Twenty-five years after Mapplethorpe’s death, an overview on his nudes, portraits, self-portraits, floral still lifes, and other works compiled by the art critic Germano Celant. Robert Mapplethorpe’s wide, provocative, and powerful body of work has established him as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Since 1977, Germano Celant has studied the life and work of Robert Mapplethorpe, participating in interviews and writing essays for several publications and exhibitions. For the first time, this volume gathers the complete anthology of Celant’s writings on the artist: from the 1983 exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, with the collaboration of the artist himself, to the posthumous writings published in the catalogs prepared on the occasion of the exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, since 1990.This publication, through over 140 images and texts that appear both personal and scientific, aims to pay tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe’s contribution to the history of photography.

Germano Celant, a renowned art historian, critic, and theoretician, has served as the curator of hundreds of exhibitions worldwide and published more than one hundred books and catalogs.