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Self Portrait
Artist
Robert Mapplethorpe
(Born 1946, United States; died 1989, United States)
Date1980, printed 1999
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 13 7/8 x 13 7/8 in. (35.24 x 35.24 cm)
Sheet: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.64 cm)
Framed: 30 5/8 x 29 5/8 x 1 1/8 in. (77.79 x 75.25 x 2.86 cm)
Sheet: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.64 cm)
Framed: 30 5/8 x 29 5/8 x 1 1/8 in. (77.79 x 75.25 x 2.86 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number2014.30
Status
Not on viewMarkingsestate stamped on verso
Copyright© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Category
Label TextRobert Mapplethorpe’s photographs share a technical mastery, a dignified presentation of the subject, and a commitment to a confessional, deeply personal mode of expression. He came of age as an artist in New York in the 1970s amid the emergence of punk and gay cultures and captured images of fellow artists, musicians, socialites, pornographic film stars, and members of the underground S&M scene. Mapplethorpe later shifted to the elegant, classically composed black-and-white studio portraits, still lifes of flowers, and explicitly erotic nudes for which he is best known. An unapologetic adherent of classical ideals of beauty and perfection, he was driven by a desire to capture the physical splendor of his subjects, however shocking or morally fraught.
In the Modern’s Self Portrait, 1980, Mapplethorpe presented himself in partial drag, with theatrical “feminine” makeup and luxuriant fur neck wrap, his hair coiffed into voluminous curls. Part of a long-term series of self-portraits in which he assumed the guise of various personae, the image challenges society’s binary construction of gender. Mapplethorpe was well aware of his cultural precedents when it came to blurring gender identity, from the cross-dressing tradition of men playing women’s roles in ancient Greek theater to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray’s famous portrait from around 1920–21 of Marcel Duchamp dressed as his feminine alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, also in a fur collar. By incorporating drag into his self-representation, Mapplethorpe contributed to the expanding cultural dialogue about how we define ourselves and each other.
In the Modern’s Self Portrait, 1980, Mapplethorpe presented himself in partial drag, with theatrical “feminine” makeup and luxuriant fur neck wrap, his hair coiffed into voluminous curls. Part of a long-term series of self-portraits in which he assumed the guise of various personae, the image challenges society’s binary construction of gender. Mapplethorpe was well aware of his cultural precedents when it came to blurring gender identity, from the cross-dressing tradition of men playing women’s roles in ancient Greek theater to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray’s famous portrait from around 1920–21 of Marcel Duchamp dressed as his feminine alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, also in a fur collar. By incorporating drag into his self-representation, Mapplethorpe contributed to the expanding cultural dialogue about how we define ourselves and each other.
