Robert Mapplethorpe
Self Portrait
About this artwork
This photograph represents a sharp break with Mapplethorpe’s earlier self-depictions in which he adopted various guises. Here the artist takes inspiration from a sculpture he had in his own collection, creating a photograph which is an experiment in motion. The image suggests a powerful awareness of the transience of life and the artist’s own vulnerable position in the face of the AIDS crisis which dominated the 1980s.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
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title:Self Portrait
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date created:1985; printed 2005
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materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
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measurements:39.10 x 39.40 cm; framed: 68.40 x 66.20 x 3.10 cm
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object type:
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credit line:ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation 2014
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accession number:AL00390
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gallery:
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Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
The American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe became famous, not to say, notorious, in the 1970s and 1980s for his photographs of the male nude and sexually explicit, gay imagery. Although often considered controversial, Mapplethorpe tested the right to individual freedom of expression. These...