At the Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Le Forme della Bellezza brings together Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of flowers, bodies, statues and faces. Curated by Denis Curti, the exhibition forms the final chapter of a retrospective that began in Venice and continued in Milan.
Rather than following only a chronological path, the exhibition highlights a recurring element in Mapplethorpe’s work: a controlled approach to form, built through light, framing and composition.
This attention extends across very different subjects. A flower, a nude body, a statue or a face may be treated with the same formal care, without becoming interchangeable. The contrast between them helps make the continuity of Mapplethorpe’s visual language visible.
The exhibition also includes works from the Statue Series, alongside photographs such as Man in Polyester Suit and Calla Lily. In portraits of figures including Isabella Rossellini, Roy Lichtenstein, Iggy Pop and Patti Smith, pose, selection and light contribute to images that go beyond the simple recording of appearance.
The most interesting aspect of the exhibition lies in seeing how Mapplethorpe applies the same visual discipline to very different subjects. Here, beauty is not treated as an abstract idea to define, but as something constructed through the concrete choices of photography.
