{"product_id":"wagstaff-before-and-after-mapplethorpe-a-biography-9780871404374","title":"Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe: A Biography","description":"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. \u003cp\u003eBorn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAccordingly, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePositioning 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Liveright Publishing Corporation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/03\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780871404374\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 480\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.94lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.77h x 6.54w x 1.47d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAward:\u003c\/b\u003e Lambda Literary Awards - Finalist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAward:\u003c\/b\u003e Triangle Awards - Finalist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal Prepub Alert\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/15\/2014 pg. 62\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/11\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/15\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Yorker (The)\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/01\/2014 pg. 80\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/07\/2014 pg. 17\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/14\/2014 pg. 42\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Philip Gefter","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44683495964853,"sku":"9780871404374","price":29.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_35d71bbf-bd45-4061-8d71-988f0c269109.jpg?v=1727796099","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/wagstaff-before-and-after-mapplethorpe-a-biography-9780871404374","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}