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Robert Mapplethorpe

Man in Polyester Suit

Live auction begins on:

October 22, 04:00 PM GMT

Estimate

200,000 - 300,000 USD

Bid

180,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Robert Mapplethorpe

1946 - 1989

Man in Polyester Suit


gelatin silver print, signed, dated and editioned '8/15' in ink in the margin, flush-mounted, the photographer's copyright stamp, signed and dated in ink, with edition and '[MAP] 529' in pencil, on the reverse

image: 17⅞ by 13⅞ in. (45.4 by 35.3 cm.)

Executed in 1980.

Galerie Jurka, Amsterdam

Galerie Nagel, Berlin

Acquired from the above circa 1981-82 by the present owner

Peter Weiermair, ed., Robert Mapplethorpe (Frankfurter Kunstverein, 1981), p. 36

Sandy Nairne, Robert Mapplethorpe: 1970-1983 (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1983), p. 46

Robert Mapplethorpe, Black Book (New York, 1986), pl. 55

Richard Marshall, Robert Mapplethorpe (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1988), p. 95

Robert Mapplethorpe and Janet Kardon, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Arts, University of Pennsylvania, 1988), pl. 69

Els Barents, Robert Mapplethorpe: Ten By Ten (Munich, 1988), no. 55

Mark Holborn and Dmitri Levas, eds., Mapplethorpe (New York, 1992), pl. 117, p. 335

Germano Celant, Mapplethorpe (London: Hayward Gallery, 1992), p. 145

Arthur C. Danto, Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (Berkeley, 1996), p. 110

Robert Mapplethorpe, Stern Spezial Fotografie, portfolio no. 33 (Dusseldorf, 2003), p. 19

Sandra Phillips, ed., Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pl. 57

Molesworth, Helen, This Will Have Been: Art, Love, & Politics in the 1980s (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2012), p. 370 [caption incorrectly reads "Man in Suit, 1980"].

Germano Celant, Robert Mapplethorpe: la ninfa fotografia (Milan, 2014), pl. 67, p. 89

Mapplethorpe + Munch (Oslo: Munch Museum), 2016, p. 159

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2016), pl. 72, p. 101

Robert Mapplethorpe, Mapplethorpe (London, 2020), p. 271

Derek Conrad Murray, Mapplethorpe and the Flower: Radical Sexuality and the Limits of Control (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020), fig. 3, p. 50

Paul Martineau and Ryan Linkof, Queer Lens: A History of Photography (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2025), no. 133, p. 203