In Patti Smith’s National Book Award-winning memoir “Just Kids” (2010), the author shared her loving admiration of Robert Mapplethorpe, introducing him as a young man in search of himself and fueled by desire, far from prior conceptions of him as a canny careerist, censorship target, or AIDS activist. Smith placed Mapplethorpe in relationship to the avant-garde orbit of the late 60s and early 70s and contextualized his practice in a different way than art historians had up to this point. “Robert Mapplethorpe: A Perfect Medium” is on view at LACMA and @gettymuseum through July 31, 2016.
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