Robert Mapplethorpe: Subject Object Image review – penises, perfection and Patti Smith

Alison Jacques, London
This being Mapplethorpe, phallic imagery is in abundance – but do we really need a room of dull celebrity portraits?

“He’s famous for his objectionable sexual representation,” Louise Bourgeois says gleefully in a BBC documentary on the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Bourgeois once sat for a portrait by Mapplethorpe, grinning maniacally at the camera while clutching her latex-covered, phallic-shaped sculpture Fillette. The documentary, shot in 1988 – a year before Mapplethorpe’s death – plays downstairs at Alison Jacques gallery, a finale to a new exhibition on his work.

Bourgeois recognised an affinity between her own work and Mapplethorpe’s. They both made a lot of works about the phallus, and at this exhibition, there’s no shortage of cocks. Mapplethorpe photographed them voraciously, sculpturally, with ebullient, ecstatic erotic desire. And – as demonstrated in a photograph of a protruding willy staged in a stand-off with a devil figurine – a dose of humour.