ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (1946–1989)

'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