Throughout his career, he made conceptual work relating to his sexual identity and responding to the difficulties of living with HIV/AIDS. The foundation continues to donate funds for medical research to fight against AIDS and HIV.Ĭuban artist Felix Gonzales-Torres was a gay artist working in America. He left behind an important legacy and founded the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Mapplethorpe died on 9th March 1989 at the age of 42. to remove the artist's work from public view. In 1989, Mapplethorpe's work was censored by Helms, who, alongside 100 Congressmen, forced the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. Unabashedly offering new representations of the male body and queerness – sometimes shocking his contemporaries by conflating religious insignia with explicitly sexualised nude photography – Mapplethorpe embodies the LGBTQ+ and BDSM subcultures of his era.Īndy Warhol (1928–1987) National Galleries of ScotlandĪfter the outbreak of AIDS in the late 1970s and early 1980s, figures such as Republican senator Jesse Helms regarded the virus as a 'punishment' for homosexuality, a view shared by many at that time.
Like Warhol, Mapplethorpe's artistic status grew into one of legend as he came to prominence against the backdrop of New York's sexual liberation and the freewheeling creativity flourishing in places like the Chelsea Hotel between the 1960s and 1980s. In 1983, Andy Warhol created this silkscreen painting of Robert Mapplethorpe, a pioneering photographer known for his homoerotic visions of the male nude. A pink triangle against a black backdrop with the words 'Silence = Death'Ĭentred upon the diverging experiences of masculinity across sexuality, race and religion, Barbican's exhibition ' Masculinities: Liberation through Photography' (20th February – 17th May 2020) shines a light on a generation of gay artists who lost their lives during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.Īlthough we should not wholly define these artists by their sexual orientation or death, here are some of the artists affected by AIDS who widened the possibilities for representing LGBTQ+ identities and perspectives in art.