"Black White + Grey" is the title of an early exhibition at the Wadsworth and also the title a world premier at the TriBeCa film festival about the curator that put together that exhibit, Sam Wagstaff, art world fixture and partner to Robert Mapplethorpe.
The film, a three-year effort directed by James Crump, gives a stylized view of Wagstaff and his times, but comes up short of giving a compelling sense of "Sam", I thought. Like Mapplethorpe, Wagstaff didn't leave behind an autobiography or an extensive set of letters or diaries - Robert left it to friend Jack Fritscher to pull together the main part of what exists of the personal, for an artist whose photographs now sell into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The film situates the facts of Wagstaff's life, including his expansive photography collection he sold for a princely sum in 1984 to the Getty that ensures his place in art history, no doubt, but doesn't much capture the passion of his aesthetic, in the way that a visual documentary can do. The director says that one must garner "Sam" from the photos he collected, but there are precious few glimpses in the film from which inferences are given or suggested. Rather, the director relies on dialogues with those familiar with Sam's work, mostly, and with longtime friend and life witness Patti Smith, that proved to be a view from a somewhat stiff and inadequate perch, I thought.
Herald Tribune captures much of the look-feel of the film, if you are interested.
The director insists, in questions with the audience afterward, that he did not intend for his film to bring Sam out from under the shadow that has become "Mapplethorpe"; but there is no denying that is what the film does, in some ways. "Mapplethorpe" is one of those amazing social constructs that will probably forever shape the general conscience regarding the admissibility of art, one artist, and a certain aesthetic. Beyond the popular social narrative, Wagstaff-Mapplethorpe shine as an example of one of those rare, candle-to-flame relationships that unlocked the potential of two men, in both the intense sexuality of their Scorpio-to-Scorpio sadomasochism (they shared the same birth date) and its extension into the pointedly sharp, creative aspects of their life's work.
