Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe: A Biography

by Philip Gefter

Overview

Winner of the Arts Club of Washington Marfield Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection

This "admiring and absorbing biography" (Deborah Solomon, The New York Times Book Review) charts Sam Wagstaff's incalculable influence on contemporary art, photography, and gay identity.

A legendary curator, collector, and patron of the arts, Sam Wagstaff was a "figure who stood at the intersection of gay life and the art world and brought glamour and daring to both" (Andrew Solomon). Now, in Philip Gefter's groundbreaking biography, he emerges as a cultural visionary. Gefter documents the influence of the man who—although known today primarily as the mentor and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe—"almost invented the idea of photography as art" (Edmund White). Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe braids together Wagstaff's personal transformation from closeted society bachelor to a rebellious curator with a broader portrait of the tumultuous social, cultural, and sexual upheavals of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, creating a definitive portrait of a man and his era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631490958
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	11/02/2015
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Philip Gefter was on staff at The New York Times for over fifteen years, where he wrote regularly about photography. His essays are collected in the book Photography After Frank (2009). He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prologue xv

Part 1 Provenance

1 Dragged Mass Displacement 3

2 The Crossing 24

3 Be Here Now 49

4 Jardin Des Nabi 80

Part 2 Apollo and Dionysus In Manhattan

5 Kama Sutra, Baby 105

6 From Minimalism to Mapplethorpe 120

7 Transformation 138

8 Circles of Influence 147

9 Luxe, Calme, Et Volupte 169

Part 3 The Fine Art of Longing

10 The Inamorato 197

11 Let the Games Begin 219

12 Applause 248

13 Back to Pompeii 266

14 The Arriviste 287

Part 4 Nocturne

15 The Pictures Generation 311

16 Whispers of the Muse 327

17 The Glimmer and the Gloom 339

18 Gardenias, Fragrant, Floating 363

Afterword 384

Notes 389

Acknowledgments 421

Index 425

Editorial Reviews

"This thorough, entertaining biography portrays a blue blood who charmed East Coast society but also loved to scandalize…Gefter captures the brilliance of that world and its decline in the face of AIDS."

The New Yorker

…an admiring and absorbing biography…[Gefter's] book reminds you that the long campaign to validate photography as high art was hardly over by 1973, when Wagstaff entered the fray.

The New York Times Book Review - Deborah Solomon

★ 08/11/2014
Until fairly recently, Sam Wagstaff was best remembered as the patron and lover of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Gefter’s (Photography After Frank) rich biography shows this collector and curator not only as a trendsetter in the art world, but a “tastemaker of historic consequences” who shaped art history during the second half of the 20th century. Handsome, wealthy, and Yale educated, Wagstaff abandoned his career in advertising to study art history under Renaissance scholar Richard Offner at NYU. In 1964, he curated the first exhibition of minimalist art, called Black, White, and Gray, at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford, Conn.; however he was “never officially recognized as the first art-world professional to identify the movement.” His greatest contribution, according to the author, was as an independent advocate for and connoisseur of photography, as evident by Wagstaff’s legendary photo collection, now on display at Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum. Gefter, a former staffer at the New York Times, writes gracefully and with a sure command of his subject. Wagstaff witnessed dramatic cultural shifts in the art world and in the gay community, all of which are vividly tracked and smartly explained. Also commendable is the way Gefter traces the arc of the Wagstaff-Mapplethorpe relationship without letting Mapplethorpe steal the show—as the photographer is wont to do. Photos. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"This thorough, entertaining biography portrays a blue blood who charmed East Coast society but also loved to scandalize… Gefter captures the brilliance of that world and its decline in the face of AIDS."

New Yorker

"An admiring and absorbing biography… As cultural history, Wagstaff’s life story parallels the ascent of the gay rights movement in New York. Gefter tracks the social changes that allowed Wagstaff to escape the charades and debasements of living as a closeted homosexual in the intolerant past."

Deborah Solomon

"Gefter delivers the most persuasive account yet of how Wagstaff encouraged a small coterie of likeminded collectors… who raised vintage photographs from quaint curiosities to a ‘serious’ artistic medium. Mapplethorpe was the inadvertent catalyst of this historic shift."

The New York Review of Books - Martin Filler

2014-07-30
The life of an influential champion of photography as an art form.Educated at Yale and the NYU Institute of Fine Arts, Sam Wagstaff (1922-1987) was a prominent art collector and promoter from the 1960s, when he was hired as curator of painting, prints and drawings at the Wadsworth Atheneum, until his death from complications due to AIDS. Coming of age in the 1950s, he became an expert, former New York Times staff writer Gefter (Photography After Frank, 2009) writes, "at leading the double life of a homosexual, relying on his impeccable etiquette to shield his activities in the closet." In his circles of artists, writers, dancers and musicians, the closet included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allen Ginsberg and John Cage. Although these gay men socialized easily among themselves, some, like Wagstaff, lived behind a "veil of fear about being discovered." Not until 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a pathology, did many gay men begin to feel some freedom. By that time, Wagstaff had become the highly visible lover, and generous patron, of the young Robert Mapplethorpe. Wagstaff was fascinated both by Mapplethorpe's art and his sexual allure. Mapplethorpe had been involved with wealthy men before, but no one as charming, handsome and appealing as Wagstaff. Besides, the writer Edmund White noted, "he was also very rich, and…very powerful in the art world." Although others saw Mapplethorpe as a bit of a hustler, Wagstaff was smitten, and he bought him a Hasselblad camera and a loft. The relationship pushed Wagstaff into the world of photography, where he stood out as a collector and opinion maker. In 1978, the eminent Corcoran Gallery mounted a photography show drawn from his collection; by the 1980s, he had become internationally famous. Gefter draws on interviews and considerable research to create a richly detailed portrait of a connoisseur who defied convention in the art world and in his own life.

Kirkus Reviews