Robert Mapplethorpe Autoportrait

The early 1970s witnessed the emergence and convergence of body art, performance, earth art, video, narrative, and photography-based art that sought to break the stronghold of minimalism (an art of pure form and materials) and conceptualism (the art of pure idea). In this context, Robert Mapplethorpe was an artist who infused art with personal reference, subjective expression, and allusion to real time and emotion. Mapplethorpe's earliest and most frequent subject was himself, in various guises, activities, and states of arousal that celebrated his ego, his body, and his sexual desires. The subject of nudity, sex, and self was a primary focus in Mapplethorpe's work. The black-and-white Polaroid photographs that Mapplethorpe produced during the early 1970s constitute an in-depth self-portrait, intently and graphically exploring expressions, moods, postures, and actions that range from angelic and innocent to sinister and erotic. Autoportrait, the first publication dealing exclusively with Mapplethorpe's self-portrait Polaroids, presents the artist's most revealing attempts to wed the erotic and sexual with other theoretical concerns.