Robert Mapplethorpe Looks Entirely Innocent
Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post
January 2019
Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photographs of naked African American men and ritualized scenes of sexual domination and bondage scandalized some Americans in the 1980s and ’90s, died 30 years ago this March at age 42. He is now a historic figure, an essential entry in any history of American art over the past half-century, a regular subject of exhibitions and retrospectives, and an increasingly legendary figure in the annals of the culture wars that still flare to life whenever political demagogues are imperiled by political head winds. […]