Paris Toasts Robert Mapplethorpe During Fashion Week The late American photographer is the subject of an exhibition curated by Edward Enninful
By Lily Templeton
American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe would have been thrilled to be the toast of Paris Fashion Week with the opening of an exhibition on his work at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery on Saturday.
“It was a world that fascinated him,” Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation president Michael Ward Stout told WWD.
But despite connections such as a close relationship with Carolina Herrera, the late photographer’s projects in the industry remained sparse.
That may change now. “He’s already achieved the fine art level in every major museum in the world,” said Ward Stout. “Now he’s getting this popular attention that he’d always wanted and someone like Edward Enninful helps bring it there.”
More than three decades after his death, Mapplethorpe’s images “have something to say to us today,” gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac told WWD at the opening.
To bring this to light, the gallery called on Enninful to curate the exhibit running through to April 6.
Arranged in the manner of a flatplan throughout the gallery, the photographs form a dialogue as their shapes and silhouettes find an unexpected echo in the companion image they’re paired with.
Enninful said his career as an editor made him used to finding harmony or creating tension in double-page spreads. “Everything has to be about storytelling,” he said.
But rather than create a narrative ahead of time, the seasoned editor said he’d let instinct guide his hand through an expansive archive that spans still lives, portraiture, fashion photography but also nudes and even racier work.
“I didn’t go with must-have pictures,” he continued. “His work is so broad and has everything that I love — society, fashion.”
From a portrait of British artist David Hockney reclining and yawning and a seemingly candid snapshot of Princess Margaret in a swimsuit to the glistening bodybuilt muscles of Arnold Schwarzenegger or the tender embrace of a white and a Black man, the curation explores how Mapplethorpe defied the aesthetic standards and conventional definitions of beauty. (...)
