Lawrence Weiner
About this artwork
Lawrence Weiner was one of the founders of conceptual art, a movement that placed the emphasis on the conceptual and linguistic basis and formulation of a work of art, rather than on its execution. Mapplethorpe portrays him as a rugged intellectual with more than a streak of flamboyance - a silk scarf draped around his neck and tattooed star on his wrist - and love of his own rhetoric (note the open mouth, as if he had been caught in mid-flow). The diagonal lines of his arms create a parallelogram in the centre of the composition that acts as a base for the bearded head above.
Updated December 2021
see media-
artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
-
title:Lawrence Weiner
-
date created:1982; printed 1991
-
materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
-
measurements:37.50 x 37.50 cm (framed: 64.40 x 62.00 x 3.80 cm)
-
object type:
-
credit line:ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Art Fund, 2008
-
accession number:AR00218
-
gallery:
-
depicted:
-
artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
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...