About this artwork
William Burroughs was a novelist, a guru and one of America’s underground heroes. His greatest novel, ‘The Naked Lunch’ (first published in France in 1959) was banned on the grounds of obscenity until, in a groundbreaking trial in 1966, it was declared not obscene. By 1980, when this photograph was taken, Burroughs was a countercultural giant. Mapplethorpe portrays him as a secular saint in prayer. Almost half the composition is taken up by Burroughs’s dark jacket, which thereby throws into sharp relief his head and clasped hands.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
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title:William Burroughs
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date created:1980
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materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
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measurements:34.10 x 34.10 cm (framed: 61.10 x 58.80 x 3.90 cm)
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object type:
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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
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accession number:AR00211
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gallery:
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depicted:
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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...