About this artwork
In this work Mapplethorpe removed the man’s torso, head and lower legs from the frame. Instead he focused the composition on the man’s groin (he wears a studded belted jock-strap), his muscular naked right thigh, leather-jacketed lower right arm and right hand, clenched in a fist. It is a highly structured composition, typical of the way in which Mapplethorpe used the medium of photography to create works with a three-dimensional quality. The strong lighting and stark shadows, together with the strength of the man’s stance and a sense of the unseen parts of the subject, result in a powerful and challenging image. By titling the work with the name of his sitter, ‘Patrice’, Mapplethorpe gave his subject an identity and individuality, even while showing him as faceless and anonymous.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
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title:Patrice
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date created:1977; printed 1992
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materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
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measurements:(framed: 61.10 x 58.70 x 3.80 cm)
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object type:
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credit line:ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation 2010
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accession number:AR01138
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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...
