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Product Identifiers

PublisherLiveright Publishing Corporation

ISBN-100871404370

ISBN-139780871404374

eBay Product ID (ePID)201680837

Product Key Features

Book TitleWagstaff: before and after Mapplethorpe : a Biography

Number of Pages480 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2014

TopicArt, Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / General, Artists, Architects, Photographers

IllustratorYes

GenreArt, Biography & Autobiography, Antiques & Collectibles

AuthorPhilip Gefter

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.1 in

Item Weight30 oz

Item Length1 in

Item Width0.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2014-029920

ReviewsGefter delivers the most persuasive account yet of how Wagstaff encouraged a small coterie of likeminded collectors... who raised vintage photographs from quaint curiosities to a 'serious' artistic medium. Mapplethorpe was the inadvertent catalyst of this historic shift., This thorough, entertaining biography portrays a blue blood who charmed East Coast society but also loved to scandalize... Gefter captures the brilliance of that world and its decline in the face of AIDS., An admiring and absorbing biography... As cultural history, Wagstaff's life story parallels the ascent of the gay rights movement in New York. Gefter tracks the social changes that allowed Wagstaff to escape the charades and debasements of living as a closeted homosexual in the intolerant past., Sam Wagstaff was a leonine figure who stood at the intersection of gay life and the art world and brought glamor and daring to both. Philip Gefter's eloquent biography captures the challenges and the thrills of this dramatic life. It is a smart, sexy biography of a brilliant, charismatic man; it is also a portrait of a time when our ideas of art and our attitudes toward sexuality were in extraordinary flux., I just couldn't stop reading this book!... Sam Wagstaff was the ultimate collector--of talent, of beauty, of silver, of boys. He had everything: looks, taste, money. He almost invented the idea of photography as art, valuable art worth collecting. This is a book not only about the New York art scene of the 70s but also about an entire generation., I just couldn't stop reading this book! ...Sam Wagstaff was the ultimate collector--of talent, of beauty, of silver, of boys. He had everything:looks, taste, money. He almost invented the idea of photography as art, valuable art worth collecting. This is a book not only about the New York art scene of the 70s but also about an entire generation., I just couldn't stop reading this book!...Sam Wagstaff was the ultimate collector--of talent, of beauty, of silver, of boys. He had everything: looks, taste, money. He almost invented the idea of photography as art, valuable art worth collecting. This is a book not only about the New York art scene of the 70s but also about an entire generation.

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal709.2 B

SynopsisA legendary curator, collector, and patron of the arts, Sam Wagstaff was a "figure who stood at the intersection of gay life and the art world and brought glamour and daring to both" (Andrew Solomon). Now, in Philip Gefter's groundbreaking biography, he emerges as a cultural visionary. Gefter documents the influence of the man who-although known today primarily as the mentor and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe-"almost invented the idea of photography as art" (Edmund White). Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe braids together Wagstaff's personal transformation from closeted society bachelor to a rebellious curator with a broader portrait of the tumultuous social, cultural, and sexual upheavals of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, creating a definitive portrait of a man and his era., Biography on a grand cultural level,here is the long-awaited story of SamWagstaff and his indelible influenceon the world of late-twentieth-centuryart., Sam Wagstaff, the legendary curator, collector, and patron of the arts, emerges as a cultural visionary in this groundbreaking biography. Even today remembered primarily as the mentor and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe, the once infamous photographer, Wagstaff, in fact, had an incalculable--and largely overlooked--influence on the world of contemporary art and photography, and on the evolution of gay identity in the latter part of the twentieth century. Born in New York City in 1921 into a notable family, Wagstaff followed an arc that was typical of a young man of his class. He attended both Hotchkiss and Yale, served in the navy, and would follow in step with his Ivy League classmates to the "gentleman's profession," as an ad executive on Madison Avenue. With his unmistakably good looks, he projected an aura of glamour and was cited by newspapers as one of the most eligible bachelors of the late 1940s. Such accounts proved deceiving, for Wagstaff was forced to live in the closet, his homosexuality only revealed to a small circle of friends. Increasingly uncomfortable with his career and this double life, he abandoned advertising, turned to the formal study of art history, and embarked on a radical personal transformation that was in perfect harmony with the tumultuous social, cultural, and sexual upheavals of the 1960s. Accordingly, Wagstaff became a curator, in 1961, at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum, where he mounted both "Black, White, and Gray"--the first museum show of minimal art--and the sculptor Tony Smith's first museum show, while lending his early support to artists Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson, and Richard Tuttle, among many others. Later, as a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, he brought the avant-garde to a regional museum, offending its more staid trustees in the process. After returning to New York City in 1972, the fifty-year-old Wagstaff met the twenty-five-year-old Queens-born Robert Mapplethorpe, then living with Patti Smith. What at first appeared to be a sexual dalliance became their now historic lifelong romance, in which Mapplethorpe would foster Wagstaff's own burgeoning interest in contemporary photography and Wagstaff would help secure Mapplethorpe's reputation in the art world. In spite of their profound class differences, the artistic union between the philanthropically inclined Wagstaff and the prodigiously talented Mapplethorpe would rival that of Stieglitz and O'Keefe, or Rivera and Kahlo, in their ability to help reshape contemporary art history. Positioning Wagstaff's personal life against the rise of photography as a major art form and the simultaneous formation of the gay rights movement, Philip Gefter's absorbing biography provides a searing portrait of New York just before and during the age of AIDS. The result is a definitive and memorable portrait of a man and an era.

LC Classification NumberN406.W34G44 2014