(Image via HBO)

Coming this weekend to NYC is the Robert Mapplethorpe pop-up exhibit I have previously blogged about.

The show, billed as featuring “larger-than-life projections, a stunning array of famous and more personal works, and a rare, revealing commentary from Robert Mapplethorpe himself,” opens Friday, March 18 (6 p.m.—11 p.m.) and also runs Saturday, March 19, (6 p.m.—10 p.m.) in Flatiron Plaza North (23rd St. & Broadway).

How the pop-up looked in Miami (Image by Michael Raveney)

The exhibition opens ahead of the premiere of Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, which debuts Monday, April 4, at 9 p.m. on HBO.

The exhibition will also be seen in San Francisco (March 25 & 26) and will live at PROXY in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of that city.

More on the film, from a press release:

Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures is a revealing look at one of the most important artists of the 20th century, whose name remains a byword for something illicit, dangerous and dark. “Look at the pictures,” said Senator Jessie Helms, denouncing the controversial art of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photographs pushed boundaries with frank depictions of nudity, sexuality and fetishism, igniting a culture war that rages to this day. More than 25 years later, the documentary does just that, taking an unflinching, unprecedented look at his most provactive work. From acclaimed filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Robert Barbato (Inside Deep Throat; HBO’s Wishful Drinking and The Eyes of Tammy Faye), and produced by Katharina Otto-Bernstein (Absolute Wilson), Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures is the first feature-length documentary about the artist since his death and and the most comprehensive film on Mapplethorpe ever. As the J. Paul Getty Museum and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art prepare landmark Mapplethorpe retrospectives (both opening in March), the film goes inside the preparations for the exhibitions as a jumping-off point to tell the complete story of his life and work for the first time. The film follows Robert Mapplethorpe’s early beginnings as a young artist in New York City through his meteoric rise in the art world to his untimely death. In 1963, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he studied drawing, painting and sculpture, and soon met his girlfriend, Pattie Smith, one in a string of profoundly influential lovers. By the late 1960s and early 1970s he was taking Polaroid photographs of friends and acquaintances, and was determined to make it, which meant being recognized as an artist and becoming famous. Almost all of the people from key relationships in his life are present in the film, including Sam Wagstaff, David Croland, Lisa Lyon, Marcus Leatherdale and Jack Walls. The documentary also features almost 50 original interviews with family, friends, co-workers and colleagues, including Mary Boone, Carolina Herrera, Brooke Shields, Helen and Brice Marden, Fran Lebowitz, Bob Colacello and Debbie Harry.

See you there!