‘Nobody made greater portraits’ - A touring Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition opens in Dunoon

My affection for Dunoon’s Burgh Hall goes back several years. Having interviewed architect John McAslan for The Scotsman Magazine, I was invited west a year later, to peek at an abandoned building that his mum convinced him to rescue before it was developed as flats.

Through the John McAslan Family Trust, a charity he runs with his wife, Dava, he bought Burgh Hall in 2009, and sank tens of thousands of pounds of his own money into badly needed repairs to make it safe to use. When I saw it, the building was a mess, clinging to its dignity by a slender thread. Full of potential and rich with history, but unloved, and under-appreciated.

What a difference three years makes. The idea was to create, in Burgh Hall, an arts-led community venue, offering a diverse programme of exhibitions, performances, community activities, youth theatre, dance (Rambert Ballet have performed here) and more. The Trust is committed to delivering a range of cultural experiences not previously available to the local community and the wider region. And though the ambitious renovations McAslan ultimately envisages are only partially completed – they’re beating the bushes to try and raise at least £500,000 to finish the job – I know from friends living in Argyll that the Hall is perpetually humming, filled with kids taking drama and dance classes every afternoon, and after dark, a popular venue for comics and musicians.

To accommodate the small exhibition of 16 Mapplethorpe portraits, John McAslan + Partners (JMP) built a climate- and humidity-controlled white box within the ground floor space. There, visitors can get up close and personal with two of the photographer’s most renowned images of his close friend, Patti Smith – one of which became the cover of her album Easter, while the other, a nude, shows the singer/poet curled up against a radiator. Also on show are four self-portraits of the artist, another of singer Grace Jones, and a shot of Arnold Schwarzenegger, back when he was a body builder. Mapplethorpe’s friend Lisa Lyon, also a body builder, is the subject of two portraits: one, shot from behind, shows her bare skin criss-crossed by black straps, underscoring the nature of a sport that’s all about isolating individual muscle groups.

At Saturday’s opening, attended by luminaries from the Scottish art world, John Leighton, director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, was in conversation with Anthony d’Offay, the donor and ex-officio curator of Artist Rooms, who began his lifelong relationship and love affair with Scotland while studying at Edinburgh University. Leighton said, “Since his gallery closed in 2001 he’s been devoting himself tirelessly to the creation of Artist Rooms, which belongs to all of us, thanks to his generosity.”

For his part, d’Offay’s comments were both thoughtful and thought-provoking:

“From 1980, for 21 years, I was travelling the world. Particularly in New York, I had the experience when I was going home at night, of very often standing in Soho, waiting for a taxi, when I would encounter Robert who, I think, was not going home, he was going out. He had a day life and a night life. And when I was in Naples, I would always see Robert in that city of temptation, late at night or early in the morning. What was Robert doing? We all know what Robert was doing. He was not taking photographs, but he was collecting ideas and inspiration. If you think of a flame burning very brightly, one had the impression of Robert. He was always enormously friendly, and very kind, always saying he would like to take a photograph of me and my son – and like a fool I didn’t do it. And I didn’t represent him because we had so many artists and only a limited amount of time.

“For me, in the second half of the 20th century in American photography, the great figures are Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe. The longer you look at his work, the better you know it, the greater it gets, and that, for me, is the test of art.

D’Offay came to Edinburgh to study Spanish literature but wound up studying philosophy, anthropology and art. “When you fall in love with Scotland, your life changes. The experience of being in the beautiful city of Edinburgh, and of being able to walk through the National Galleries of Scotland every day of my life, was a wonderful thing that is with me still, every day.”

The guiding ethos behind Artist Rooms was to create something free for that portion of the public not living in big cities that are home to great museums. “It’s about trying to think in a new way and see the world in a new way. When you have a group of works by one artist, if they’re carefully chosen and work together, they have an intensity which is completely different from a group exhibition. If you’re able to be in the presence of great work by a great artist, it can inform you and illuminate you in a special way. Not in terms of art history, but about the way you think and the way you ask yourself questions about why we’re here, what is our purpose, what is our duty?”

Though the photographs on show in Dunoon are not the infamous willy wagging portraits which cause rows all over the world, Leighton alluded to the issue of Mapplethorpe’s subject matter, noting, “It’s only 20 years since some of Mapplethorpe’s photographs caused some of the greatest scandals in the art world; only 20 years since museum directors putting on exhibitions of his work were being prosecuted for obscenity.”

D’Offay replied, “If you lived in New York in the 80s, it felt somehow like a hot-house. [But] I think time solves all these problems, doesn’t it? The important thing is not those questions, but his work as a whole. I think he is a very great artist and entirely relevant and important. No one made greater portraits than Mapplethorpe.”

• The Artist Rooms on tour with the Art Fund’s Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition is at Dunoon Burgh Hall until 8 July; at The Gallery at Linlithgow Burgh Halls from 20 July until 28 October; and at Perth Museum and Art Gallery from 10 November until 27 April 2013. Admission is free.

• For more about the Dunoon project, visit: www.burghhalldunoon.com