Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Mapplethorpe

Mapplethorpe doesn’t apologize here; he reframes the indictment as a job requirement. Calling himself “selfish” is a deliberate provocation, the kind that forces you to ask what we actually mean when we demand artists be “good people.” In his mouth, selfishness isn’t petty stinginess. It’s the hardened focus that lets someone pursue an image past comfort, politeness, and consensus.

The second clause is the real maneuver: “that’s an attribute that all artists possess.” It’s half confession, half alibi, and it works because it’s both plausible and infuriating. Plausible because making serious work often requires prioritizing vision over relationships, money, even safety. Infuriating because it tries to universalize a personal flaw into a professional badge. Mapplethorpe knew the power of that friction. His photographs live in it: intimacy staged like a ritual, beauty sharpened into something confrontational, bodies treated as form and as risk.

Context matters. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Mapplethorpe was manufacturing a new kind of American classicism out of queer desire, BDSM culture, and high-gloss studio control. The culture wars that later engulfed his work framed him as either decadent villain or martyr of free expression. This line anticipates both readings and refuses to pick one. He’s telling you: if you want art that’s actually dangerous to norms, you may be buying into someone’s ego, appetites, and tunnel vision. The subtext is transactional and chilly: the price of the gaze is the artist’s refusal to look away, even when you want him to.