PHOTO:Implicit Tensions-Mapplethorpe Now

The second part of the yearlong exhibition “Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now” at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, is exploring the legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most critically acclaimed yet controversial American artists of the late 20th century, Mapplethorpe is widely known for daring, formally rigorous imagery that deliberately transgresses social mores and for the censorship debates that transformed him into a symbol of the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Guggenheim Museum Archive

In the ensuing decades, artists and critics have grappled with Robert Mapplethorpe’s legacy, raising questions about the agency of the photographic subject and interrogating his representations of homoerotic desire, the black male nude, and the female figure. Robert Mapplethorpe has simultaneously been celebrated for bringing visibility to underrepresented communities and critiqued for objectifying his sitters. Endeavoring to reflect these complex conversations, and to honor Mapplethorpe’s critical contribution to the art of his time, this exhibition “Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now”  showcases the work of six artists in the Guggenheim collection who offer expansive approaches to exploring identity through photographic portraiture. Following the first part of the presentation, which explored the depth of the museum’s Mapplethorpe holdings, the second part highlights the artist’s early Polaroids; iconic, classicizing nudes; flowers; self-portraits; and images of the S&M underground scene in New York. Working in the 1980s, Rotimi Fani-Kayode produced within a short career a body of photography exploring his hybrid, transnational identity as a gay diasporic African. Often referencing his own sense of otherness as he confronted the confluence of racism and homophobia, Fani-Kayode’s images reflect his experiences as an outsider in both Africa and the West. His portraits incorporate symbolism and iconography from his Yoruba heritage into potent celebrations of spirituality, homoeroticism, and the black male figure. The photographs, videos, and installations of Lyle Ashton Harris probe the nuances of identity and belonging through performative self-presentation. His early Americas series (1987–88) offers multilayered ruminations on and subversions of ethnicity, gender, and sexual desire. Since the late 1990s, Harris has assembled personal imagery and cultural ephemera into complex collages. Born out of the artist’s experiences around the recent death of his estranged father, “Untitled (DAD)” (2018) , looks at ritual expressions of grief and mourning to explore the therapeutic potential of publicly processing loss. Conceptual artist Glenn Ligon appropriates text and images, transforming them into works that critique the ways race and sexuality shape the visual field. Created in the years after Mapplethorpe’s death, “Notes on the Margin of the Black Book” (1991–93) presents framed pages excised from a copy of “The Black Book” (1986), a volume of Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photographs of black men that has been criticized for objectifying and fetishizing its subjects. Interspersed between the photos in Ligon’s installation are quotations from philosophers, activists, curators, historians, religious evangelists, visitors to Mapplethorpe exhibitions, individuals concerned with censorship issues, and people Ligon met at a bar. As a self-described visual activist, Zanele Muholi has been dedicated to promoting awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex communities in South Africa. Muholi’s photography foregrounds the diversity, possibility, and joy of these groups while also commemorating the stigmatization, violence, and loss endured by friends and family in the artist’s home country and globally. In the series “Somnayama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness” (2014– ), Muholi incorporates  everyday materials into costumes to assume an array of archetypical alter egos that counter reductive stereotypes and create powerful emblems of self-possession and beauty. Catherine Opie’s body of work in photography explores notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. Her formally pristine images illuminate the conditions in which communities form and the terms by which they are defined. Along with three of Opie’s powerful self-portraits, on view in this selection are the artist’s early portraits of queer subcultures, incisive views of domestic life, and explorations of youth, aging, and identity, as well as works from her “O portfolio” (1999), which was created as a response to Mapplethorpe’s “X Portfolio” (1978). Paul Mpagi Sepuya reformulates the conventions and decorum of studio portraiture with images that depict his body, as well as those of his friends and lovers, in compositions celebrating queer community and desire. The artist welcomes multiple bodies, interactions, and histories into the photographic process. By treating his models as active collaborators in his works’ creation, Sepuya relinquishes absolute control of the studio setting and undoes traditional hierarchies between photographer and subject.

Info: Curators: Lauren Hinkson and Susan Thompson, Assistant Curator: Levi Prombaum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, Duration: 24/7/19-5/1/20, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed-Fri & Sun 10:00-17:30, Tue 10:00-21:00, Sat 10:00-20:00, www.guggenheim.org