R. Mapplethorpe; Photographer Known for Wide-Ranging Works

Robert Mapplethorpe, praised as much for his exquisite photographs of flowers as for his fetishistic portrayals of erotica, died Thursday of AIDS-related complications at New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston, a spokeswoman for his gallery said. He was 43.

Mapplethorpe was diagnosed with acquired immune deficiency syndrome more than a year ago and was in Boston for a special treatment when his condition worsened unexpectedly, said Susan Arthur of the Robert Miller Gallery in New York City, which represented him.

Commenting on the world of classic beauty and the arena of sadomasochism that Mapplethorpe bisected throughout his short career, Los Angeles Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic in 1982 said that Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre “confuses expectation because it is a scattershop assortment of everything from delicate romance and good humor to brutal titillation.

‘Extraordinary Talent’

“The artist who emerges seems to have an extraordinary talent and a dehumanizing sensibility.”

Mapplethorpe, who was about to publish two new books of his work, was probably best known for the controversy surrounding his homosexual-oriented photographs of the 1970s.

His favorite medium was black and white but he also experimented some with color. Most of his pictures, whether of people or things, are lighted and photographed so they appear as sculpture.

“I just want to be written about as a normal artist,” Mapplethorpe once told American Photographer magazine.

“I never wanted to be a photographer,” he said. “It was sort of a mistake really. I only wanted to make a statement and photography ended up being the vehicle.”

Last August, New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art featured him in a one-man show with 100 of his works. The New York weekly 7 Days reported that Mapplethorpe, visibly suffering from AIDS, appeared at the opening, “dapper but visibly frail.”

“For an hour he was propped up on a couch . . . surrounded by his pictures. Then, when the crush of well-wishers made the place too steamy, he was whisked away.”

The photographer’s recent work reflected his illness, Arthur said.

“His pictures now were about what he was experiencing. That he was fighting dying makes them that much more timely in this age of AIDS,” Arthur said.

His self-portraits, published last year, show his once-attractive features drawn and emaciated. Many are now on view in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Often-Bleak Photographs

Born in 1946, the son of an electrical engineer and raised in a middle-class, Catholic home in Floral Park, N.Y., Mapplethorpe took to Manhattan’s 42nd Street in the 1960s seeking subjects for what would become his often-bleak photographs.

In 1962, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute, one of New York’s top art schools, and studied there for eight years.

He emerged in the mid-1970s as part of an offbeat culture that included longtime friend and rock singer Patti Smith. He worked in several media, including collage and film.

His subject matter ranged from sexual taboos to traditional still lifes to commercial advertising to fashion and album covers. At his death, he had published 20 books and his pictures were commanding high prices.

When the mid-1970s gave way to New Wave rock ‘n’ roll, Mapplethorpe presented ascetic album covers for the recordings of Smith and the group Television.

Also in the mid-1970s, he began working as a staff photographer for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.

Between rock ‘n’ roll albums and his nudes of male athletes, he produced flattering portraits of John Paul Getty III, Arnold Schwarzenegger, composer Philip Glass and writer Susan Sontag. Another was of art curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, his longtime companion, who died of AIDS in 1986.

(Wagstaff’s vast collection was purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu in 1984.)

His successes mounted and by 1987, Mapplethorpe’s linen prints were being sold for as much as $15,000 apiece.

“I want to get a picture that is the way I want to remember someone. It’s like a diary in the end,” Mapplethorpe once said. “My work is about order. I am a perfectionist.”

Mapplethorpe is survived by his father and mother, two sisters and two brothers.