Live Auction 2304Photographs
ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (1946-1989)
Lot 406

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (1946-1989)

Calla Lily, 1988

Closed15 April 2010

Price Realised

USD 266,500

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ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (1946-1989)
Calla Lily, 1988
platinum print
signed by Michael Ward Stout, Executor, date, number '5/5' and Estate copyright authentication in pencil (on the verso)
18 7/8 x 19 1/8in. (48.4 x 49cm.)

The most powerful photos are those in which Mapplethorpe focuses on a single flower...its sparseness suddenly turns monumental...Even more highly charged are the calla lilies with their teasing phallic pistils, perhaps derived from O'Keeffe, but to which he imparts a dangerous eroticism of his own. (John Ashbery, Robert Mapplethorpe: Pistils, p.7)