MFAH Favorites: Fredericka Hunter on Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe, “Black Shoes,” 1974, Gelatin silver prints with artist’s frame, 36 7/8 × 44 5/8 × 1 inches. Gift of Michael A. Caddell and Cynthia Chapman

50 years ago it was already all there…not explicit but implied.

One pair of the shoes was placed precisely under a cabinet that had a record player on it, across from a bed with a chrome handlebar atop it and black mesh netting over that, and beside it a small table with a binder of collages combining images from gay porn magazines and Catholic votive objects. Across the room was a typical 7th Avenue rolling clothing rack with a leather jacket hanging on it and a bullwhip curling along the crossbar. Tacked to the walls were soft-core Polaroids harking back to 50s gay men’s magazines. There were hand-made beaded necklaces incorporating more Catholic votive objects and found items like dice and trinkets bought from street vendors on 14th St. 

This description is from memory of the loft next to the Chelsea Hotel. For those who were invited to visit, it was an unfamiliar and revealing environment that perhaps would be considered an installation, though the jacket, shoes, and jewelry would be worn by the artist to Max’s Kansas City that same night.

The next time the shoes appeared they were included as a photo in Black Shoes with a companion pair, deliberately presented in a red mat and heavy black frame — a fully realized work of art with characteristics that would be part of the practice going forward …with photographs, sculpture, and subject matter. Black Shoes hung in the members’ dining room of the Museum of Modern Art. Robert Mapplethorpe proceeded to change and reveal the subject of art in profound ways combining Eros and Thanatos through Beauty.