“I learned to see through you,” she wrote him in a late letter,
“and never compose a line or draw a curve that does not
come from the knowledge I derived in our precious time together.”


Patti Smith's letter
to Robert Mapplethorpe










"the statuary" by Robert
Mapplethorpe.


"Robert Mapplethorpe’s sadomasochistic photographs stirred controversy in the late 1980s. But by then he had mostly abandoned such themes, and also began to deeply explore a fascination with ancient Greek statuary. In addition to photographs of actual statues, this exhibition presents the polished—and surprisingly demure—nudes inspired by them."

"Oh how time flies With crystal clear eyes
And cold as coal When you're ending with diamond eyes"
- crossbones style.

"During the 1980s Mapplethorpe's sense of rapture in the classical ideal found full expression through photographing live, lithe bodies of unusually powerful dancers and bodybuilders — notably those who, like him, broke stereotypes.

It was Mapplethorpe's transgression of high culture as much as the breathtaking courage of his oeuvre that brought him to the epicenter of art and censorship issues before he died of AIDS in 1988."



















"the statuary" by Robert
Mapplethorpe.





---------------------------------

P o r t r a i t o f a M a n

Portrait of a Man
Pt. 15


"David times 19"
aka
House of David.

Formerly Nat King's Cole's home in Hancock Park, Los Angeles.
3rd St. and Muirfield Rd.

The house is now owned by Norbert Youngwood.

"Apparently the owner, Norbert Youngwood,
after neighbors expressed displeasure over his erecting a single statue of David, retaliated by adding 18 brothers of various sizes."

"It is one of most recognizable sculptures in the world, a monument to the perfect male form, a paramount symbol of Renaissance art.

Michelangelo's "David." Norwood Young's got 17 of them.
They line his mansion's semicircular driveway--two sets of eight 3-foot-high replicas on column pedestals, flanking each side of a diminutive "Venus de Milo."

A lone "David" sits atop Young's roof, along with six plaster models of Greco Roman-style busts. The statues are irregular, each one slightly different from the other.

Young, who set up the statues a year ago, thinks he's improved the neighborhood. The neighborhood--stately, affluent Hancock Park--strongly disagrees..."

taken from 1997 LA times article.











-- -- -- -- white house -- -- -- --