Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971-1985

Heading

Five photographers who carry Robert Mapplethorpe’s subversive legacy


The piercing impact of queer aritsts in the 1980s in its moment was rarely given the recognition it deserved. Working under the oppresive force of both a deeply homophobic society and art world, queer artists of this era were often dismissed, silenced, and their work considered too taboo for acceptance. It has only been with the progession of queer rights at the hands of queer liberation movements globally that these artists are finally getting the recognition and power they rightfully merit.


We can see this vividly through the lens of Robert Mapplethorpe: a photographer so unorthodox for his time that his photos were the subject of national censorship debates in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Mapplethorpe’s Man in a Polyester Suit (1980), a close-cropped photograph of a black man’s penis hanging exposed from his open fly, caused such a ruckus in Cincinnati that it was cancelled by congress.


From photographing New Yorks 1980s S&M scene to self-portraits in drag, Mapplethorpe’s photos were queer protests that bought visibility to underrepresented communities. But despite the ways in which he subverted iconography by dousing it in homo-erotic tones and overthrowing visual conceptions of gender, his work was once disbarred from high art. The thirty years since his death and the art world’s slow progression, however, have largely changed this.


This year, Mapplethorpe is the subject of a year long retrospective at New York’s esteemed Guggenheim Museum. Split in two parts, Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now observes the revolutionary tendencies of Mapplethorpe's work through showcasing his polaroids, floral still lifes, portraits, and classic nudes in part one. Part two of the show, launching on 24 July, traces Mapplethorpe’s legacy through artists who carry its subversiveness today — harnessing, reshaping, and progressing it into contemporaneity.


To prepare you for the show, read about five of the artists and how their work carries on the subversive essence of Mapplethorpe below.


CATHERINE OPIE

Skin engraving, breast-feeding, and skin pinning make photographer Catherine Opie’s self-portraits some of the most extreme artworks ever made — and some of the most politically charged. Take her 1994 “Self Portrait / Pervert” as key example, where the artist stuck 46 pins down each of her arms and engraved her skin with the word pervert while wearing a gimp mask. The work explored the divide between the lesbian S&M and the wider queer S&M scene.


Opie began her career with her noteable series Being and Having that photographed members of Los Angeles 1990s butch scene by placing them infront of yellow backdrops and allowing them to experiment with the represenation of their gender through fake facial hair.  In 1999, Opie recreated Mapplethorpe’s infamous X Portfolio (1978) which featured New York’s 1970s bondage scene. She reclaimed the series by replacing Mapplethorpe’s queer men with lesbians from San Francisco's leather dyke community where Opie was a member of a group called The Outcasts. Overall, Opie’s work has reshaped photography as a form of personal protest that can be used by all.

Catherine Opie
Dyke, 1993
Chromogenic print, 101.6 x 75.9 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee, 2003.69© 2019 Catherine Opie

LYLE ASHTON HARRIS

Lyle Ashton Harris is a mixed media artist whose work probes the intersection between the personal and the political, proving their inextricable relationship. His most well known works are his performative self-portraits that see the artist assume the roles of pop culture icons, like Billie Holiday and Yoko Ono, in a bid to displace and subvert ingrained cultural symbols that signify gender and race. Many of his self-portraits are in sepia, a technique he uses to play with the viewer’s perception of race. Use of colour, whether through photographic technique or props like clothing, has remained an important tool for Harris to subvert his images.


Lyle Ashton Harris
Americas, 1987–88 (printed 2007)
Gelatin silver prints, 76 x 50.5 cm each
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee, 2011.57
© Lyle Ashton Harris


ZANELE MUHOLI

Visual activist Zanele Muholi’s photos increase visibility of LGBTQ+ and intersex communities in South Africa. They strike a balance between celebrating her subjects and their identities, and illuminating the darkness of their experiences including stigmatisation, violence, and loss. In her most well known works, Muholi uses her body as a canvas through which to explore these themes. Her 2014-current series Somnayama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), features 60 self-portraits taken across America, Europe, and Africa where Muholi metaphorically inflicts the pain of the politics of race and representation on herself.

Zanele Muholi
Siphe, Johannesburg (fromSomnyama Ngonyama), 2018
Gelatin silver print, 50 x 40 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Wendy Fisher, 2019
© Zanele Muholi, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York


ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE

Nigerian-born photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode moved to England at age 11 to escape the Nigergian Civil War. As a queer black man who felt like an outsider in both his homeland and his new home, Fani-Kayode turned to photography in the 1980s as a way to challenge stigmatisation. Through his signature stylised portraits that fuse the spirituatlity of his Yoruba heritage with bold homoeroticism, Fani-Kayode created a new visual world that tore down the visual perceptions of both queer and black men.


“Both aesthetically and ethically,” Fani-Kayode once said, “I seek to translate my rage and my desire into new images which will undermine conventional perceptions and which may reveal hidden worlds. Many of the images are seen as sexually explicit – or more precisely, homosexually explicit. I make my pictures homosexual on purpose. Black men from the Third World have not previously revealed either to their own peoples’ or to the West a certain shocking fact: they can desire each other.”

Rotimi Fani-Kayode Adebiyi, ca. 1989 Chromogenic print, 61.4 x 60.3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Council, 2017.34 © Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Courtesy Autograph ABP
Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Every Moment Counts II (from Ecstatic Antibodies), ca. 1989
Chromogenic print, 62.7 x 60.6 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Council, 2017.31
© Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Courtesy Autograph ABP


PAUL MGAPI SEPUYA

American photographer Paul Mgapi Sepuya carries Mapplethorpe’s dedication to studio photography, and intensifies it. His work, which commonly appears as mixed and mashed collage nude photography with flailing limbs and anonymous sitters, focuses primarily on the relationship between subject and photographer. Taking note from Mapplethorpe’s use of the studio and progressing it further, Sepuya interrogates the nude figure’s relation to the studio, and strips down the formal qualities of studio portraiture to untie the hierarchy between photographer and subject.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Darkroom Mirror (0X5A1531)(from Darkroom Mirror), 2017
Inkjet print, 129.5 x 86.4 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Council, 2018.47
© Paul Mpagi Sepuya


Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now is running at New York’s Guggenheim until 5 January 2020. You can find out more here

Read Next
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Privacy Policy Cookie Policy Terms and Conditions