Robert Mapplethorpe “Calla Lily” 1988 (Category 1, The Eroticized)
(For more info on Sexual Context: a Re-History and/or to see the first post visit: LINK)
Art Historical Texts:
“Mapplethorpe remained devoted to the minimal elegance of black-and-white photography, using the medium in part as an agent to explore certain paradoxes and binary relationships. In many of his works, for example, the distinction between male and female is problematized… Calla Lily takes an object used as a cipher of femininity and redeploys it as a male organ.” LINK
“His treatment of the male and female aspects of the calla lily is most striking, one photograph emphasizing the flower’s phallic stamen, another emphasizing its feminine curves. At the size at which the flower photographs have been printed, their sensuality becomes overwhelming…forcing [the viewer] to acknowledge their primitive sexuality.” LINK
RESPONSE:
Robert Mapplethorpe was an extremely gifted photographer with a wide range of subjects. Not choosing to limit his portfolio to still life, editorial, commercial, or portraiture, or even to Black and White or Color platforms, Mapplethorpe often moves seamlessly through different photographic styles and subjects.
Mapplethorpe’s eye and sensual relationship to light express a strong degree of aesthetic primacy. His Calla Lily series embodies this aesthetic sensibility– formal compositions, stark contrast, and the lush detail afforded by the large format film, make these flowers larger than life and luxurious. It is understandable that such richness could be romanticized, especially within the context of Mapplethorpe’s catalog.
