PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Derek Conrad Murray is Associate Professor of the History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. He has contributed to leading magazines and journals of contemporary art and visual culture, including American Art, Art in America, Art Journal, Third Text, and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, where he currently serves as associate editor.
Mapplethorpe and the Flower [reveals] rich and necessary reflections. * Revue Critique d'Art (Bloomsbury Translation) * It has been almost four decades since Kobena Mercer's groundbreaking articles dealing with issues of blackness in Mapplethorpe's photographs of black male bodies. Murray takes up where Mercer left off and significantly expands the conversation by powerfully arguing that Mapplethorpe's flower works are not as distinct from those dealing explicitly with the body and issues of difference (racial and sexual). Indeed, he argues this divide has been partly brought about art historical methodologies that effectively cleave issues of form from issues of difference and vice versa. Through clear, cogent prose, Murray will leave readers stunned at what's possible through his reimagination of art historical methodology: in this brilliant book, he powerfully outlines how issues of power and repression manifest themselves across the spectrum of Mapplethorpe's body of work. I'll never look at one of Mapplethorpe's flower works the same way! * Alpesh Patel, Associate Professor, Contemporary Art and Theory, Florida International University, USA *
