Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera: A Pop Culture Memoir-An Outlaw Reminiscence

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Summary: A Lasting Snapshot of Photographic Genius
Review:
Few artists have been mythologized as quickly and as completely as the late Robert Mapplethorpe. The incredible life of the controversial photographer is given new focus in the biography Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera by friend, confidant, and former lover Jack Fritscher. Insider knowledge of the man humanizes a complex individual who has become obscured by his art and by the scourge of censorship.
This revealing portrait by Hastings House publishers shows Mapplethorpe from his early days as a fledgling photographer. As the former editor of Drummer magazine, it was Fritscher who gave Mapplethorpe his first magazine cover. The biography traces his rise to prominence as the avant-garde photographer of the New York art scene, his sexual obsessions, his ongoing relationship with punk legend Patti Smith, his drug use, his submersion into leather culture, his love of beauty, his theories on art, and much more. Into the narrative Fritscher weaves a fair amount of artistic exploration and examination as well.
Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera also contains a generous number of photos and a gold mine of data about not only Robert Mapplethorpe, but about the larger scope of the gay leathersex New York scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Fritscher explores somewhat extensively the great creators of the erotic image from that period such as Rex, as well as those on the photographic cutting edge such as Joel-Peter Witkin. By exploring Mapplethorpe's influences as well as his life, Fritscher provides the reader with a wider understanding not only of the artist, but also of his world and times.


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Summary: Many authors wrote this book by Fritscher
Review: By chasing down lots of interviews, author Fritscher manages to have several friends of Mapplethorpe compose their thoughts of robert and his photographs. The beauty of this book is the multiple voices speaking which Fritscher takes the time to present to honor Mapplethorpe. He could have had the last word himself--after all, he had the book contract and was the man's sometime lover. This Mapplethorpe memoir is actually written by the following artists and personalities who Fritscher presents--AND LETS SPEAK IN THEIR OWN VOICES WHICH HE COLLECTED: GEORGE DUREAU, HOLLY SOLOMON, CAMILLE O'GRADY, REX, MARK WALKER, THE INCREDIBLE MILES EVERETT, EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH, JOEL-PETER WITKIN. (Yes, this book is scary, and it gets scarier as time goes by and our culture becomes more puritanical. It's also a good reference book of those times and events that are now so far back in the past.

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Summary: Mildly interesting, mostly annoying and self-aggrandizing.
Review: It's been about two years since I read this book, but its lingering effect is extreme irritation with the writer. Fritscher is clearly far more interested in himself than in Mapplethorpe, and boastfully uses the subject of his "biography" (term used charitably) as little more than a tool with which to broadcast his own (clearly exaggerated) influence on -- and involvement with -- the photographer. While I don't doubt that Fritscher played a small role in Mapplethorpe's life and art, I don't for a second believe that it was even a tiny fraction of what he'd like you to believe. Jack, you were one of a large pool of pornographers and one of an even more humongous population of RM's lovers. This bio reeks of little more than self-promotion and self-promoting fiction, and the fact that it was penned posthumously makes it even more disgusting and annoying.

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Summary: Very interesting "read" that penetrates 70s art &sex world
Review: Written as a tell-all memoir of pop culture, this book is amazing in what it tells us about lost lives in lost times. Real nostalgia. Actually, this book is loaded with "gay street credential." The fact that it has an index tells you the book seriously intends to record history's major and minor characters. Many gay pop culture books don't even bother to have an index which makes them useless. My litmus test in a book store is to first see if a book has an index, and then I skim it to see who's included and who's not, because that way I can judge the book's presentation and prejudices. Too bad Patty Smith doesn't write about Mapplethorpe and this period like his boyfriend did in writing this attack on American lying, political hypocrisy, and phoney art wackjobs. What is generously amazing is that boyfriend Fritscher seems to genuinely miss and mourne Mapplethorpe to the degree that he devotes 60% of the book to direct interviews with other Mapplethorpe art friends like George Dureau, Joel-Peter Witkin, and others who all speak for themselves.