Photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe in the museum of Michelangelo, the temple of Form. Curated by Franca Falletti and Jonathan Nelson, this exhibition mounted in the Accademia Gallery twenty years after Mapplethorpe's death presents 91 images compared, for the first time, to the most emblematic Renaissance icons. According to a curatorial statement, "the studied poses of Lisa, Lydia, Ken, Tyler, Thomas and Ajitto point out a constructional procedure of a sculptural type and, in a certain sense, reference the David and the masterpieces of Florentine painting. Between the human body and the still-life, two worlds engage in a dialogue beyond time, space, and cultures. The XX century looks for answers in the civilisation of Humanism."
"The photographs are divided into five sections, four in the exhibition area, and one in another part of the Museum. Each section confronts an aspect of the single great theme of Form intended as a value in itself, separated from objective content, that is from the subject represented, as well as from the artist’s personal experience (emotional, cognitive, or what have you), which is diffused by means of the image: sculptural Form, the geometry of Form, the Form and its double, the fragment as Form."
The 91 works by Mapplethorpe are joined by several works by Michelangelo (four drawings and a sketch, in addition to the David, Four Prisoners and the painting Venus and Cupid) and the Rape of the Sabines by Giambologna. The exhibition is completed by works by artists that Mapplethorpe referenced throughout the course of his life and work (Brice Marden, Man Ray, Ettore Spalletti and Andy Warhol).
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