In his excellent biography of art curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, Philip Gefter notes how the rise of the gay rights movement in the early 1970s occurred at the same time as the growing interest in photography as an equal among the arts. Once he was turned on to photography by his lover Robert Mapplethorpe — whose career he also helped support and mythologize — Wagstaff amassed one of the most important private collections of photography, which he used to promote the art form before he sold to the Getty Museum in...
- 10/25/2020
- by Jerry Portwood
- Rollingstone.com
The major thing that “Mapplethorpe” has in its favor is that the film is afraid of neither the life nor the work of the notorious photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Documentary director Ondi Timoner (“We Live in Public”), making her narrative debut, has ensured that this movie acknowledges the many hard edges and unattractive qualities of this man while also celebrating and not looking away from his most explicit and scariest photographs, many of which rather surprisingly appear on screen.
Most mainstream films are afraid of showing the male penis, or anything having to do with sadomasochism, but Timoner’s attitude here seems to be, “Bring it on!” Timoner’s gutsiness is shared (and then some) by her star Matt Smith, a British actor who very convincingly played another gay male icon, writer Christopher Isherwood, in a TV movie of Isherwood’s memoir “Christopher and His Kind” in 2011.
Also Read: 'Mapplethorpe,...
Documentary director Ondi Timoner (“We Live in Public”), making her narrative debut, has ensured that this movie acknowledges the many hard edges and unattractive qualities of this man while also celebrating and not looking away from his most explicit and scariest photographs, many of which rather surprisingly appear on screen.
Most mainstream films are afraid of showing the male penis, or anything having to do with sadomasochism, but Timoner’s attitude here seems to be, “Bring it on!” Timoner’s gutsiness is shared (and then some) by her star Matt Smith, a British actor who very convincingly played another gay male icon, writer Christopher Isherwood, in a TV movie of Isherwood’s memoir “Christopher and His Kind” in 2011.
Also Read: 'Mapplethorpe,...
- 2/27/2019
- by Dan Callahan
- The Wrap
Robert Mapplethorpe shot flowers, children, celebs (Warhol, Capote, the young Arnold Schwarzenegger) and himself in high-contrast black-and-white that commanded attention. But what made him infamous and iconic were his portraits of nudes, often reduced to body parts (a hand, a torso, a black penis enveloped in white hands) and often in Bdsm positions that increasingly reflected his queer-world obsessions. A year after Mapplethorpe’s death, a retrospective of his work at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was charged with obscenity simply for displaying his so-called “dirty pictures,” creating a...
- 2/27/2019
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
The story of legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe will be the subject of the upcoming biopic Mapplethorpe, which unveiled its first trailer Friday ahead of its 2019 release. Dr. Who and The Crown actor Matt Smith portrays the photographer in the Ondi Timoner-directed biopic that chronicles his sexual and artistic awakening in New York City of the Seventies and Eighties, as well as his friendship with rock legend Patti Smith.
“Photography, it’s about light, it’s about composition, it’s about the personality of the subject,” Smith’s Mapplethorpe says in voiceover.
“Photography, it’s about light, it’s about composition, it’s about the personality of the subject,” Smith’s Mapplethorpe says in voiceover.
- 12/14/2018
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Rising to prominence in a changing cultural landscape, Robert Mapplethorpe may have been just been in the right place at the right time. At the cultural vanguard he experienced both the free love era of the 1960s with Patti Smith–treated in the film as an impromptu ordeal he was thrown into likely to satisfy his parents–and documented the AIDs crisis as his subjects started to fade away. As a biopic, Mapplethorpe comes up short, falling into the kind of tropes artist pictures tend to plunge into, full of grandiose speeches foreshadowing what’s to come, perhaps a victim of low-budget indie filmmaking forcing compromises. Providing a Wikipedia overview of a complex career, the film chooses to provoke with Mapplethorpe’s images rather than totally engage with his conceptual practices.
Co-written, directed, and edited by master documentarian Ondi Timoner, Mapplethorpe falls short of her best picture, We Live In Public,...
Co-written, directed, and edited by master documentarian Ondi Timoner, Mapplethorpe falls short of her best picture, We Live In Public,...
- 4/29/2018
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
There is a lot of penis in Ondi Timoner’s “Mapplethorpe,” a streamlined, straightforward biopic about the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. For those familiar with the late artist’s work, that may not come as much of a surprise — many of his most famous images center on male genitalia, rendering plump and veiny dicks with the same religious awe that Michelangelo sculpted “The Pietà.” On the other hand, it’s rare to see any peen in a major motion picture, let alone dozens of them in close-up. Not since the State of the Union have so many flaccid tools proudly displayed themselves in one place. How sad that it still feels transgressive to show them at all, and how much we owe to Mapplethorpe that depicting them is no longer considered obscene.
Of course, Mapplethorpe’s photography was less controversial for the flesh that it showed than for how it positioned...
Of course, Mapplethorpe’s photography was less controversial for the flesh that it showed than for how it positioned...
- 4/24/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
A renegade Catholic boy raised by conservative parents in Queens, New York, Robert Mapplethorpe transformed some of the most blasphemous subjects on earth — gay sex, Satanism, bondage — into beautiful black-and-white images. In her first scripted feature, doc filmmaker Ondi Timoner (“We Live in Public”) effectively does the opposite, taking a queer art-world enfant terrible and filtering his life back into gritty 16mm color, attempting to convey the nuances that made him such an enigmatic figure. To her credit, Timoner doesn’t shy away from the hardcore bits, which means her film will have to go out unrated (or else suffer the damnation of an Nc-17), but neither does she capture what made the radical photographer tick.
In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was charged with obscenity for displaying “The Perfect Moment,” a career-spanning retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work that incorporated everything from his flowers to his celebrities to a...
In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was charged with obscenity for displaying “The Perfect Moment,” a career-spanning retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work that incorporated everything from his flowers to his celebrities to a...
- 4/23/2018
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.