Composing Beauty: Mapplethorpe’s Quest for Perfection

“I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect.”
—Robert Mapplethorpe

In this Olio, Jeanne Proust engages participants in an expansive conversation about Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, through the lens of aesthetics and the famed photographer’s quest for perfect beauty. In thinking about Mapplethorpe’s carefully composed photographs of provocative subjects, can we engage with beauty solely through the aesthetic qualities of the representation itself? Or is our appreciation of beauty inherently linked to the moral connotations of the subject matter? Proust also brings Mapplethorpe’s work into dialogue with French poet Baudelaire, who helped redefine our notion of beauty and what can be considered beautiful. Is beauty within the subject matter or within the spectator?

Teacher: Jeanne Proust

Jeanne Proust has studied Philosophy and Visual Arts in Bordeaux, Berlin, and Paris. Her research focuses on Théodule Ribot’s Diseases of the Will, both in philosophical and psychological perspectives. While teaching at different universities here in New York, Jeanne is advocating for a widening of philosophical education beyond the frontiers of academia.

*Tickets to this Olio are highly limited and are being sold on the BAM website. RSVP here.

Co-presented by BAM and Think Olio
Led by Jeanne Proust