MAPPLETHORPE, ROBERT

born Nov. 4, 1946, New York, N.Y., U.S. died March 9, 1989, Boston, Mass. American photographer who was noted for austere photographs of flowers, celebrities, and male nudes; among the last were some that proved controversial because of their explicitly homoerotic and sadomasochistic themes. Mapplethorpe, who attended the Pratt Institute in New York City (196370), gained renown in the late 1970s for his black-and-white images of classical beauty. He sometimes combined photographic images printed on linen and designed his own wooden frames. His work was exhibited internationally, and collections of his photographs were included in such books as Robert Mapplethorpe Photographs (1978), Lady: Lisa Lyon (1983), and Robert Mapplethorpe: Certain People (1985). A retrospective exhibition in Washington, D.C., entitled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment (1989), partly funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), stirred a debate about government subsidies of obscene art and provoked Congress in 1990 to enact restrictions on future NEA grants. Also that year, the director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, was arrested but later acquitted of obscenity charges for displaying a Mapplethorpe exhibition.