This work is intended to juxtapose and recontextualize the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and Tracy Emin.
Rober Mapplethorpe created explicit images depicting gay men in various sexual positions and manners. His work with Phallic imagery is well known, but so is his work with flowers. Flowers such as the one used in this piece are common symbols for femininity.
The elements of this work that have been appropriated are Tracy Emin’s work which says ‘why are we not having sex right now’, a painting of a nude male by Egon Schiele and various photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
the sources for these images are various searches on the Search engine DuckDuckGo, which have been sourced from the Robert Mapplethorpe website, as well as the Egon Schiele Archive website
The meaning of the source’s images is similar. All the artists are making a comment on sexuality in a contemporary and provocative manner. Mapplethorpe took various images which explored the sexuality of black, gay men. Egon Schiele painted nudes that explored human sexuality like no-one else.
I appropriated all of these images to show the contrast between the way sex in the gay male community is viewed as opposed to heterosexual sex. on the left are the images of Mapplethorpe’s photographs of naked men, some engaging in BDSM, all of which are highly sexualized. these are juxtapositioned against another image of a man on a pedestal and a flower, showing purity and reservation.
the font has been surrounded by a negative for visual effect.
the appropriated images make this artwork what it is. Without the knowledge of how and why these images or artworks were created, the meaning of the artwork would be very different. Without knowing that the images and text are by other artists, it loses the references and hence the history and meaning behind each image.
