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Untitled (Phillip on a Pedestal)

Artist/Maker (American, 1946–1989)
Date1980
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 13 13/16 × 13 13/16 in. (35.1 × 35.1 cm)
Sheet: 19 7/8 × 15 7/8 in. (50.5 × 40.3 cm)
Credit LineFriends of Art Endowment Fund
Edition7/15
Object number1981.32
Status
On view
Copyright© The Robert Mapplethorpe FoundationMore Information
Robert Mapplethorpe produced Untitled (Phillip on a Pedestal, a studio portrait of Phillip Prioleau, as part of a series of images of Black men eventually compiled in the 1986 volume Black Book. An accomplished photographer known for his classical nudes, images of gay S&M, and sensual depictions of celebrities and flowers, Mapplethorpe openly fetishized the black male body. Some of the most famous photographs from Black Book are explicitly sexual; these images have been charged with equating race and sex and thereby invoking primitivizing stereotypes. Priolueau, by comparison, is shown perched on a pedestal as if he were a work of sculpture, his body condensed and hidden from view. Yet other photographs from the series have a romantic soft focus and a much more sensual—less explicitly sexual or objectifying—gaze.
Exhibition History
New Acquisitions, 1981-1983
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 1, 1983 - October 9, 1983 )
Photography in the Collection: A Sesquicentennial Salute
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (December 13, 1988 - February 12, 1989 )
The Body and Other 20th-Century Metaphors
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (November 15, 1991 - January 12, 1992 )
The Male Nude: From Pollaiuolo to Mapplethorpe
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (May 3, 1994 - June 26, 1994 )
Subjects of Desire: Issues in Contemporary Photography
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 7, 1997 - March 9, 1997 )
Framed and Shot: Photographs from the Allen Memorial Art Museum
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (March 1, 2000 - May 30, 2000 )
Queering the Museum
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (April 15, 2004 - June 6, 2004 )
Facing America: Portraits of the People and the Land
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 18, 2006 - December 17, 2006 )
Hybrid Images: The Photography of Sculpture, 1860 to 1990
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (September 6, 2012 - December 23, 2012 )
The Body: Looking In and Looking Out
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (August 12, 2015 - December 23, 2015 )
Radically Ordinary: Scenes from Black Life in America Since 1968
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 11, 2018 - December 23, 2018 )
The Body, The Host: HIV / AIDS and Christianity
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 20, 2024 - December 15, 2024 )
Collections
  • Modern & Contemporary
  • On View