synopsis
The theme of flowers is woven throughout Robert Mapplethorpe's oeuvre, coming to signify some of his deepest concerns as an artist. The photographs in Flowers range from images of the early 1980's to many taken in the months just before his death.
Library Journal
Patti Smith's foreword, ``A Final Flower,'' is a poetic tribute to the late photographer whose recent retrospective exhibition sparked a national legal debate over censorship in the arts. Smith's observation that Mapplethorpe embraced ``the flower as the embodiment of all the contradictions reveling within,'' and in these photographs ``found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else,'' enlarges this work in a meaningful way. The 50 color photographs of flowers taken over the past decade ``by one who caused a modern shudder'' are surprisingly conventional yet uniquely striking in their composition and lighting; Smith attributes their power to Mapplethorpe's ``unflinching perception of the color, form and personality of the flower.'' The book's simple and sublime presentation--each opening a full-page plate facing a blank--serves to remind us that Mapplethorpe was a masterful photographer, not just an iconoclast.-- Ann Copeland, Champaign, Ill.
About the Author, Mapplethorpe. Robert
Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 and was raised in Long Island, New York. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. By the early 1980s, he challenged the definition of photography with new techniques and formats. Mapplethorpe continued to create powerful images until his death from AIDS in 1989.
Patti Smith's foreword, ``A Final Flower,'' is a poetic tribute to the late photographer whose recent retrospective exhibition sparked a national legal debate over censorship in the arts. Smith's observation that Mapplethorpe embraced ``the flower as the embodiment of all the contradictions reveling within,'' and in these photographs ``found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else,'' enlarges this work in a meaningful way. The 50 color photographs of flowers taken over the past decade ``by one who caused a modern shudder'' are surprisingly conventional yet uniquely striking in their composition and lighting; Smith attributes their power to Mapplethorpe's ``unflinching perception of the color, form and personality of the flower.'' The book's simple and sublime presentation--each opening a full-page plate facing a blank--serves to remind us that Mapplethorpe was a masterful photographer, not just an iconoclast.-- Ann Copeland, Champaign, Ill.
