Robert Mapplethorpe Botanical Porcelain Plate, "Calla Lily, 1984"

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Robert Mapplethorpe Botanical Plate,
Calla Lily, 1984"
Made By Swid Powell

The Robert Mapplethorpe porcelain plate depicts in black and … Read more Robert Mapplethorpe Botanical Plate,
Calla Lily, 1984"
Made By Swid Powell

The Robert Mapplethorpe porcelain plate depicts in black and white a Calla Lily made in 1984. It is lithographically printed porcelain based on Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs and made by Swid Powell.

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe 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. He was concerned with Classical aspects of beauty, whether in his nudes, floral still life pictures, or self-portraits—light, shadow, composition, and form were central to all his work.

Dimensions: 12 inches diameter x 1 inch height

Reference: Annette Tapert, Swid Powell: Objects by Architects, New York, 1990, pp. 142-43

See: Examples from this series can be found in the MFAH, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
(https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/117646/orchid?ctx=7be63630e2f5011b245a220e443b79da26156d15&idx=1)

Also see Yale University Art Gallery for an examples, (https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/122594)


Robert Mapplethorpe was born on November 4, 1946, in Floral Park, New York. He left home in 1962 and enrolled at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 1963, where he studied painting and sculpture and received his BFA in 1970. During this time, he met artist, poet, and musician Patti Smith. She encouraged his work and posed for numerous portraits when they lived together in Brooklyn and in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, a gathering place for artists, writers, and musicians in the early 1970s. He became a controversial photographer known for his large-scale, stylized black and white images. Whether of celebrities, nudes, self-portraits, BDSM scenes, or flowers, he treated all his subjects in the same sensitive but blunt manner.

Reference: The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Accession number 1990.34.4 for a "Calla Lily", dated 1984.

(Ref: NY10236-iiux) See less