VENICE ASTRAL PROJECTION CLINIC

06 May 2025

The minute one comes face to face with the curvature of the female body, pure ecstasy looms over them. Robert Mapplethorpe is a master of crafting arousal for the spectator, through his masterfull impressions of the human form. The exhibition “Le forme del classico” at Le Stanze della Fotografia  bridges together over 200 works from Mapplethorpe’s canon, ranging from his sexually charged nude photographs to portraits of global figures including Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Susan Sontag, Glenn Close, Yoko Ono, and Richard Gere. The exhibition sheds light on how Mapplethorpe reinterprets classical aesthetics to explore themes such as desire, identity, gender, and sensuality, using a cultured and visionary language.

The focal point of Mapplethorpe’s canon as previously mentioned lies within his meticulously crafted depictions of female bodies, exemplified in the photographs he took of his muse, Lisa Lyon. The reverent candor with which Lyon, a bodybuilder and symbol of androgynous beauty, is portrayed enables us to go into a deep and fascinating process of self-determination. A variety of fantastical creatures from uncharted realms with physical attributes that may send a chill through a person's spine were used in this activity, positinoning Lyon at the centerfold of theatrics to the camera.  Lyon entered the photographer's life under these fictitious guises.  

Such subversive techniques were sufficient to bring about the considerable identity renewal of a figure with a very ambiguous charge since she refused to conform to the conventions of mainstream depiction. The images of Lisa Lyon's toned figure have the right to evoke pure sexual ecstasy while transcending the bodybuilder's gender. After all, the ideal woman is a man. Mapplethorpe believed that the complex development of the idea of femininity, of which Lyon was portrayed as the leader, should captivate everyone. Mapplethorpe's deep fascination with a being who carried within her multiple dichotomies, such as beauty, femininity, and graceful facial features clashing with a typically masculine muscularity, juxtaposed Lisa Lyon's desire to appear at the pinnacle of her neoclassical form.

In spite of the ongoing statement that Mapplethorpe’s female nudes do not contain a sexual charge within them, such a point can be easily contested. His photographs of luscious curves, plump breasts, and legs the length of highways provide a simultaneous point of arousal for the subject, the photographer, and the spectator. The surge of pleasure one is engulfed in just looking at these images is indescribable, and it would be a disgrace to human nature itself to state otherwise. By sterilizing the raw energy that engulfs the female form, the magic is lost. Beauty lies in arousal, and to contest arousal is to contest art itself.