In April of 1990, the Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center opened its doors to Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, a retrospective of the famed photographer who just recently died from AIDS. I was 15 and had grown up in the Queen City, as it was called, and Dennis Barrie, the director of the CAC, and his…
Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato on their definitive documentary of the artist Last month, both the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted their respective installations on famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium, both retrospectives attempt to narrate the complex arc of an artist…
“Look at the pictures,” said Sen. Jesse Helms, denouncing the controversial art of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photographs pushed boundaries with frank depictions of nudity, sexuality and fetishism, igniting a culture war that rages to this day. More than 25 years later, the HBO Documentary Films presentation Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures does just that, taking…
thursday, may 9 The Big Bad Armo Show Playing to sold-out audiences across California, The Big Bad Armo Show is a hilarious, bold, fun and witty sketch-comedy show about the Armenian-American experience. Written by Lory Tatoulian it stars Alex Kalognomos, Helen Kalognomos, Ludwig Manukian, James Martin, Alex Mashikian and Lory Tatoulian. Lyceum Space Theatre, 79…
If there was a patron saint of contemporary LGBT art a contender for that title would surely be Robert Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe sought, found and held onto fame in the 1980s thanks in part to his gorgeously lit photographs of flowers and then his gorgeously lit photographs of naked men in all manner of sexual situations….
You might have noticed that artists and writers are beginning to look back and reflect upon the 1980s and that era that has come to be known as the “AIDS crisis”? I am thinking about Just Kids by Patti Smith, a memoir that chronicles her early years in New York and her pivotal friendship with…
