Recalled as the lover and patron of Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Wagstaff here takes centre stage as a leading American intellectual and cultural visionary. Philip Gefter traces Wagstaff's evolution from society "bachelor" of the 1940s to his emergence as rebellious curator. In 1972, his meeting with twenty-five-year-old Mapplethorpe, would lead to his legacy as world-class photography collector and cultural arbiter.
Positioning Wagstaff's personal life against the rise of photography as a major art form and the simultaneous formation of the gay rights movement, 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.
| ISBN: | 9781631490958 |
| Publication date: | 5th January 2016 |
| Author: | Philip Gefter |
| Publisher: | Liveright Publishing Corporation an imprint of Liveright |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 480 pages |
| Genres: |
Biography: arts and entertainment |