Was the public’s later adverse reaction to Robert’s work
an expression of the far right, or was this a more deeply embedded
response encouraged by his work?
Oh, absolutely. Robert loved
being the naughty Catholic boy. There was no question that was in there.
The far right wasn’t an issue like it is now, yet there were still adverse
reactions to his pictures.
It wasn’t until the Cincinnati
exhibition that the brouhaha escalated.
The shocking reactions
were there to Robert’s work as much as attraction. I had it myself. It’s a
world most of us didn’t know and didn’t live in and couldn’t believe was
really going on.
Robert touched that edge between classical form
and extreme sexuality.
He did it beautifully. He had a very
refined and fresh eye.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-portrait, 1988
©Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
What did
he look at? Germano Celant talked about him looking at
Ingres and
Michelangelo.
Robert and I went to a lot of
Pop Art and
Minimalist exhibits. We didn’t go to the
Met together or to other countries to see classical things. You should ask
Patti [Smith]. He didn’t have a lot of [art history] books.
Lynn Davis, Darlene Vanderhoop, Los Angeles, 1978
Courtesy of Lynn Davis and Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY
©Lynn Davis, New York, All Rights Reserved
The Michelangelo imagery happens into his pictures.<
He had such
an interest in the nude and sex, he probably had a view of anything where
the male or female nude had been in art history, as opposed to somebody
who studied classical painting or sculpture. He knew what appealed to him.
He knew the history of all things Christian and related to the Church,
such as Michelangelo, and also classical Greek art. In terms of his being
homosexual and looking at the history of men in art, I’m sure he was very
familiar [with art history]. But he didn’t talk about [it].
His connection to art history feels more spontaneous, as if the knowledge was
gained on a more visceral level, through his personal relationships and
lovers and from the everyday world he lived in. His images are connected
to what he’s experiencing.
It was in his consciousness,
but he was also exposed to art-based things through his relationship with
Sam Wagstaff. His interest in art history was natural and instinctual.
How did Robert’s sense of art history differ from yours?
Lynn Davis, Emin Minaret, 2001
Courtesy of Lynn Davis and Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY
©Lynn Davis, New York, All Rights Reserved
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With Robert, it was about a reinterpretation and Minimalism
as well as classicism. He and I are very different, yet oddly, there’s
something similar in our work. My relationship to sites and travel started
because my parents were great travelers of the world in the 50s, when the
world was more unique to itself and not so global. My mother had gone to
Benares. She came back with this beautiful film of the Ganges. She was
more like a recorder than an interpreter. It was this long pan of holy men
praying in yoga on the Ganges. That hit me, undeniably, as this dazzling
moment.
On the surface, your photographs “The Walking Buddah”
and the Giza pyramid series document history, but their scale and
directness come right out of the tradition of Minimalism. In Robert’s
case, he creates a strange hybrid between contemporary photography and
neoclassical sculpture.
Lynn Davis, Walking Buddha, Sukhotai, (2001)
Courtesy of Lynn Davis and Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY
©Lynn Davis, New York, All Rights Reserved
Robert did it in the composition, whereas mine was about emptiness vs.
Form, which is different.
What projects would Robert have
pursued, had he had the time?
He had the flowers, the sex
pictures, and the portraits. The constructions hadn’t quite worked. He
probably would have done bigger pieces, maybe combining his amazing sense
of proportion and objects with images. I could see him going on and on.
It’s tragic not to see more. On the other hand, he left an amazing amount
of work for somebody who was 42.
You’ve been shooting in
Greenland. How do you prepare?
The room I stay in in Greenland
overlooks the ice from a distance, but you can’t shoot from there, you can
only shoot from a little boat. You get to study nothing. It’s a wonderful
challenge. You’re in that moment. You have to find the images; you’re
floating, the boat’s moving, the ice is moving, you have to put it all
together. It’s like archery.
Do you have a boatman?
Lynn Davis, Iceberg#16, Disko Bay, 2000
Courtesy of Lynn Davis and Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY
©Lynn Davis, New York, All Rights Reserved
I’ve had different boatmen over the years. I had a 20-foot fishing boat
this year.
Was it stable?
It’s going up and down, I’m
hanging over it. Even when you cut the motor, it’s still moving. You have
to be able to get the image as you drift right into it.
That
sounds like a line from the poet
John Berryman, whom you studied with: “All that hair flashing over the
Atlantic…” That’s from the poem "
Dream Song 176" that he wrote about you.
Berryman taught
me that you could create from your own madness. I had never before met a
person who created work I loved that had these edges and so much pain and
beauty. I learned that you could use your wildness. Unfortunately, he
killed himself — which is another tragedy.
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