World Famous Comics: Mapplethorpe: Assault With a Deadly Camera
Mapplethorpe: Assault With a Deadly Camera
By: Jack Fritscher Publisher: Hastings House Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Hastings House Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 306 Publication Date: September 25, 1994
Assault with a Deadly Camera -- J. Fritscher I started the book and after the first paragraph, I almost decided to pass on reading. Author, Jack Fritscher credits himself with "I helped him create himself" - they met in 1977. That grandiose attitude really turned me off. Although, I did read the book and found it informative and interesting. It is somewhat scattered, but it is honest and enlightening.
Disappointing I found this book extremely disappointing and agree with other reviewers that the author seemed more interested in aggrandizing himself through association with Mapplethorpe. Fritscher also seems intent on producing this biography to prove that Mapplethorpe selected him, rather than Patricia Morrisroe, as biographer. The writing is annoying, frequently repetitive, and skips all over the place chronologically. The book comes across more as a collection of magazine/newspapers articles rather than a coherent whole.
A Lasting Snapshot of Photographic Genius
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.
Many authors wrote this book by Fritscher 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.
Mildly interesting, mostly annoying and self-aggrandizing. 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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