FROM THE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005 ISSUE OF SPOON
 
By Stephen Todd
 
Everybody knows Robert Mapplethorpes work. The portraits of Patti Smith and Arnie Schwarzenegger. The highly-stylised flower shots. That man in that polyester suit. Even the more extreme, masochistic images have been in free circulation these past years.

So whats left to discover of the charismatic photographer who died of AIDS in 1989, at the tender age of 43? Thats the question the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe appears to be asking itself. And the answer, it seems, involves not just what we look at, but how we look at his work.

By inviting artistsCindy Sherman, Vik Munoz, David Hockneyto curate exhibitions of Mapplethorpes pictures, the Estate hopes to stimulate new ways of seeing. The latest guest curator is fashion designer Hedi Slimane of Dior Homme.

The choice is atypical, but as Thaddeus Ropac (who suggested Slimane to the Estate and who will be hosting the exhibition) explains, Hedis selection of images is one that a museum person would never have made. That I would never have made. Its extremely precise, and quite intense. I am extremely happy with it!

So is Slimane, who, as a photographer himself (his latest book, a study of ex-Libertine Pete Doherty titled London, Birth of a Cult, is released this month by Karl Lagerfelds 7L imprint) clearly has an eye for an icon. We met at a Left Bank café the day before he flew to New York to make his final selection of images.

STEPHEN TODD: When Thaddeus approached you about curating this show, what was your initial reaction?

HEDI SLIMANE: He called and suggested we meet to talk about it. But I said yes straight away, on the phone.

ST: Why the immediate enthusiasm?

HS: I have always found Mapplethorpes photos intriguing. What I find really astonishing is this sort of tension between his radical subject matter and his high formalism, the almost academic classicism and the radical shock-value of the subjects. But we have become so used to his imageseven the hardest ones to look atthat they have become inscribed in the conventions of aesthetics. I wanted to cut across the work, to find a new way in.

ST: The previous guest curators were all confirmed artists. You are, essentially, a fashion designer. Did your peripheral status to the art world help in some way?

HS: My whole approach was informed by a certain sense of distance. Im far from being a specialist on Mapplethorpes photography, so of course I made some discoveries. Spending time looking through the catalogue raisonné I came across a lot of little known or rarely seen pictures. And in fact I quickly became interested by the symbolic aspect of his work, and the notion of danger. Like a whole series of portraits in which the subjects look dead. Actually, I always assumed that Mapplethorpe was fascinated by morbidity, but people have told me that in reality he was quite sissy [for Slimane this is an adjective, and said in English]. Maybe as he became ill he developed that fascination. Either way, close acquaintances of his insist that he was all-too-consciousdespite, or perhaps because of, the extreme classicism of his imagesof the need for this frisson of danger in his photos. So that became the focus of my way of looking at the work. For instance, I selected a series of still lives of what look like religious objects. Theyre not, but they are treated that way. Then there are the portraits of iconic people of the New York scene from the late SeventiesDebbie Harry, David Byrne, etc. And then an incredible group of pictures of Teddy boys, which are totally unknown.

ST: Debbie Harry, David Byrne, Teddy boys That seems a very style-driven choice.

HS: Its really more about a period, New York at the end of Seventies, in which fashion played an integral part in underground identity. The interest for me was to find connections, shared sensibilities in certain pictures. There are images which arent particularly my favourites, but which I find important in the overall concept. That said, I feel personally very close to this way of interpreting Mapplethorpes work. Its far from the official discourse, its more intimate.

ST: Havent you also discovered a film that you are including in the show?