Name: ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (1946–1989)
Brand: Alice Neel, 1984
Price: 5500.00 USD
Availability: SoldOut

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (1946–1989)
Alice Neel, 1984
gelatin silver print, flush-mounted on board
signed and titled in ink in photographer's copyright credit stamp, titled, dated and numbered '3/10' in ink (flush mount, verso); credited, titled and dated on affixed gallery label (frame backing board)
image: 19 x 15¹⁄₄ in. (48.2 x 38.7 cm.)
sheet/flush mount: 19³⁄₄ x 15³⁄₄ in. (50.1 x 40 cm.)
This work is number three from an edition of ten.

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco;
acquired from the above by the present owner, 1988.

Richard Mashall et al., Robert Mapplethorpe, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1988, p. 157.
Mark Holborn (ed.), Mapplethorpe, Random House, New York, 1992, p. 204.
W.M. Hunt, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, Aperture, New York, 2011, p. 295.

Arles, Recontres de la Photographie; Lausanne, Musée de l'Élysée, Sans Regard or No Eyes: Photographs from W.M. Hunt / Collection Dancing Bear, 2005-2006.
Ocala, Appelton Museum of Fine Arts, The Unseen Eye: Photography from the Collection of W.M. Hunt, November 7, 2010–January 2, 2011.
Rochester, George Eastman House, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection, October 1, 2011–February 19, 2012.
Portland, Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, The Unseen Eye, September 6–30, 2012.

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Lot Essay

'The Mapplethorpe has in it something that I have never found in another work. The sitter, the painter Alice Neel, seems to be slipping out of the bottom of the frame. The eyes are peacefully closed, the mouth hangs open loosely. It is as if she is exhaling and escaping the weight of her being. Indeed, Neel died shortly after the session with Mapplethorpe. I don’t believe that there is direct evidence, or even a foreshadowing, of this turn of events in this mysterious and dreadful slow leak, but it is a portrait of our mortality.' – W.M. Hunt