Mapplethorpe Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy reading and share 73 famous quotes about Mapplethorpe with everyone.
Top Mapplethorpe Quotes
You're never going to get anywhere in life if you don't live up to your obligations. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I always thought I was good. That's why it was so frustrating when other people didn't agree. — Robert Mapplethorpe
People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I don't like that particular word 'shocking.' I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before ... I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I played around with the flowers and the lighting, so that was a good way to educate myself. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand. — Robert Mapplethorpe
With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing. — Robert Mapplethorpe
If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I come from suburban America. It was a very safe environment and it was a good place to come from in that it was a good place to leave. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Whenever you make love to someone, there should be three people involved - you, the other person, and the devil. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I'm not photographing anything naked these days. I haven't been concentrating on bodies recently. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I can't have just anybody assisting me, I need somebody who I can really communicate with. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Of course, in the end, when Mapplethorpe turned out to be very gay, Smith was left with no other option than to go off and write Horses and grow the world's most influential lady mustache instead. Her hand was forced into productivity. — Caitlin Moran
Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book. — Patti Smith
Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard. — Jerzy Kosinski
The principal thing is the question of how our culture views age: that old is ugly. Take a photographer like Mapplethorpe. Every single photograph of his is about classical notions of beauty, of young beautiful black men, young beautiful women, and he selects subjects who are essentially interesting and good-looking and extremely physical. I can't stand them. — John Coplans
People have done pornographic pictures forever, but most of the people who involve themselves in explicit sexuality aren't really artists. — Robert Mapplethorpe
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. — Patti Smith
The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer. — Robert Mapplethorpe
My lifestyle is bizarre, but the only thing you need to know is where the darkroom is. — Robert Mapplethorpe
From childhood my mother had me examining Robert Mapplethorpe's style and Egon Schiele's framing - that's what modelling is about. — Milla Jovovich
I don't think that there's that much difference between a photograph of a fist up someone's ass and a photograph of carnations in a bowl. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I want to see something I've never seen before. — Robert Mapplethorpe
The photographs that are art have to be separated from the rest - then preserved. — Robert Mapplethorpe
We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn't want to be without each other. — Patti Smith
If I have to change my lifestyle, I don't want to live. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I've never lied. I think I've lived a moral life. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I wish I could be elegant. — Robert Mapplethorpe
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. — Collier Schorr
I became the toast of London. A lot of people I met came from these really decadent families where the married men were gay and no one thought anything about it. — Robert Mapplethorpe
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. — Aaron Brookner
It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe) — Patti Smith
When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God. — Robert Mapplethorpe
My theory about creativity is that the more money one has, the more creative one can be. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn't. And that's a tough place to be because you're never satisfied. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I don't believe in dogmas and theologies. I just believe in being a good person. — Robert Mapplethorpe
If I am at a party, I want to be at the party. Too many photographers use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers. — Robert Mapplethorpe
When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I think that it was a great advantage to go into photography not knowing much about it. Not thinking. I think one of the problems with many photographers today is that they never see for themselves, but just like everybody else ... — Robert Mapplethorpe
Just because I was out at the bars all the time didn't mean I wasn't looking for someone to love. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I don't use recreational drugs, except for cocaine, hallucinogens, and nitrates. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I recorded that because it happened to me. I wasn't making a point. — Robert Mapplethorpe
The best picture I got was Bianca Jagger whispering in Mick's ear. I caught them telling a secret, which is sort of rude. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go.
(letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, 1970) — Patti Smith
Sell the public flowers ... things that they can hang on their walls without being uptight. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I see things like they've never been seen before. Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Beauty and the devil are the same thing. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I came across Nell like you would a Robert Mapplethorpe at a street art fair, gobsmacked that something so valuable would be lumped in with a bunch of other crap like that. She'd been slumped against the bathroom wall in Butterfields, a dorm we later took to calling Butterfingers, for the lacrosse team residents who manhandled girls made Gumby-legged by Popov vodka. Even with her mouth hanging open, her tongue dry and pebbled white from all the medically sanctioned stimulants, there was no question that she had a movie star face. "Hey," I said, my — Jessica Knoll
I just try to live my life and do my thing. — Robert Mapplethorpe
If I had been born one or two hundred years ago, I might have been a sculptor, but photography is a very quick way to see, to make sculpture. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I don't know why my pictures come out looking so good. I just don't get it. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I should try to get some sleep as one doesn't know what tomorrow may bring. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I'm not a photojournalist. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Like Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, and so many others before me, sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography. — Terry Richardson
I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before. — Robert Mapplethorpe
I would never have done what I'd done if I'd considered my father as somebody I wanted to please. — Robert Mapplethorpe
My father wants me to be like my brother, but I can't be. — Robert Mapplethorpe
There were counter-protests, of course, and in the end Mapplethorpe's work was exhibited, but the message to the arts community was clear: stray too far from the innocuous, and the axe would fall. Call it selective censorship: freedom of expression was guaranteed unless it was expressed in a work of art. The most amazing aspect of this American morality play was not that the government would place self-interest above principle when it felt threatened, but that no one foresaw this coming from miles down the road. A reminder from history: the American Revolution was not financed with matching Grants from the Crown. COMMON — David Bayles
I am selfish, but that's an attribute that all artists possess. — Robert Mapplethorpe