Some artists are so great that they come to represent their entire era. Think of the opulent Tudor court of Hans Holbein or Man Ray's jazz-baby femme fatales. In the 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe helped define the athletic, pseudo-neoclassicist aesthetic that would rule the decade.
On display until Feb. 29 in the Dean's "Gallery" (term loosely applied) at MIT, the exhibition of 13 early black-and-white floral studies by Robert Mapplethorpe is a horrible example of disrespect for one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. Lucky is the aficionado who can even locate the exhibition, hidden as it is on the fourth floor of an economics building with nary a sign to guide one's way.
Known as his "Y Portfolio," the collection is of great historical importance, especially with respect to the growth of a singularly commercial look that emerged in the 1980s. Yet it is treated as little more than a gathering of pretty pictures with little attention to proper lighting, arrangement or spacing. Scattered on four walls, office doors and cubicles interrupt the flow of the exhibit while a low ceiling, drab office furnishings and small windows make the space feel nearly claustrophobic. The title cards that accompany each print are mere computer print-outs with no explanatory notes.
To be sure, the genius value of many of these works is somewhat questionable. Mostly pleasant, sometimes banal and often quite dull, there is frequently little to elevate even his later flower work above the level of serviceable hotel art. The Mapplethorpe aura, duly accumulated by his dynamic nudes and politically-charged portraiture, has led critics and curators to build up what feels like quite an artificially academic reasoning behind these shots. Most often, they will tell you (as the paltry plaque introducing the exhibition does) that these photos reveal a mastery of lighting technique and a subversive sexuality in the close attention to his individual subjects.
This is nonsense. It is certainly easy to read sensuality into these flowers, but this is hardly revelatory or even necessary, especially in the more lackluster compositions. Mapplethorpe's amateurism is quite apparent in some of these photos, taken in 1977, albeit a youthful inexperience with the glimmer of promise for future greatness. Works like "Carnation," which features a single downy white blossom perched defiantly on top of a spherical black vase, show off this promise and presage his later interest in the juxtaposition of African-American and Caucasian human subjects. Staring out at the viewer like one of Man Ray's own crystal-tear eyes, the flower appears almost impossibly full and lush, and Mapplethorpe's command of texture-play is truly captivating.
Forming a trio of some of the most effective photos in the exhibition, "Carnation," "Chrysanthemum" and "Gardenia" all play upon the idea of a central white aperture against a background of inchoate darkness. "Chrysanthemum" seems to capture the burst of a firework midair, a vast open-air celebration, until one comes closer and discovers it is far more intimate, even melancholy. The titular flower rests upon a barely discernable, paisley jacquard tablecloth, which gives the entire work an austere, mournful quality.
The clear star of the show, though, is the single orchid. A truly inspired print, "Orchid, NYC" gives the queen of flowers her Mona Lisa and manages to capture all her excessive beauty. Mapplethorpe plays up the figure's strangeness and grotesquely fascinating splendor. A shaft of light from the upper right-hand corner hits the flower in the center of the composition and electrifies it in its moment of ecstasy. If only it were possible to back more than two feet away from the photo, it would be worth the visit alone.
Other prints, like the graphic "Tuberose," shot like an Amazonian model in a Calvin Klein ad (muscular, dangerous, beautiful) against a background of tight horizontal lines, or the macabre "Rose," which the artist casts as a ghostly specter, are worthy of leisurely contemplation, which the office atmosphere does not really invite. There are a few that are pure trash, including the uninspired "Kale," the cheap "Tulips" or the vulgar "Baby's Breath," which, at their best, are never more than bland.
As a portrait of the artist in his youth, this exhibition is valuable to students of art history and to completist connoisseurs. As an initiation into Mapplethorpe's aesthetic, one could do worse, but one could also do far, far better. Caught in the tight, gray office space where the only light comes from a few crass fluorescent bulbs, these delicate beauties are never allowed the proper breathing room, and neither is the spectator. Shown thusly, the poorest prints seem coarser and the best ones, sadly, struggle like seedlings in a dark forest for their place in the sun.
