A Quote by Patti Smith
It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)
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Obviously there was Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe, but Howard was on the brink of becoming a famous director - it didn't happen because he died.
He found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else. (On Robert Mapplethorpe)
You can't work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.
With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn't know who to work with.
From childhood my mother had me examining Robert Mapplethorpe's style and Egon Schiele's framing - that's what modelling is about.
I made the first 'Blumen' picture after looking at Robert Mapplethorpe's Pictures book. I was struck by how much freedom Mapplethorpe was able to extract from his model's restraint-that in tying up and cropping his models, he appears to be able to work with people as forms. I never thought about my flowers as related to his (which I saw as annoyingly erotic); I thought of them in relationship to bondage. I wanted to make the flowers more aggressive and ironic and less docile and sensual.
Like Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, and so many others before me, sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography.
Perhaps I'm hiding from myself. Perhaps I don't want to be what I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps I don't want to keep living the life I already started to live.
I started hiding my paintings in certain ways, like behind panes of glass for example. Then, instead of hiding them I did something quite cold and clinical: I built a wooden box, filled it with enamel paint and dunked the painting in so you could only see a suggestion of it from a controlled point of view.
The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One doesn't live because one's reason assents to living. People who, as we say, 'would be better dead' don't want to die! People who apparently have everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they haven't got the energy to fight.
My goal when I started out was to get to the point where I could tour a lot and make a living, which means getting paid enough to hire my own band, travel and end up with a bit of money, but I'm still nowhere near that point. Because I didn't have a band and fan base when I started, I did everything backward.
There was a stage in my career when I started to have problems with the vanity aspect of the subject. I got frustrated and bored with it. Then I thought, actually, how does it feel to be photographed? That's when I started to photograph myself. That was an incredibly important moment, and it opened up my work tremendously.
Robert Mapplethorpe, I met in 1967. He was a student at Pratt, though even as a student a fully formed artist. We went through many things in our life together. He became my loved one, then my best friend.
I went to lunch at the Ivy. People started running across the street, and one guy almost got hit by a car. I started to freak out. That put me into hiding for three weeks. I didn't leave the house.
I got my dog three years ago because I was drunk in a pet store. We had nine cats at the time. The cats started hiding the alcohol after that.
I started making music... I guess I was 12, and I started playing 'Guitar Hero.' And you know, it got to a point where on expert, you can only exceed to a certain point. And so, you know, I was like, 'Let's play real guitar. Let's not waste more time.' So, I got my mom, I told her to buy me a guitar for Christmas, and I started making music then.
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