Celebrating Extremes
Olivia Cole, The Spectator
October 2009
Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1985 self-portrait with little devil’s horns is one of the most instantly recognisable self-portraits in modern photography. Short-haired and cherubically handsome, his face turns back to the camera, an inappropriately appealing daemon, complete with a ‘devil-be-damned’ look in his eye. It’s half full of wit, half haunted by an almost childlike vulnerability. […]