No. 61
Robert Mapplethorpe (c) 2006
running time: 79 minutes
DVD/VHS
This documentary looks at the life and work of Robert Mapplethorpe, a world renowned and controversial photographer, who died of AIDS in 1989. It explores his photography, his relationship to the downtown New York art world, and the gay S & M club scene prevalent in the Eighties. His infamously explicit pictures of the gay, leather, New York Underground were considered groundbreaking and made him a cause celebré. Mapplethorpe's portraits, flowers, erotic subject matter and artistic presentation, elevated the photograph to serious art, worthy of exhibition in galleries and museums.
In this documentary we see a 1983 interview with the youthful and mythic Robert Mapplethorpe. In his downtown loft, he talks about his ideas, inspiration, and his highly charged subject matter depicted in his work. Included are interviews with Jack Walls, Mapplethorpe's partner; artist Brice Marden; Holly Solomon, his first dealer; his father, Harry Mapplethorpe; and Father Stack, his priest in Floral Park, Long Island. Also commenting are curator Richard Marshall, brother Edward Mapplethorpe, photographer Gilles Larrain, lawyer Michael Ward Stout, artist Louise Bourgeois, and biographer Patricia Morrisroe.
No. 60
Eric Fischl (c) 2004
running time: 28 minutes
Eric Fischl is a painter of American disillusionments. Raised in suburbia, Fischl paints provocative vignettes and portraits of middle class lives. His paintings, a combination of David Lynch and Edward Hopper, are fraught with psychological insight and emotional ennui.
Fischl has been a celebrated figure in the New York art world since the early 80's and he continues to paint and exhibit nationally and internationally. On this tape we see four recent exhibitions at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York, a 1984 interview with Fischl by noted art critic Peter Schjedahl as well as an interview conducted by Paul Tschinkel in 2002 at the artist's NY studio.
Eric Fischl, No. 60
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