Despite some moving contributions from family members, particularly Mapplethorpe's younger brother Edward, the film never really gets anywhere near its subject.
The most revelatory facet of Look At The Pictures is what you hear: Bailey and Barbato accessed a trove of audio recordings in which Mapplethorpe discusses himself with disarming frankness.
Though an undoubtedly fascinating journey into the artistic mind (and the 1970s and 80s New York City), Look at the Pictures never quite breaks free from the lionizing of Mapplethorpe and appeasing people who already defend him.
Each chapter of Mapplethorpe's biography - his Catholic boyhood in Queens, his renowned romances with Patti Smith and the collector Sam Wagstaff, his devotion to and aestheticizing of s/m - is given the same cursory treatment.
Look at the Pictures mirrors what Mapplethorpe did with his own life and career: It uses the pictures to tell a version of Robert Mapplethorpe while leaving us with the nagging feeling that there was much more to him than met the eye.
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's authoritative doc about the artist positively commands us to appreciate it, from flower studies to the fetish scenes that shocked '80s America.
What we learn from the enjoyable punditry of siblings, art-world associates and former lovers is that the gorgeous provocateur was consumed with fame, and that everything and everybody was a means to that end.
