Robert Mapplethorpe - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 4, 2017 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Simon Lowinsky Gallery, San Francisco

  • Exhibited

    Censored, 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, 21 March- 1 April 1978

  • Literature

    Martineau and Salvesen, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs, pl. 37
    Random House, Mapplethorpe, p. 101
    Schirmer/Mosel, Robert Mapplethorpe: Ten by Ten, pl. 7

  • Catalogue Essay

    In 1978 Robert Mapplethorpe secured his first solo exhibition outside of New York at Simon Lowinsky Gallery in San Francisco. While the original selection of work for the exhibition included the lot on offer, it was removed from the final selection along with eighteen others. Together the nineteen pictures, all early works from Mapplethorpe’s exploration in the s/m community, were exhibited at the non-profit art space, 80 Langton Street. The exhibition was appropriately titled Censored as a direct response to the challenges Mapplethorpe faced in securing a venue to show his rougher sex pictures, with a review of the opening night by Rita Brooks stating that patrons of the art circuit could now “rub shoulders” with the “men in black.” In the same year, further placing this work among the most important early s/m pictures by Mapplethorpe, a smaller print of Jim, Sausalito was included in the X Portfolio.

    From the sold-out edition of five, three prints are in museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate/ National Galleries of Scotland; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

  • 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."

    View More Works

284

Jim, Sausalito

1977
Gelatin silver print.
13 3/4 x 13 7/8 in. (34.9 x 35.2 cm)
Signed, dated and numbered 5/5 in pencil on the verso.

Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000 

Sold for $32,500

Contact Specialist
Sarah Krueger
Specialist, Head of Sale

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Deputy Chairman, Americas

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

Photographs

New York 4 April 2017