About this artwork
This photograph is from a series of images of black men in which Mapplethorpe celebrated the sculptural beauty of the human form. It was published in Mapplethorpe’s ‘The Black Book’ in 1986. In ‘Bob Love’ the naked sitter is posed like a sculpture on a pedestal draped with a twisted white sheet, his legs spread, in a candid and frontal study of the male form. The artist’s fascination with classical and antique sculpture is evident in his use of light and shadow to create a sense of three-dimensionality in these works. In his photographs of black male nudes Mapplethorpe confronted questions of racial stereotypes and his images have been critiqued for their emphasis on muscular, sculpted physiques.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
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title:Bob Love
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date created:1979
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materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
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measurements:(framed: 61.20 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:AR01140
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gallery:
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subject:
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...