Dianne Benson, Charlie Porter, Jack Walls on Robert Mapplethorpe | In Conversation | Xavier Hufkens

On the occasion of the online exhibition 'Robert Mapplethorpe: Fashion, Clothes, People, Pictures' [20 July—10 September 2023], curator Charlie Porter discusses Mapplethorpe’s relationship with fashion alongside the artist’s collaborators, Dianne Benson and Jack Walls.

Dianne Benson was a maverick 1980s retailer, who has contributed to establishing New York City’s Soho neighborhood as a prime fashion destination. She commissioned Mapplethorpe on multiple occasions to photograph selected garments sold in her store, such as this Seagull coat designed by JC de Castelbajac.

Charlie Porter is a writer, fashion critic and curator, whose book What Artists Wear is published by Penguin. He has written for The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, GQ, Luncheon, i-D and Fantastic Man. Porter was a juror for the Turner Prize in 2019, the same year he curated the group show Palimpsest at Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland. His next exhibition will be Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion at Charleston Lewes, UK, opening September 2023. Coinciding will be his next book for Penguin, Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion.

Jack Walls is a Chicago-born artist who has been a vital part of the New York art world for over 30 years. He is a writer, poet, painter, and performer. In his early years in New York, he met and lived as a couple with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. This relationship lasted until Mapplethorpe’s untimely death in 1989.

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 in Floral Park, Queens, USA and died in 1989 in Boston. His vast, provocative, and powerful body of work has established him as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Today his work can be found in the collections of major museums around the world. His legacy lives on through the work of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation which he established in 1988.

More on the artist:
https://www.xavierhufkens.com/artists...