Robert Mapplethorpe - Photographs London Tuesday, May 7, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    LipanjePuntin Contemporary Art Gallery, Trieste
    Private Collection, Europe

  • Literature

    R. Mapplethorpe, Certain People: A Book of Portraits, Twelvetrees Press, 1985, cover (detail) and n.p.

  • Catalogue Essay

    "The formality and intensity of the early photographers are evident in what I do. I use a rather slow film and long exposures… and it gives you a certain intensity. I’m working with old fashioned techniques……there hasn’t been a creative portrait photographer since Nadar in the 19th century."
    ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE, 1978

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Mapplethorpe

    American • 1946 - 1989

    After studying drawing, painting and sculpture at the Pratt Institute in the 1960s, Robert Mapplethorpe began experimenting with photography while living in the notorious Chelsea Hotel with Patti Smith. Beginning with Polaroids, he soon moved on to a Hasselblad medium-format camera, which he used to explore aspects of life often only seen behind closed doors.

    By the 1980s Mapplethorpe's focus was predominantly in the studio, shooting portraits, flowers and nudes. His depiction of the human form in formal compositions reflects his love of classical sculpture and his groundbreaking marriage of those aesthetics with often challenging subject matter. Mapplethorpe's style is present regardless of subject matter — from erotic nudes to self-portraits and flowers — as he ceaselessly strove for what he called "perfection of form."

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12

Self Portrait

1980
Gelatin silver print.
35.5 x 35.5 cm (13 7/8 x 13 7/8 in)
Signed, titled, dated, numbered 13/15 in ink and copyright credit reproduction limitation stamp on the reverse of the flush-mount.

Estimate
£30,000 - 50,000 

Sold for £86,500

Contact Specialist
Lou Proud
Head of Photographs, London
lproud@phillips.com
+ 44 207 318 4092

Photographs

London 8 May 2013 4pm