About this artwork
In this photograph the artist takes on different persona, recalling film stars Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953) or James Dean in Rebel without a Cause (1955) as he embraces the persona of archetypal bad boy. With a cool, glazed expression and dressed in a black leather jacket and dark shirt, with carefully coiffed 1950s-style hair, he appears impervious to emotion. Mapplethorpe would revisit this persona in 'Self-Portrait' (1980) where the subject is less tightly framed and has a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. This later photograph was featured on the front cover of Mapplethorpe’s book 'Certain People: A Book of Portraits' (1985), a book which featured an essay by, and portrait of, writer and critic Susan Sontag.
Updated before 2020
see media-
artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
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title:Self Portrait
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date created:1980; printed 1990
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materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
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measurements:35.50 x 35.60 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:AL00388
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gallery:
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...
