Robert Mapplethorpe with Patti Smith (1946-1989 & b. 1946)

Unique silver print surrounded by extensive annotations in ink, coloured pencil and pencil. Signed at lower right 'Patti Smith' over 'Robert Mapplethorpe'. Signed and dated 'Robert Mapplethorpe May 78'. Inscribed throughout. In the original frame bearing a Robert Miller Gallery label on the reverse.

Baldwin Fong, New York, NY.
The Estate of Richard York, New York, NY.

Mapplethorpe, Robert, Altars, with an essay by Edmund White, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995, p. 86.

Not examined out of frame. Examination through the glass reveals a print in excellent condition. Some of the pencil markings were smeared already when the image was reporduced for publication. The perspex glazing is lightly scratched.
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This print is reproduced complete with the existing frame in Altars, at p. 86. The text is indecipherable in parts, but is written partly in a variant of boustrophedon and partly in a spiral arrangement around the image. It contains several repeated phrases, of which one is 'They take offense at this nude' and another 'what could I experience that could compare to this?'.  In the lower left is legible the expression 'It was the transformation.'