Dueling Photographers:
George Dureau and Robert Mapplethorpe
Profiles in Gay Courage Vol. 2
Foreword:
by
Jack Fritscher, PhD
How to Quote from this Material
Foreword
These lively historic transcripts of legendary New Orleans artist George Dureau in conversation with Jack Fritscher act as a lens through which we’re able to peer into one of 20th-century art’s great questions of influence and mentorship: George Dureau and Robert Mapplethorpe.
New Orleans master craftsman Dureau holds court on art history, his life, lifestyle, and career, and both Fritscher and Dureau speak candidly about their longtime relationships with the recently departed Mapplethorpe.
Fritscher who knew both men for years leads us Virgil-like through these sessions held long distance, and up close on Dureau’s French Quarter balcony, from 1989 to 1991 showing us Dureau in his early 60s, demanding and generous, as he continues to pursue his art despite the odds surrounding homosexuality, race, and disability.
This is George fit and on top at the end of the century before Hurricane Katrina, gentrification, and Alzheimer’s took their toll on this great creative and (generally) blithe spirit who lived twice as long as Mapplethorpe.
Authenticated by his friends and family, these conversations illustrate Dureau’s life and his work as inseparable. Fritscher handles the artist with the same empathy and care George showed his subjects.
Fritscher’s release of this archival material is a great gift and an act of love for Dureau and Mapplethorpe and the models. It’s essential art history giving a sense of time, place, and context while illuminating two Titans — one remembered, one nearly forgotten — at the end of the 1980s.
— Jarret Lofstead, writer/filmmaker, George Dureau: New Orleans Artist