About this artwork
This photograph is a close-up study of an orchid against a plain dark background. In the last years of his life Mapplethorpe made a number of images of flowers. This work is a typical example of this subject matter, in which the highly detailed images are suggestive of sexual organs, both male and female. For his ‘portraits’ of flowers, Mapplethorpe frequently chose lilies, orchids and tulips whose fleshy petals suggest the texture of human skin. Captured in exquisite detail, Mapplethorpe used photography to preserve their ephemeral and fleeting beauty.
Updated before 2020
see media-
artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
-
title:Orchid
-
date created:1987
-
materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
-
measurements:61.00 x 50.80 cm (frames: 81.70 x 78.50 x 2.8 cm)
-
object type:
-
credit line:ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation 2010
-
accession number:AR01144
-
gallery:
-
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...