‘Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures’ on HBO

“Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures” is on HBO tonight, April 4

Every generation gets its own “New York values” panic. Monday’s HBO documentary on the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe begins in 1989, months after his death, with Senator Jesse Helms decrying his work on the floor of the United States Senate. The senator had started a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts’ funding of an exhibition by “a known homosexual who died of AIDS,” whose work included graphic depictions of sex and S-and-M. “Look at the pictures!” he cried.

“Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures,” directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, does just that. But where Senator Helms meant to point to the photographs’ content — the skin, the genitalia, the placement of a bullwhip or a fist — “Pictures,” an insightful work of biographical criticism, puts them in the context of a life and artistic vision. It finds the light behind the heat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/arts/television/review-mapplethorpe-look-at-the-pictures-on-hbo-gives-context-to-controversy.html?_r=0