Getty Museum continues its inspiring digital series that you can access while you’re right here in New Zealand. Take a look at their latest offerings.
How an eccentric aristocrat and a “shy pornographer” took the art world by storm
As power couples go, the combined cultural resonance of artist Robert Mapplethorpe and collector, curator, and patron Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr. is hard to overstate. Meeting in 1972, Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff gave artistic expression to a newly visible queer culture in America through an underappreciated medium: photography.
Related story: defining society with photographer Gisèle Freund
How did it come about that Robert Mapplethorpe photographed the celebrated French photographer Gisèle Freund at her Paris apartment in 1980, since Freund did not like to be photographed, and Mapplethorpe preferred to make portraits in his Manhattan studio? Curator Paul Martineau fills us in.
Learn the story behind the portrait
Unpacking the reputation of a visionary British artist
Painter, poet, draftsman, and printmaker William Blake (b. London, 1757–1827) had a reputation as an eccentric who experienced visions and was not always easy to understand or get along with. In this podcast episode, British art historian Martin Myrone discusses Blake’s work and reputation as a mystic and dreamer during and after his lifetime. Myrone wrote the introduction to Lives of William Blake from Getty Publications.