Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe
Category: Books,Politics & Social Sciences,Social Sciences
Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe Details
From Publishers Weekly The erotically candid photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, became the focus for the controversy over federal funding of the arts. Danto, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia and an art critic for the Nation, proclaims that Mapplethorpe produced "some of the most shocking and indeed some of the most dangerous images in modern photography, or even in the history of art." While acknowledging the ostensibly pornographic content of many of Mapplethorpe's photographs, especially his sadomasochistic pictures, Danto argues that the work transcends pornography because of the "moral relationship between subject and artist," a core of trust that made his photographs explorations, risks and revelations. Mapplethorpe's subjects, he writes, are touched with a beauty and transcendence that lift them above their tawdry surroundings. Danto won the 1990 National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism for Encounters and Reflections. Illustrated. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Library Journal Describing and dissecting Mapplethorpe's oeuvre and place in art history might be given as an entrance exam for aspiring critics. Perhaps no other contemporary photographer has been so widely written about, yet virtually no one seems capable of addressing the whole of his work. Supporters too often ignore the uncomfortable content or discuss the beauty of contradiction, while detractors make little effort to go past a superficial reading or ignore the work altogether to focus on the individual. With characteristic lucidity, Danto, art critic for The Nation, brings the whole of the man and his multifaceted works into focus in the title essay here. That essay is a reprint from Mapplethorpe (Random, 1992), however, brought together with a brief introduction discussing the National Endowment for the Arts-controversy and a 1988 (read precontroversy) review of a Mapplethorpe show. Libraries already owning the Random House illustrated book need not purchase this title for the addendum; libraries that lack that catalog should purchase it to give patrons a chance both to see what the fuss is about and to read Danto's illuminating words.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
Arthur Danto's essay is very enjoyable and is as smart as anything he's written elsewhere. By the time I was old enough to really be aware of Mapplethorpe's work, the controversy was already in full swing, so it's very interesting to experience it through Danto's story of seeing the famous show before the media went nuts.The photographs are remarkable, which is to be expected.