Some Women

4.2/5 ( ratings)

"Some Women" is Robert Mapplethorpe's breathtakingly elegant homage to female beauty. One of the most controversial and, ultimately, canonized photographers of our time, Mapplethorpe died in March 1989, at the peak of his critical acclaim. This collection was among the last projects that he undertook and includes a retrospective of his portraits of women, the majority of which have never been published in book form. "Some Women" explores female beauty in many incarnations, beauty both idealized and externalized. It brings together eighty-six of Mapplethorpe's finest images - a balance of his luminous nudes, fashion shots, and portraits. The women included come from every age group and rnge from the unfamiliar to the notable. Isabella Rossellini, Grace Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Yoko Ono, Brooke Shields, Cyndi Lauper, Melanie Griffith, Susan Sarandon, and Mapplethorpe's close friend Patti Smith are among the numerous celebrities who participated. Equally arresting are the lesser known: fellow artists, friends, favorite models, and children. "Some Women" reveals the full extent of Mapplethorpe's mastery of black-and-white photography and his gift as a portraitist.

In her introduction, Joan Didion probes the relationship between the artist and his subject, observing that "there was always about Robert Mapplethorpe an astonishing convergence of quite traditional romantic impulses There was the romance of the apparently conventional. There was the romance of art for its own sake" "Some Women" is the work of an assured photographer. It is an essential part of Robert Mapplethorpe's legacy.

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in New York in 1946 and received a B.F.A. from the PrattInstitute in 1970; he died in March 1989. His portraits, self-portraits, and photographs of nudes, sculptured objects, flowers, and still lifes have had an undeniable impact on the art world. In 1988 he achieved the greatest recognition of any photographer of the past decade in two major independent retrospectives: at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

Mapplethorpe's photographs have appeared in nearly two hundred solo and group exhibitions and hang in major collections worldwide. His publications include "Lady: Lisa Lyon" "Certain People" "Black Book" "Robert Mapplethorpe" and "Flowers"