Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe ( ; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Mapplethorpe is said to have drawn inspiration from George Dureau, an American black and white photographer ten years his senior, who composed shots of fully nude African American and disabled men in his home city of New Orleans.

Mapplethorpe's 1989 exhibition, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both the use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.

Early life and education Mapplethorpe was born in the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens, New York City, the son of Joan Dorothy (Maxey) and Harry Irving Mapplethorpe, an electrical engineer. His jewelry was modeled by Warhol superstars Ultra Violet, Jay Johnson, and Joe Dallesandro.

Mapplethorpe's boyfriend, David Croland, introduced him to John McKendry, curator of photographs and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wagstaff provided him with $15,000 to purchase a loft at 24 Bond Street, a few doors from Wagstaff's own apartment.

Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff had remained good friends after their romance ended, and Wagstaff gave Mapplethorpe $500,000 to purchase a top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he resided and used as a photo-shoot studio. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom.

After being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, Mapplethorpe intensified his artistic production despite his declining health. Mapplethorpe was the principal inheritor of Wagstaff's fortune and executor of his estate after he died in 1987.

In 1988, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City mounted his first major American museum retrospective. That year, Mapplethorpe selected Patricia Morrisroe to write his biography, which was based on more than 300 interviews with celebrities, critics, lovers, and Mapplethorpe himself.

Death On March 9, 1989, Mapplethorpe died at age 42 due to complications from HIV/AIDS in a Boston hospital. His body was cremated. His ashes are interred at St. John's Cemetery, Queens in New York City, at his mother's gravesite, etched "Maxey". A stark, iconic photograph by Mapplethorpe was used as the cover of Smith's debut album, Horses. Mapplethorpe photographed Warhol again in 1986.

Art market In 2006, Mapplethorpe's 1986 photograph of Warhol sold for $643,200, making it the most expensive Mapplethorpe photograph ever sold.

In October 2015, Mapplethorpe's Man in Polyester Suit (1980), depicting his lover Milton Moore in a three-piece suit with his penis exposed, sold at Sotheby's New York for$478,000. The image was part of Mapplethorpe's "X Portfolio" series, and previously sold for $9,000 in 1992.

In 2017, a 1987 Mapplethorpe self-portrait platinum print was auctioned for £450,000.

Criticism was the subject of a work by American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, Notes on the Margins of the Black Book (1991–1993). Ligon juxtaposes Mapplethorpe's 91 images of black men in the 1988 publication Black Book with critical texts and personal reactions about the work to complicate the racial undertones of the imagery. The Washington Post Book World described it as "Mesmerizing ... Morrisroe has succeeded in re-creating the photographer's world of light and dark."

In 2022, Isaac Cole Powell played a character in American Horror Story: NYC named 'Theo Graves' loosely inspired by Mapplethorpe's life as an erotic photographer, relationship with his mentor and art curator Sam Wagstaff, and death from HIV/AIDS complications.

In May 2026, Troye Sivan attended the Met Gala in an outfit inspired by Mapplethorpe's fashion style.

Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Nearly a year before his death, the ailing Mapplethorpe helped found the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. His vision for the Foundation was that it would be "the appropriate vehicle to protect his work, to advance his creative vision, and to promote the causes he cared about".

Selected publications

Selected exhibitions 1973

Polaroids, Light Gallery, New York.

1977 Flowers, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York. ; Forma Foundation for Photography, Milan (2011); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2012).