Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989). The parable of an artist known too much for his private life and little for his work.

The 20th century turned artists into real stars. People do not talk about Cattelan, and so on, only for their works but they are treated as celebrities like footballers, fashion designers, TV personalities. From the 50s the artist myth - while still alive and even more post-mortem - "as a character", rather than as an artist, has permeated even the way of narrating art.

So here are the stories about Caravaggio, the epics based on the American authors' blowout of lysergic acids, the many stories of sinful and scandalous relationships.

For many years the risk we ran of dealing with artists like Robert Mapplethorpe was exactly that. It has been talked about the gay icon, the scandalous images, the friendships with the great rock stars. At the risk of overshadowing the true artistic heart of his works.

A devilish Mapplethorpe, a sadomasochistic and porn Mapplethorpe, a Mapplethorp of naked gay models and of tragic death of complications from AIDS. We would like to speak of a key reading of this masters' photographs (but not only), a phrase used by the artist himself to describe the impression he got from a visit to the photographic collection of the MOMA: It's all about light.

Light: ask those who are accustomed to handle brushes or cameras. Nothing is more difficult than knowing how to reproduce, grab or create those reflexes that nature gives us so easily. The glare, shadows, shapes produced by the wise use of lights and darks.

The search for Mapplethorpe, with his "simple" subjects (portraits, self-portraits, studies) has been going in this direction: being able to steal the secret of light. In the amazing images of Flowers, this effort is highly visible and the results are really excellent. They are perhaps the less known works of Mapplethorpe but, in our opinion, also (among) the most significant of his valiant work.

In these images, in the simplicity of the buds, of open flowers that burst of colour, in the stems bent by the lack of water: here is all the talent of Mapplethorpe.

 
Review (Recensione) of the exhibition at the Form in Milan.