During the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, Robert Mapplethorpe was maligned, vilified, and censured, but the photographer who died of AIDS in 1989 is now an audience favourite.
Xavier Hufkens shows Robert Mapplethorpe's pictures
His tame and not-so-tame self-portraits, photos of lilies and SM slaves, dressed in leather from head to toe, are incredibly popular. In her memoir Just Kids, musician and friend Patti Smith sketches Mapplethorpe as an intensely ambitious man. He never concealed his desire for fame, recognition, dirty sex, and yes, also money.
It is part of his art: his life was one great performance that he documented in his oeuvre of 120,000 pictures. He thought that his work should be talked about, and that shouldn’t be too difficult.
> Robert Mapplethorpe. > 20/07, Xavier Hufkens, Elsene
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