Sex, death and beauty in the art of Robert Mapplethorpe

The smooth classical forms, the famous nudes, the iconic portraits, the still lifes. At the Palazzo Reale in Milan, nothing escapes the poetics of Robert Mapplethorpe, which Milan rediscovers in an exhibition focusing on the Forms of Desire. The irreverent and non-conformist American photographer, a controversial exponent of a counterculture that has been able to celebrate the vertigo of ancient beauty, while at the same time becoming the interpreter of a densely political libertarian creativity and a fetishistically irreverent sculptural aesthetic, with the male sex as its epicentre, finds here the right redemption from a criticism that has too often relegated him to the homoerotic dimension alone.

Because the self-taught Mapplethopre was this and much, much more. And his still lifes or his densely-coloured self-portraits would suffice to prove the heights he reached, even in the execrability of a career cut short at only 42 years of age, as witnessed here by the more than 200 works on display.

"The focus of this exhibition in Milan, at the Palazzo Reale, is on the idea of desire, which Robert Mapplethorpe declined with photography through the celebration of the body. Moreover, this exhibition coincides incredibly with the Winter Olympics between Milan and Cortina. So all the athletes who have joined our initiative will also be Ambassadors and will communicate this exhibition that truly celebrates the power of the body,' curator Denis Curti explains.No less famous than his portraits are the many self-portraits here behind me, this splendid and suffering one from 1988.

The exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe and the Forms of Desire can be visited at the Palazzo Reale in Milan until 17 May.