Robert Mapplethorpe - SPOTLIGHT: Photographs from A Private London Collection Online Auction London Friday, July 7, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “In session after session, Lisa [Lyon] posed as bride, broad, doll, moll, playgirl, beach-girl, bike-girl, gym-girl, and boy-girl; as frog-person, mud-person, flamenco dancer, spiritism medium, archetypal huntress, circus artiste, snake-woman, society woman, young Christian, and kink.” 
    —Bruce Chatwin, An Eye and Some Body, Lady: Lisa Lyon

    • Provenance

      Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

    • Literature

      R. Mapplethorpe, Lady: Lisa Lyon, New York: St. Martin's, 1983, p. 94 (variant)

    • 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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SPOTLIGHT: A PRIVATE LONDON COLLECTION

28

Lot offered with No Reserve

Lisa Lyon

1982
Gelatin silver print, printed 1982, mounted.
38.7 x 38.4 cm (15 1/4 x 15 1/8 in.)
Signed, dated by Michael Ward Stout, Executor, in ink, estate copyright credit reproduction limitation and signature stamp on the reverse of the flush-mount. Number 1 from an edition of 10.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£5,000 - 7,000 

Sold for £3,302

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Justine Gruser
Specialist, Photographs
jgruser@phillips.com
 

Clare Lamport
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clamport@phillips.com
 

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SPOTLIGHT: Photographs from A Private London Collection Online Auction

7 - 14 July 2023