Chloë Sevigny on the Life and Style of Robert Mapplethorpe

For Chloë Sevigny, Robert Mapplethorpe is not only the trailblazing artist who made taboo subjects beautiful in the 80s with his controversial images of leather boys, bondage and naked flesh, or the cultural figurehead who, alongside his soul mate and muse Patti Smith, was at the epicentre of New York’s downtown scene in the 70s, he is also a painful reminder of the tragedy of HIV/Aids – Mapplethorpe died in 1989, aged just 42. “Reading the last passage of Patti Smith’s book…