Laid bare: The Playful Side of Robert Mapplethorpe
William Cook, BBC
November 2016
In the sleek white atrium of London’s Alison Jacques Gallery, there are two contrasting pictures which sum up Robert Mapplethorpe’s strange allure. One is a huge photo of a young man in a state of sexual arousal. The other is a small photo of frogs scampering across a plate. Oddly, it’s the smaller photo which seems more shocking, more disturbing. Mapplethorpe had a talent for making even the most extreme sexual practices seem humdrum. It’s when his models put their clothes back on that things get really weird. […]