The Sluggard, Robert Mapplethorpe

Exhibition Label:
"Modernisms: Late/Post," Mar-1997, Deborah J. Wilk
Both of these artists refer to the serial nature of photography in their inquiry into issues of identity. In the triptych Magenta Colored Girl, Carrie Mae Weems repeats a hand-tinted photograph of a young girl. The repetition recalls the police mug shot, the Minimalist grid, and turn-of-the-century ethnographic photographs. In addition, by combining image and text, Weems implies that photographs and language shape our perceptions of color and gender. The triptych at once celebrates the diversity of skin color as it exposes the arbitrary nature of the hierarchy of skin colors in the African American community and in the general society.
Mapplethorpe's diptych is more personal. The Sluggard is the result of a gay photographer taking pictures of a nude male statue made by a nineteenth-century sculptor, Frederic Leighton, who was also gay. The sculpture, from Mapplethorpe's own collection, is now owned by the Spencer Museum of Art. Mapplethorpe seems to be exploring the homoerotic nature of the artistic representation of the male body.
Both artists explore the position images hold in shaping the way we look at the world.