The Archive: Issue 44 Spring 2013

W I N T E R 2 0 1 2

T HE ARCHI V E 44 The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

About the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is the first and only dedicated LGBTQ art museum in the world with a mission to exhibit and preserve LGBTQ art, and foster the artists who create it. Accredited by the New York State Board of Regents, the Museum has a permanent collection of over 12,000 objects, spanning more than three centuries of queer art. We host 6-8 major exhibitions annually, artist talks, film screenings, panel discussions, readings and other events. In addition, we publish THE ARCHIVE - a quarterly art newsletter and maintain a substantial research library. The Museum is the premier resource for anyone interested in the rich legacy of the LGBTQ community and its influence on and confrontation with the mainstream art world. There is no other organization in the world like it.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum is operated by the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1987 by Charles W. Leslie and Fritz Lohman who have supported LGBTQ artists for over 30 years. The LeslieLohman Museum embraces the rich creative history of the LGBTQ art community by informing, inspiring, entertaining and challenging all who enter its doors.

Founders

CONTENTS THE ARCHIVE NUMBER 44 WINTER 2012

5

DIARIES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PHOTOGRAPHY FROM ITALY

7

ABOUT ART & HOMOSEXUALITY: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

11

HUNTER O HANIAN JOINS AS MUSEUM DIRECTOR

12

GALLERIES OF INTEREST

AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER WEIERMAIR

BY EUGENIO VIOLA

13 THE ART OF MAN

AN INTERVIEW WITH E. GIBBONS BY DAVID JARRETT

14

WHAT S HAPPENING WITH KYMARA LONERGAN?

BY JERRY KAJPUST

16 MAKING HISTORY, MAKING ART:

Charles W. Leslie J. Frederic Lohman (1922‒2009)

THE WORK OF JONATHAN NED KATZ

BY JONATHAN DAVID KATZ

Board of Directors

Jonathan David Katz, President Steven J. Goldstein, Vice-President Daniel R. Hanratty, Treasurer John Caldwell Kymara Lonergan Robert W. Richards James M. Saslow Peter Weiermair Jerry Kajpust, Secretary Ex-Officio

18 B-OUT, ANDREW EDLIN GALLERY

BY TOM SAETTEL

20 RARE & RAW

BY KEN MOFFATT

23 #1 must have

WOOSTER STREET WINDOW GALLERY

Co-Founder & Director Emeritus Charles W. Leslie

Staff

Hunter O Hanian Museum Director

Julia Haas Director of Programming

Wayne Snellen Director of Collections

Todd Fruth Administrative Assistant

Rob Hugh Rosen Director of Operations

Victor Trivero Lighting Director

Jerry Kajpust Director of External Affairs

Cryder Bankes Volunteer Librarian

The Archive

The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Number 44 Editor: Tom Saettel Production and Design: Joseph Cavalieri

©2012 The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. No part of this journal may be reproduced in

any form without the written permission of The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Copyrights for all art reproduced in this publication belong to the artists unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

The Archive is available for free in the museum, and is mailed free of charge to LL Museum members.

Museum

26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013-2227 (212) 431-2609 info@leslielohman.org leslielohman.org Gallery Hours: Tues. ‒ Sun. 12 ‒ 6pm, Closed Mon., all major holidays and between exhibitions FRONT COVER: Fabrizio Sacchetti, Autoritratto con boa di stuzzo (Self-Portrait with Ostrich Boa), 1996, Digital c-print on photographic paper, Ed. 3, 1 AP, 12 x 16

G.B. Jones, Tattoo Girls, 1986, Pencil on paper, 9 x 7 , Collection LLM, Founders Gift

2

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

ERRATA: The Archive Issue 43, Pg 7, Paragraph 2, to clarify subject and media this sentence should read: Transgenital Landscapes, photographs of transmale genitals created using a wide angle lens on a medium format camera and extension tubes, create surfaces of color and light with shadow permutations transforming skin folds and surfaces into valleys, hills or magical formations.

The Archive Issue 43, Pg 9, Paragraph 5, should read: Herm Torso, a medium shot of the body of a FTM body, depicts a slightly curved upper body, a tic-tac- toe game drawn onto the chest and genitalia that elicit erotic fantasies that cannot be oriented according to patterns of heterosexual nor homosexual desire.̶Note by Del LaGrace Volcano: Herm Torso is actually NOT a close up of an intersex body but a FTM body. The intention of the image is to demonstrate how the trans body is also a hermaphroditic .

John Burton Harter, Aborigine, 1994, Acrylic on board, 24 x 24 , The John Burton Harter Charitable Trust

This issue of The Archive is made possible by a generous donation from the

John Burton Harter Charitable Trust.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

3

EXHIBITION ISSUE 44

Diaries: An Anthology of Photography from Italy December 15, 2012–February 3, 2013 LLM An Interview with the curator, Peter Weiermair, by Tom Saettel

Peter Weiermiar has curated

several exhibitions for Leslie-Lohman during its twenty-five year history, which were all one-person exhibitions, and mainly photographic. The upcoming exhibition Diaries is a themed exhibition, an anthology of eleven photo-based artists currently active in Italy. As the publisher of All Saints Press, he produced Treasures of Gay Art from the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (2008). He has written extensively on contemporary artists.

Tom Saettel (TS): Peter, please tell me a little about your curatorial background? (clockwise from top left) Daniele de Vitis, † † † , 2011, Lambda print, 12 x 18 Luigi & Luca, Martirium V, 2009, Digital photograph, 12 x 18 Fiorenzo Niccoli, Untitled, 2000, Silver gelatin print, 7 x 9 Pasquale Martini, Volare a Venezia (Flying in Venice), 2012, B/W photo, 16 x 11 (opposite page left) Frabrizio Sacchetti, Untitled (El Sueño), 2006, Digital c-print on photographic paper, Ed. 3, 1 AP, 12 x 16 (opposite right) azt, Andrea e Giuseppe, 2012, Pigment print on paper, Ed. 3, 18 x 12

Peter Weiermair (PW): First, I have to start with my meeting Charles Leslie in the 70s when I published the German version of his book on the gay photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden. Leslie awakened my interest in the history of gay art and culture. I discovered that many artists, especially in the field of photography, were not exhibited and remained unknown

because of the censorship of their erotic content. From 1981 to 1999, I was the director the Institute of Contemporary Art in Frankfurt (Frankfurter Kunstverein).

As director I was able to mount of a series of exhibitions dedicated to gay photographers. Beginning with Mapplethorpe, I also showed Larry Clark, George Platt Lynes, Steven Arnold, and many others. At the same time, I was publishing monographs and writing essays on the artists. It was during this period that I showed the visual work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, and celebrated Dino Pedriali — Pasolini’s friend and photographer—and the photographer of the Roman “ragazzi di vita”.1 Later as director of the Bologna Museum of Contemporary Art (2001-2006), because of my interest in gay photographers, I was confronted by a series of people working in the underground.

Many of the gay artists, especially the photographers, were given shows at the Bologna Museum or were included in theme exhibitions such as, Desire (2001), and were published by All Saints Press. As

a stranger “un straniero” I had more liberty and was able to avoid the self-censorship of my Italian colleagues. I achieved a certain fame.

TS: In your curatorial activities, photography has always played an important role. Why are you so fascinated by this medium?

PW: I think that photography presents a vast array of the aesthetic strategies of contemporary artists—Diaries is a good example. The contrast between the genres of the work in Diaries gives us the possibility to see the diversity of the medium as fine art, free of commercial intention.

These photographers are message-oriented artists, who are not interested in gratuitous “beautiful bodies” and pornographic images. Sexuality plays an important role in the lives of younger people, but how these photographers articulate sexuality has to do with their private visions and subjective desires and not with the titillation of the public.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

5

EXHIBITION ISSUE 44

ESSAY ISSUE 44

TS: Why the title Diaries?

PW: My choice of artists includes those

with various approaches to the theme of confessions. Their work ranges from the eccentric narrative of staged selfexpressive output related to the history of performance and actionism2, by Pasquale Martini to Daniele de Vitis’s more introspective reportage of everyday activities with symbolic overtones.

Fabrizio Sacchetti’s work comprises staged events of self-representations and genderchanging play, also referencing video and performance art. Fiorenzo Niccoli depicts Pasolinesque meetings with anonymous immigrants from Eastern Europe, picked up by the photographer at the central railway station in Rome and undressed for the purpose of the photograph. One of the most prolific artists of the nude

portrait, azt, might be seen in the tradition of Peter Hujar, especially when we consider the sexuality in his images. Luigi & Luca are presented in this exhibition with a different body of work than shown at LLM in 2011, which does not document their life together, but is rather the staging of grotesque “tableaux vivants”.

TS: Italian artists have played an important role in your curatorial work at LLM. I am thinking of the retrospective of Marco Silombria and the very successful retrospective of Luigi & Luca. I understand that you have been living in Italy for quite a while, but what makes the Italian contribution to gay photography so intriguing for you?

PW: If I compare the visual productivity

of Italy with that of Austria, Germany, or even France and Spain, in Italian photography I see a very strong physical sensibility and an erotic tension. I believe this has its origin in Greco-Roman antiquity, in the painting and sculpture which glorify the male nude and have a subtext of gay love.

The beauty of desire is visible in the contribution of three artists I have not yet mentioned: Gianfranco Maria Lelj, the oldest of the artists in the anthology, is a former Vogue photographer and collaborator of Visconti and Zeffirelli. Lelj is a classic photographer with an film director’s flair, working with dramatic light and shadow, praising the beauty of man with much compassion. Compassion prevails also in the large digital “paintings” of Mataro da Vergato, who illustrates old pagan myths with seamless digital “corrections.“ Stefano Scheda’s work also reminds us of classical Greek and Roman sculpture.

TS: What do you see as the important issues and messages of this exhibition?

(clockwise from top left) Mataro da Vergato, Ganymedes, 2009, Lambda print on diasec Plexiglas, Diam. 71 Stefano Scheda, Histories 18, 2001, Lambda print on aluminum, Ed. 3, 21 x 15 Matthias Herrmann, Untitled (Self-portrait), Toscana series, 2007/2010, Digital archival c-print, Ed. 5, 8 x 10 Gianfranco Maria Lelj, In the Descent of Life I Fear Nothing, 2012, Digital c-print, 12 x 18

PW: First, let me say that I believe it should be the philosophy and intention of LLM to have an international scope and play an active role in providing a venue for gay artists around the world who are suppressed and censored by a wave of neoconservatism. Matthias Herrmann, a German artist who lives in Tuscany, fits into this context. Herrmann’s books are sold through Printed Matter (NYC), so he is probably the best known in the US of the eleven Diaries artists. His self-portraits are in my opinion strong political statements about the body as a battlefield of beauty and sexuality, and also statements about the censorship of the sexual being.

And secondly, there is the legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe, who showed us that sexual images can be art, and not residing solely in the realm of pornography. ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

About Art & Homosexuality: A Personal Account

By Eugenio Viola

In trying to locate the land of

homophile photography in Italy, the case made for artists deliberately (and exclusively) homoerotic is scant. Among those active in the late 1970s and 1980s, there are Tony Patrioli and Dino Pedriali. Pedriali

“In my opinion, we can talk about “gay art” only to the extent that it reveals how an artist treats the homosexual theme.

It does not necessarily imply that it is the artist’s own lifestyle...”

.............................................................

1 Refers to Pasolini s 1956 novel Ragazzi di vita.

Literally translated as boys of life̶idiomatically, hustlers.

2 The term actionism or Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20thcentury art, part of the trend in the 1960s toward action art (Fluxus, Happenings, Performance, Body Art, etc.). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As actionists , they were active between 1960 and 1971, but did not formalize themselves as group.

6

Giovanbattista Brambilla, Bruno e Carlo, 2002, Cibachrome mounted on aluminum, 28 x 20 , Courtesy of the artist

was introduced to photography by Man Ray himself, and his photography was admired by Pasolini. Peter Weiermair has named him “the Caravaggio of twentieth century photography” for his stage lighting and strong chiaroscuro, as well as for his ennobling of models taken from the street. A less aesthetic approach is the art of Patrioli, who moved from softcore to hardcore images as his career progressed,

Translated from Italian by Juliana Fisichella

collaborating with many homoerotic magazines, some Italian, but mostly Northern European. Patrioli cultivated the art nude, initially inspired in an unequivocal way

by Von Gloeden’s photography. Like Von Gloeden, he focusied on the enhanced Mediterranean characteristics of his subjects, a kind of male beauty completely different from the one proposed by the U.S. and Northern European photographers—so much so that in the common speech of the time a certain physical type of guy was defined as “patriolesque”.

The generation of Italian artists from the late 1980s throughout the 90s has a more globalized attitude and assimilates some queer suggestions defining the relationship, never taken for granted, between art and homosexuality. Here the spirit of an aesthetic and mental experience in which the defense of homoeroticism and the right to see it legitimated became the iceberg’s tip of a broader struggle against the superstructures of gender, race, and sexual identity beyond the conventional distinctions between art, eroticism, and pornography. These irreverent artists incited a revision/subversion of these

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

7

ESSAY ISSUE 44

concepts on the basis of a complete reappropriation of the self. I think, for example, of the work of the following artists: Francesco Impellizzeri and Mataro da Vergato, who developed self-representational strategies, the first in a self-ironic tone and the second with a series of references to the great art historical tradition; Jacopo Benassi, a metropolitan photographer who intercepts queer suggestions and presents

“The reading of the artwork comes from the interaction with the viewer, offering from time to time a different response depending on the type of the question asked.

And if art gives different answers to different audiences, are perhaps all equally valid?

communities and contemporary fetishism without aesthetic mediation; Giovanbattista Brambilla, an intriguing photographer who has collaborated since the 90s with several Italian homoerotic magazines; New York based Francesca Galliani, known for the intensity of her female and male subjects; Andrea La Rocca, who draws a languid and romantic universe of delicate tones; the performance work of Nicola Ruben Montini, where homosexuality is often treated in a political and controversial tone; and the eclectic style of Luigi & Luca, which draws from the great tradition of homoerotic photography and art.

However, the most iconic “homo” figure in Italy is Francesco Vezzoli, whose celebrated modus operandi is nourished by cinema and art history. Vezzoli reshuffles the meaning of pop icons and reinterprets unarmed contemporary media stars.

His unscrupulous use of image quotations drafts a tale filled with beauty and decadence, oulining the origin as well as the

art continues to scandalize to the joy of artists who would otherwise would lose all transgressive power. These reactions, however, do not always have particular relevance to the objects, works, and actions of the artist. So deep is today’s distance between the “layman” and the “specialists” that the latter take advantage of—and often abuse—their legitimacy in the educated world.

I got the “game” and was convinced that in this game there are (artistic) values to defend, and even, moral errors—preferrably not to be repeated or perpetuated. The educated world does its best to maintain transgression in the field of the things that can be looked at, commented on, even admired, or more broadly, that can be interpreted. I have vowed not to fall into the trap of commentary and the futile search for meaning which often undo an artist’s intent—a sort of “game” in which each artist‘s movement is met by a critic’s movement, each

decline of the human soul.

But what do we mean by art deliberately homosexual? This definition brings with it a number of thorny issues of method. In my opinion, we can talk about “gay art” only to the extent that it reveals how an artist treats the homosexual theme. It does not necessarily imply that it is the artist’s own lifestyle—it can be suggested by many different inferrences and not necessarily the autobiographical substrate. It follows that not everything that comes from the mind and hands of a homosexual artist be considered “gay art”. Similarly, a “gay” or homoerotic work in some cases may be created by an artist who is not homosexual.

Briefly these are the conclusions I came to when I was preparing the now notorious Art and Homosexuality: From von Gloeden to Pierre et Gilles (2007-08), one of the most contested exhibitions in recent years, intended to show for the first time in Italy the long-standing relationship before it was overcome, and its sense inevitably distorted, by the spirals of media amplification, and oblique political use. The core of the scandal, in the case of Art and Homosexuality, was Miss Kitty (2006)

by Paolo Schmidlin, a sculpture guilty of showing a grotesque middle-aged man in semi drag whose shapes “dangerously” recall those of Pope Benedict XVI. I would like to note that Miss Kitty’s fame has gone beyond national borders to become an icon of events such as Europride.

History is full of similar events. Consider the controversy surrounding the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in Ameri-

“...my motto: Freedom of expression to the artist.

Freedom of selection to the critics. Freedom of opinion to the public.

To everyone the moral responsibility of their choice.

(left) Francesca Galliani, Transgender‒Tailandia, 1998, Mixed media, 24 x 20 , Courtesy the artist (below) Cover, Dino Pedriali, Edited by Peter Weiermair, Editions Stemmle, Zurich, 1994

Tony Patrioli, Untitled, ca 1975, B/W photo, 7 x 9. 5 , Collection Giovanbattista Brambilla, Bergamo

8

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

can Portraiture (2010-11) organized at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, and focused on the recognition of the discourse about gender and homo-erotism in the last hundred years of American art. In the case of Hide/ Seek, it was a excerpt of Fire in My Belly (1986-87) a video by David Wojnarowicz that was the at the core of the controversy.

The video was created by Wojnarowicz after the AIDS-related death of his partner, the photographer Peter Hujar, shortly before Wojnarowicz’s own death. The video sequence which shows a crucifix covered with ants attracted threats of excommunication, and in particular, the cutting of subsidies to The Smithsonian—The Smithsonian preferred to bow its head removing the offending work. In my case, due to

the censorship of Art and Homosexuality by the mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, I preferred to move the exhibition with much difficulty—but uncensored—from the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan to the Palazzina Reale of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

In light of my experience, I can state that these mechanisms are particularly revealing of the contemporary art “game”, re-enacting art’s pursuit since the beginning of the last century—violating limits and placing these limits “on display”. This strategy in contemporary art completes itself with the hermeneutics by experts affecting the interpretation and perception of an artist’s work by spectators—the so-called “ordinary people”—who supposedly contemporary

exhibition by a critical interpretation, every transgression a re-integration.

In this regulated strategy, which tests and at the same time pushes back the limits of the art acceptability, the lesser of these “hits” is a challenge to the critics, the operators of legitimacy. You cannot understand what the French sociologist Nathalie Heinich called “the triple play of contemporary art”1 without taking into account the production of the artists’ works and their reception by the critics; the challenge to common sense and the creation of meaning; the destruction of the rules and their reconstruction; transgression on one hand and integration on the other.

Otherwise the Wesen2 of the art work is constantly fed by the possibility of multiple readings. The reading of the artwork comes from the interaction with the viewer, offering from time to time a different response depending on the type of the question asked. And if art gives

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

9

ESSAY ISSUE 44

(far left) Paolo Schmidlin, Miss Kitty, 2006, Polychrome earthenware, 35 x 25 x 12 , Courtesy of the artist, Photo G. Pagliara Rosy Rox, Cavaliere Oscuro (The Dark Knight), 2009, Steel, crystal, latex, vibrating electric motor, Plexiglas, 8.5 x 4 x 4, Courtesy of the artist Jacopo Benassi, Clouds, 2012, B/W photo, 16 x 24 , Courtesy BTOMIC Collection, La Spezia

Museum director Hunter O Hanian with board member Kymara Lonergan and Hunter s husband, Jeffry George, at a recent Museum opening. © 2012 Stanley Stellar

Hunter O’Hanian Joins as Museum Director “I never came out,” says Hunter

different answers to different audiences, are perhaps all equally valid? And if we try to ask ourselves as the art historian W.J.T. Mitchell provocatively did: What do the pictures want?3 What harm would it be to ask an artwork to be not only gay but also religious, social, disturbing, controversial, ethic, political, even useless or pathetic? And what if we leave the meaning of an artwork unanswered—in spite of old fogey critics, and politicians who revive an ostentatious neo-counterreformation taste, and rekindled religious fundamentalism?

10

At the time of the infamous events surrounding Art and Homosexuality I coined what I thought should be my curatorial epitaph and which has instead become my motto: Freedom of expression to the artist. Freedom of selection to the critics. Freedom of opinion to the public. To everyone the moral responsibility of their choice. ■ ............................................................

Eugenio Viola is an Italian-based art critic and an independent curator.

Cf. N. Heinich, Il triplice gioco dell arte contemporanea, (The triple play of

1

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

contemporary art) in Agalma. Rivista di studi culturali e di estetica ( Agalma. Magazine of Cultural and Aesthetic Studies), Meltemi, Rome, n.9, March, 2005, p. 8-13 2 Essence is the traditional English translation of the German noun Wesen, used by Heidegger.

The German philosopher had developed his concept of Wesen in Being and Time. Cfr. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York: Harper and Row, 1962 3 Cf. W.J.T.Mitchell, Che cosa vogliono le immagini? (What do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images), in Teorie dell immagine, It. Ed. curated by A. Pinotti, A. Somaini, Cortina, Milan 2009, pp.99-133

O’Hanian. “At 22, I just refused to hide who I was.”

After a national search, the Board of Trustees of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is pleased to announce Hunter O’Hanian as museum director. Having moved to New York from Boston, Hunter brings a rich background in the visual arts. He spent more than a decade supporting artists and art making as he served as director of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen. Most recently, Hunter headed the foundation at the only independent public college of art in America, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

“Someone would have to create the Leslie-Lohman Museum if it didn’t already exist,” says Hunter. “How could the world survive without at least one museum exclusively devoted to showing works of art devoted to the gay, lesbian, bi, trans and questioning communities?

“The vision of Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman, along with the work of all of the intrepid board members, staff and volunteers, represents truth around us—it

“The Leslie-Lohman Museum strives to be the nexus of art, gay culture and activism.

It is that unique place we hold.”

—Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director reminds us of what is real and what is necessary in our daily lives. What we offer

is not a luxury; it is something that forms the soul and allows us to rise each morning and face the day.”

Having studied art history in college and later receiving a law degree, Hunter’s focus for his first year will be to work with the staff and board to create systems which strengthen the organization’s underpinnings. “My job, quite simply, is an easy one. It is to augment the structure that allows the organization to thrive. It is a first-rate museum which displays critically important work that speaks to the gay and lesbian experience. We will continue to show emerging artists and those that typically are not seen in other venues.

We will build our collection. We will be an active member of the community and offer a place for dialogue and inspiration.”

“Creating and creations are an essential part of human nature,” Hunter says.

“The Museum offers work that speaks to the experience of life itself. It creates an evocative setting which provides solace from the mess around us. It says we are part of the world and our journey can be told through the display and discussion of great art. We live in an environment with few role models—we have to forge our futures for ourselves. No one, regardless of their orientation, is free from being moved by the work we show. It ignites something within us in a way that is both brave and powerful.” ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

11

GALLERIES ISSUE 44

Galleries of Interest

To our readers: Please send us feedback on these listings. Are they helpful? Do you use them?

Send your comments, subject line: Lisitngs, to Info@leslielohman.org. Thank you, The Editor

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art 26 Wooster St., NYC leslielohman.org Nov 20-Apr 21 #1 must have Window Gallery Dec16‒Feb 3 Diaries: An Anthology of Photography from Italy, Opening Fri. Dec.14 6-8pm Feb16‒Mar 31 Making History, Making Art: The Work of Jonathan Ned Katz, Opening Fri. Feb.15 6-8pm Feb16‒Mar 31 Rare & Raw (College Art Association s annual exhibition of the Queer Caucus for Art), Opening Fri. Fri. Feb.15 6-8pm Mar 21‒24 XXX-Extremely Erotic Images, LL Annex 27B Prince St. Apr 13‒Jul 7 Paul Thek and His Circle: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Opening Fri. Apr.12 6-8pm

NEW YORK CITY

ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25th St., New York, NY, clampart.com Envoy Enterprises, 131 Chrystie St. and 87 Rivington St. New York, NY, envoyenterprises.com thru Dec 31 Winston Chmilienski; thru Dec 31Superm Beauty and Hell; Jan 10‒Feb 10 Narcissister

NEW YORK CITY—BROOKLYN

Figureworks 168 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY, figureworks.com Jan 11‒Mar 3 The Faces Behind Figureworks-Self Portraits by gallery artists, Opng Fri. Jan 11 6-9 Splatterpool, 138 Bayard St., Brooklyn NY, splatterpool. com The Spectrum 59 Montrose Ave., Brooklyn, NY, THIS. IS. ART. Bi-monthly group exhibition

NORTHEAST

Firehouse Gallery, 8 Walnut Street, Bordentown, NJ, firehousegallery.com Work by Eric Gibbons

Kymara Gallery 2 Main St., Biddeford, ME kymara.com thru Dec 31 Two Loves‒Sex, Art, and the Love That Dare Not Speak its Name, includes works from LLM Collection, New Years Eve Closing Party Dec 31; Nov 23‒Dec 31 Holiday Affordable Art Fair-Original Erotic work $200 or less

Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, museumofsex.com thru Jan 21 F*CK ART Participant Inc, 253 E. Houston St., participantinc.org P•P•O•W, 535 West 22nd St., New York, NY, ppowgallery.com

12

An Interview with E. Gibbons by David Jarrett

Barcelona

Crisolart Galleries, Mallorca, 284, Barcelona, crisolart. com

Rice/Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA thru Jan 1 Group exhibition

Schwules Museum. Mehringdamm 61, Berlin, schwulesmuseum.de thru Mar 4 Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform): Christa Winsloe; Ongoing Self Confidence and Persistence-200 years of history; Extensive program schedule with exhibitions

The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA, warhol.org thru Jan 6 Deborah Kass Before and Happily Ever After; thru Jan 6 Warhol: Headlines organized by National Gallery of Art, DC thru Jan 27 Jeremy Kost-Friends with Benefits Vitruvian Gallery, LLC, 734 7th Street, SE, Washington, DC, vitruviangallery.com thru Dec 18 Art Out of the Closet I-juried exhibit, male figurative art

Berlin

Beate Uhse Erotik Museum, Joachimstaler Strasse 4, Berlin, www.berlin.de/orte/museum/beateuhse-erotik-museum Sexuality and relationships.

Brussels

Pink Art, Rue Haute 207, Brussels, pinkart.be Groningen, NL Galerie MooiMan, Noorderstationsstraat 40, 9717 KP Groningen, NL, mooi-man.nl Dec‒Jan 2013 Male Art Calendar-group exhibition

Hamburg

Erotic Art Museum, Bernhard-Nocht-Strasse 69, Hamburg Sexualized art.

London

Adonis Art, 1b Coleherne Rd., London adonisartgallery.com

Madrid

La Fresh Gallery, Conde de Aranda 5, Madrid, info@lafreshgallery.com

Human Resources, 410 Cottage Home, Los Angeles, CA, humanresourcesla.com

Munich

Kunstbehandlung, 40 Müller Strasse 40, Munich, www. kunstbehandlung.de

Paris

M+B, 612 North Almont Dr., Los Angeles, CA, mbart.com; thru Dec 22 Jessica Eaton-Polytopes

La Galerie au Bonheur du Jour, 11 rue Chabanais, Paris, www.curiositel.com/ aubonheurdujour thru Dec Hôtels Garnis, garçons de joie; Feb‒Mar Jean Boullet

ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 626 North Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood, CA

Musee de l Erotisme, 72 Boulevard de Clichy, Paris, musee-erotisme.com History of sex

Sin City Gallery, 107 E. Charleston Blvd, #100, Las Vegas, NV, sincitygallery.com thru Dec 30 Justice HowardRude Crude and Tattooed

Sex Machine Museum, Melantrichova 18, Praha 1, sexmachinesmuseum.com/ en_page.html History of sex machines

The Advocate & Gochis Galleries, 1125 North McCadden Place, Los Angeles, CA, lagaycenter.org

The Art of Man Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary

Venustempel Sexmuseum, Damrak 18, 1015 LH Amsterdam, www.sexmuseumamsterdam.nl World s oldest sex museum.

Galería Artevistas, Passatge del Crèdit 4, Barcelona Dec 13‒Jan 27 Monique Van Steen: Beauties

Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, CA, highwaysperformance. org/highways

Munch Gallery, 245 Broome St., New York, NY thru Dec 23 Sowing the Seeds of Love, Group Exhibition

CANADA

Lyman-Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA, lymaneyerart.com thru Jan 1 Male Figurative Winter Group Show

Hallway Gallery, 800 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, WA, hallwaygallery.com

Michael Mut Gallery, 97 Avenue C, New York, NY, www.michaelmutgallery.com

World Erotic Art Museum, 1205 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL, weam.com/web thru Mar 31 Love is All Around, group exhibition

EUPOPE Amsterdam

GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA, www.glbthistory.org/museum

La MaMa La Galleria, 6 East 1st St., New York, NY, lamama.org/category/lagalleria thru Dec 30 5 decades of La MaMa collaborators

SOUTH

Heron Point Gallery, 63 Market St., Portland, ME http:/ /www.heronpointstudio.com

Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood, CA, antebellumgallery.blogspot.com (cover for openings) thru Dec 21 End of DaysArmageddon German artist, Paul Maler & others

Lambert Fine Arts, 57 Stanton St., New York, NY, www.lambertfinearts.com

Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N. Greenview Ave. Chicago, IL Thru Jan Richard Yatesphotographs; Thru Dec A Room of Her Own Thru Dec Bound: An Exhibit on Bondage Ongoing Etienne; Leather Bar; Leather History Timeline; Fakir Musafar; From Sir to Grrr; Debates in Leather

La Petite Mort Gallery, 306 Cumberland St., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, lapetitemortgallery.com thru Dec 30 Matthew Stradling-Youth Wound, paintings

WEST

Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts, 526 W. 26th St., New York, NY, kathleencullenfinearts.com thru Dec 31 Carlos Fragoso-Age of Foolishness, 15 colorful etchings

MIDWEST

Gallery 23 Hudson, Jersey City, NJ thru Dec 21 Ricardo Osmondo Francis: To Be Continued

Wessel + O Connor Fine Art, 7 North Main Street, Lambertville, NJ, www.wesseloconnor.com

Carlos Fragoso, Sacred Son, 2008, Charcoal, oil, acrylic on linen, 48 x 72 , Courtesy Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts

BOOK ISSUE 44

Pierre & Gilles, Vive la France (Long Live France), 2006, Unique hand-painted photograph, pigment print on canvas, Private Collection, Courtesy Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, Courtesy Leopold Museum

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

Leopold Museum, at the MuseumsQuartier, Viennawww. leopoldmuseum.org thru Jan 28 nude men-1800 to the present ■

figurative fine arts book that focuses on the male figure. It is created by Firehouse Publishing and its owner, E. Gibbons.

They have just produced their eleventh edition.

David Jarrett (DJ): What made you start The Art of Man? E. Gibbons (EG): Actually it began because I could not find a publishing venue for my own work. I paint classical male figures, but I prefer not to be overtly erotic with my work. I found several like-minded artists and thought if we could put together a prototype, I could send it to publishers who would in turn publish a larger version. The prototype including 26 artists was sent to Bruno Gmunder. They were onboard to publish an enlarged hardcover version in 2010, but unfortunately the CEO required that the book be beefed up with erotic content, and that was contrary to the whole idea of the book. This book eventually became Powerfully Beautiful (Firehouse Studio Publication). It is still available and continues to be one of our top-selling books.

Schiffer Publishing liked the concept but wanted to publish a book that would fit in with their existing line of books, and 100 Artists of the Male Figure was born.

As it happened, when I put out a call for artists for the Schiffer publication, I had nearly 300 submissions and could only pick 100. I thought it would be tragic to just shelve all the other work. My Firehouse Gallery gave birth to Firehouse Publishing and so began the series titled The Art of Man showcasing the male figure on an ongoing basis. Each AOM quarterly edition features five artists, art history related articles based on the male figure, and a free directory of artists that focus on the male figure. The quarterly sells very well.

DJ: Why do you not include photography, digital art, or erotica?

Prague

Vienna

The Art of Man is a quarterly

(top) The Art of Man, 1st edition, 2010, Cover art by E. Gibbons, Power of Youth, 2009 (above) The Art of Man, 10th edition, 2012, Cover art by Mel Odom, Arrangement, 1979

EG: I enjoy erotic work and even collect it, but many publishers already are well known for erotica and/or photography— Bruno Gmunder, Taschen, BLUE, TLA, to name a few. They are well established—entrenched—and I have no desire to compete with the “big boys.”

Our focus is a fine arts subset—nonerotic painting, drawing, and sculpture.

Our subscribers tend to be well

educated, often—but not always—gay, interested in the fine arts, appreciate a book they need not hide from guests, and AOM appeals more broadly to the figurative collecting world. I see AOM as a gateway or bridge into the field of male figurative fine art. Sometimes our imagery is frontal, often it is very sensual, but it is not overtly sexual.

DJ: How do you find your artists?

EG: We have built some pretty extensive files of artists, and they continue to grow every week. Some are from our search for artists for the 100 book, but others are through referrals, and discoveries from the internet on sites like Tumblr. We have a few ads out there letting people know we are seeking artists. All we need is for them to email us and send a link to an image. We don’t care if they are male or female, gay or straight, or anything.

We base our judgment on the quality of the work we see. Some artists, like James Childs, have impressive training backgrounds, and others, like Richard Stabbert, are completely self-taught.

DJ: What’s in the future for the AOM ?

EG: I now have enough artists for more

than twenty books, and as we continue to find artists, I see no end to the series. I already have the next four issues planned out so we have plenty of amazing work to showcase.

DJ: How can interested people get a copy of the Art of Man? EG: We are on T h e A r t O f M a n . n e t and there is a discount code there for readers of The Archive. If you have an Amazon account, our books are available there if you search “The Art of Man Firehouse.” (Other books come up when you do n’t add Firehouse to the search.)

You can find out more about The Art of Man and our other books at these websites: TheArtOfMan.net, FirehousePublications.com, PowerfullyBeautiful.com, 100ArtistsBook. com, a n d m y website FirehouseGallery. com/info.htm ■ ............................................................

David Jarrett is a photographer and has collected male-figurative art for decades. He is a longtime supporter of LLM.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

13

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 44

What’s “Happening” with Kymara Lonergan?

By Jerry Kajpust

Michael Rosen work from the exhibition Dirty Secrets: Sexual Portraits of Michael Rosen, curated

by Kymara Lonergan at the the LLM Prince Street Gallery. (this page clockwise from left) Michael Rosen, Geoff and Doug, 1993/1995, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 Michael Rosen, Jack Fists Peter, 1992/1994, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 Michael Rosen, John and Frank (Myrlin), 1992/1993, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 Michael Rosen, Scott O Hara, 1992/1993, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20

Anyone who has been to an

exhibition by Kymara Lonergan knows it’s not commonplace.

This was evident at her recent exhibition, Dirty Secrets: Sexual Portraits of Michael Rosen (September 28–30, 2012), held at the LLM Prince Street gallery. Entering the basement, guests walked in passing works by artists in the Museum’s permanent collection—Robert W. Richards, Geary Marcello, and Maine artist Tony Brown—all interspersed with various S/M items including handcuffs, floggers, leather jocks, and harnesses. Walking into the gallery, guests were greeted by Rosen’s photography, music, food, drinks, and a human buffet—a sexy man in a jock strap cov-

14

ered in fruit! Guests were immersed into what Kymara calls “a happening.”

“Happenings” have roots in the 1950s and 60s, and Andy Warhol was famous for hosting them at the Factory in the 70s. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation. Planning a happening not only includes the art, but also lighting, food and drink, and the people. “It’s more than just art on the walls; it’s all about people interacting with each other, the art, and the environment.” Kymara continues, “Even the way the art is displayed is critical to the overall plan. I don’t like to hang art in a simple linear fashion but rather at various heights and random patterns. People interact and experience art differently,

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

more organically, by forcing them to look up, around, over, and down.

Kymara chose Rosen’s work because of its historic value. “Created between 19871994, these images capture a time when erotic piercing and tattooing hit the scene.

“I wanted to represent the S/M culture of that time. Rosen photographs all types of individuals and is not a photographer who is totally engrossed with beautiful subjects.

His work is a brilliant narrative of the true nature and history of human sexuality.”

Rosen, has been documenting the sexual underground since 1977 and is known for his disarmingly realistic style of erotic and sexually explicit portraiture. Rosen’s work is a gritty array of cinema verité images of S/M sex scenes; sharply focused,

Cassandra, Madonna, 2010, Bronze on marble base, 12 x 14 x 15 , Collection LLM, Gift of Charles Leslie Richard Titlebaum, Charles V, 1994, Acrylic on board, 48 x 48 , Collection LLM, Bequest of the artist

elegantly composed, sexual studio portraits involving S/M, erotic piercings, and showing non-standard penetration. This is all evident in the work shown here.

In 2012, Rosen was recognized as one of the five founding members of The Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s “Masters of Erotic Art.” His work appears in many collections, including the Kinsey Institute and the Leather Archives & Museum.

His books include Sexual Magic: the S/M Photographs, Sexual Portraits: Photographs of Radical Sexuality, and Sexual Art: Photographs That Test the Limits.

Two Loves: Sex, Art, and the Love that Dare not Speak its Name is at the Kymara Gallery in Biddeford, ME. This tile reflects the phrase from the poem Two Loves by

Lord Alfred Douglas, published in 1894 and mentioned at Oscar Wilde’s gross indecency trial. It is classically interpreted as a euphemism for homosexuality. Curated from the Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition consists of paintings, sculpture, and photography dating from 1650 to 2010. Opening with a “happening” on July 27, it continues through December 31, 2012, festively closing with a New Year’s Eve party. One wall, covered in silver foil reminiscent of Warhol’s Silver Factory, features Warhol’s “Sex Parts.” According to The Warhol Museum, Warhol was inspired to capture the male sex organ uncensored when a stranger approached him and bragged about his well-endowed anatomy. Warhol photographed the parts

in question and then put the snapshots in a box simply labeled “Sex Parts”, which became the basis for this series.

Some works that are part of Two Loves have rarely or never been shown. A premier showing is Charles V by Richard Titlebaum (1939-2006), a writer, artist, antiquarian book collector, literature professor, and artist. Many of his large paintings, done in the Physique style, were donated to the Leslie-Lohman upon the artist’s death. Also noteworthy is For the Love of Leyendecker by Darold Perkins (aka Perk, 1922-2002). Perk, called the Norman Rockwell of gay art by some of his contemporaries, chose to paint images with humor and a domestic sense unusual in current gay art. All exhibition images, including the “Sex Parts” series, are viewable at leslielohman.org.

When asked why Maine, Kymara responded, “the Museum collection fills a much needed void in the community, although there are many galleries and museums around Maine, not one documents and preserves LGBTQ art. Hosting the collection in Biddeford provides a unique educational opportunity and an understanding of the rich creative LGBTQ history, especially for those who can’t travel outside the area. I wanted to share the founders’ vision as a source of inspiration and pride for the LGBTQ community.” “Since the opening,” Kymara reports, “there have been over 675 visitors coming from as far away as British Colombia and New York City, including members of the straight community. Many people have said, ‘Thank You for what you are doing.’ I am always surprised at how many of the younger crowd (18-25) have no knowledge of the history of the gay sexual revolution.”

Kymara Lonergan, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, has worked with many nonprofits including the March of Dimes. Her educational background includes anthropology, design and theater, and she has worked as a registered nurse in emergency medicine and acute psychiatry. Founded in 1985, the Kymara Gallery showcases and represents controversial works that comment on society and human sexuality.

Kymara explains, “I have always used the arts as a healing mechanism while working in health care. As I become more familiar with the history of the Foundation, it is very moving to experience the founders’ vision, and the energy of the collection. I think that the dedication and passion of Charles and Fritz is something that should be carefully preserved and the Museum is a perfect fit.” ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

15

EXHIBITION ISSUE 44

Making History, Making Art: The Work of Jonathan Ned Katz February 16–March 31, 2013 LLM Jonathan Ned Katz is an

acknowledged pioneer of the LGBTQ past, an historian who was among the very first to restore to us our history. His trailblazing Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (1976) and Gay/ Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (1983) not only chronicled our history, they made it. His subsequent The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995) also made history: it was cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the landmark 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas.

In fact it’s impossible to overstate the import of Jonathan Ned Katz’s work, a fact I know well as the bearer of his name (despite the fact that we are not related).

On many occasions in my life, people have come up to me after a lecture and thrust before me one of Jonathan’s books to sign, all the while excitedly tripping over themselves in an attempt to explain the impact his work has had on their life.

“Katz is an activist, and he comes from a line of radicals...”

While it’s true that occasionally they noted meeting “me” in 1976 and then asked for the name of my plastic surgeon, most often they were so entranced to finally meet the author of those cherished books that it was with real regret that I had to sheepishly admit, to great, general disappointment, that I was the other gay Jonathan Katz. Only Jonathan Ned Katz makes me feel like I’m the other Jonathan Katz.

But I had an unexpected discovery of my own when I found that this celebrated scholar and historian was currently an active painter whose primary identity was now as an artist, more than an historian. In truth, what seemed to me to be his new vocation turned out to be merely a reconnection with an earlier identity, for Jonathan was an artist long before he was a writer.

Curating the forthcoming exhibition of his work, I was amazed to see stacks of childhood drawings and paintings of remarkable quality, direct and psychologically dense despite the fact that they were

16

painted by a ten-year-old. Indeed, some childhood works seemed to prefigure the subsequent development of Pop art, using stamps or store-bought commodities as their subject matter. On the strength of these works, Katz was admitted to New York’s public High School of Music and Art as an art major. After graduation, he retooled his skills as an artist in an attempt to make a living and became a professional textile designer at the Jack Prince Studio.

The Jack Prince Studio is too little known today given its absolutely stellar roster of employees that included not only Katz but artists like Paul Thek and Joseph Raffael.

(In fact, the Jack Prince Studio will be a major element in the forthcoming exhibition Paul Thek and His Circle.) Given the fact that nearly everyone who worked for Jack Prince was gay, as was the owner himself, it comes as another shock to learn that Katz was closeted at the time, despite the campy chaos that often surrounded him.

But he became involved in the nascent gay rights movement and soon became the figure we now know. And somehow, with that transformation into a writer and a scholar, Katz left his art making behind him. He would not pick it up again for over thirty years, the very years that cemented his reputation as one of the founders of gay and lesbian studies. He explains this lacunae as having been motivated by an attempt to prove himself intellectual, to perceive the world cognitively, not sensuously. Indeed, research and writing, especially when there are almost no extant models, is a full-time job in and of itself.

But I think there was something else at work here. Katz is an activist, and he comes from a line of radicals—his father was as closeted as his son, albeit not with regard to his sexuality, but about being a clandestine communist organizer. Katz led the way when there were practically no other historians of LGBTQ life. But pioneering is a lonely business. After the break-up of a twenty-six-year relationship, art offered an exit from the solitary work of writing and back toward the community that animated his decades of scholarship in the first place. Indeed, the striking thing about Katz’s return to art is how communal, sen-

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

By Jonathan David Katz

suous, and community-based his painting is. He became a member of one drawing group after another, and Katz repeatedly notes the centrality of Leslie-Lohman’s own drawing group to the rekindling of his interest in art.

Writing affords readers a sense of community and commonality; however, the writer can only experience that community long after the solitary hard work is done.

Life drawing, on the other hand, affords community in the very process itself, for at minimum it involves an artist and model.

In short, art has given Katz a community of the like-minded, and its sustenance is at least in part clearly emotional.

At the same time, Katz sought to break out of the constraints that too often govern gay male figurative art with its emphasis on youth and beauty. His subjects are instead often hairy, older men, multiracial, and in his best work, there is a hard-won balance between the pathos of aging flesh and the youthful yearning that animates it, reminding us that desire knows no age limit. His rough handling, simplified forms, and lack of finish telegraph the rapidity of his hand and brush. But this quickness is no mere parlor trick; on the contrary, it carries the resonance of passion, sensuality and immediacy. Above all, Katz’s late work is a reminder of the success of his earlier career.

At a time when there was practically no gay history, he gave us one, and in so doing, offered countless queers, myself included, a sense of community larger than our immediate surroundings. Having helped build that expansive sense of community, Katz the painter now seeks to limn its outlines.

He finally takes his place within a movement he once walked ahead of—and not as an artist alone, but as a manifestly gay artist, one whose professional identity is caught up with the recovery of our people’s past so that it could inform our present. ■ ............................................................

Jonathan David Katz is President of the LeslieLohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art Board of Directors, and Director, Visual Studies Doctoral Program, University at Buffalo.

Making History, Making Art: The Work of Jonathan Ned Katz, Feb. 16‒Mar. 31, 2013. Opening Fri., Feb. 15, 6-8 pm, Leslie-Lohman Museum

(top left clockwise) Jonathan Ned Katz, Grocery Store, ca 1950, Tempera on paper, 13 x 13 , Collection David Gibson Jonathan Ned Katz, Alice and Gertrude, 2012, Tempera, Colored pencil on paper, 19 x 24 Jonathan Ned Katz, Frank, 2011, Tempera, Pencil on paper, 25 x 19 Jonathan Ned Katz, R. Sitting with Maggie the Male Cat, 2007, Pencil on paper, 18 x 12

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

17

REVIEW ISSUE 44

B-Out Andrew Edlin Gallery, NYC, July 5–Aug 18, 2012 By Tom Saettel “Scott Hug’s a good artist

who knows, or knows of, many other good artists,” wrote Holland Cotter in The New York Times. Hug is also a writer, publisher, and curator. His latest curatorial effort was B-Out. Shying away from monumentality of his accomplishment—107 artists, curated in two months—he stated, “This was not a survey.” (As if any survey exhibition, retrospective, or art history book can be all-inclusive—choices are made.)

He goes on to honor Hide/Seek (National Portrait Gallery, 2010-11) as his inspiration. Hug makes it clear, though, in his poetic curator’s statement, that the scope is not just about being out as a gay person, but about being outside of the increasingly homogenized society.

Entering the Andrew Edlin Gallery to view B-Out, the room is rather tame but full of tantalizing gems such as Cary Liebowitz/Candyass’s Hi Mom, based on a rather gay theme—a gay man’s connection to his mom—rarely expressed in visual art. We would take this work as sweet

if it weren’t for Candyass’s incessantly, but beautifully, slapping us with cultural quirks. Jonathan Weinberg’s paintings, In, Out, over the door, spell out the conundrum of the exhibition: gay/mainstream; mainstream/outsider; closeted/out. Just before one leaves this first room is a tiny photograph by Bob Mizer—a hero for pulling us out of the closet—strategically placed so as not to be missed. (This vintage physique photograph was a holiday gift Hug gave to himself a few years ago.)

More surprises are in store as one passes into a series of five hallway rooms—closets—The Doors of Deception, the concept of Fantastic Nobodies, an art collective of four straight but outsider male artists who have collaborated on installations and events internationally since 2001. The first of these closets pays tribute to that all-time outsider art, Mail Art, with work by its best known star, Ray Johnson, and also the art of Bern Porter, May Wilson, and Carlo Pittore. Pittore better know as a painter was also at the forefront of Mail

(left) Joshua Abelow, Mysterious Self-Portrait, 2007, Oil on linen, 56 x 32 , Courtesy James Fuentes Gallery NYC (above) Joshua Abelow, Art is so Gay, 2007, Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 , Courtesy James Fuentes Gallery NYC (right top) The Fantastic Nobodies, The Doors of Deception, 2012, Installation view, Andrew Edlin Gallery, showing Jack Ferver video and Maya Hayuk mural (right bottom) Hug & Magnan, USA Today version 5.0, Installation view

Art with his vision of art exchanged freely as a gift through a broadly accessible, democratic system. The genre is still alive and kicking as demonstrated by Melissa Brown’s Dotto Lotto.

An installation in the second, rather darkened, chamber features two videos of choreographer and performance artist Jack Ferver shot by John Fireman. The audio is, well, just conversation, but it imbues a feeling of the joy of being alive and gay.

The walls here are ablaze with the jewel tone, pattern-and-symmetry-obsessed work of Maya Hayuk, a painter who has been busy taking abstract painting and flat decorations to heightened levels. The third hallway chamber has USA Today version 5.0, a work by Hug and (Michael) Magnan, consisting of 125 printouts of USA Today portraits and quotes mounted on the walls and meant to be a portrait of our society, the outside chaotic world.

One passes into the huge main room of B-Out, a (homo) art explosion. The room design is the concept of artist/inte-

rior designer Keehnan Konyha. The walls, a vibrant Yves-Klein blue affectionately nickname B-Out blue, are a symbol of the universe, the stunning black and white tile floor symbolize a formal salon. There are so many rich treasures in this room that one asks: Where has all this been hidden?

Almost central in this universe are a table and two chairs coated in B-Out blue—a metaphor for the conversation these artists, including the curator, are having with you.

The installation Nina by Chris Bogia is one of the larger works in the exhibition. A pink plastic radio, hand-blown glass vase, and cock ring rest on a mirrored end table beneath a wall lamp and atop a brown carpet—all setting the 70s domestic scene for a huge tapestry of the album cover for The Essential Nina Simone. A string of what looks like vertebrae slinks down from above. They are actually broken pieces of ceramic Venus and David figurines, staples of the lesbian and gay 70s household.

Martin Wong’s paintings, a lusty graffiti tribute to the scent of a fireman and a portrait of chunky mustachioed bear, instantly takes us back to the early-80s heyday of New York City’s gay art galleries and the East Village gallery scene.

Wong, who migrated to NYC from San Francisco, was the lover of Miguel Piñero, founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. Wong, like so many artists of this 80s scene, died of AIDS in 1999. From the same period—though very much alive— Mel Odom is represented by one of his classic 1980s portraits.

Two whimsical gouache paintings on Kraft paper by Dani Leventhal depict

stick figures fucking and an ominous longnecked observer. Leventhal is a multidisciplinary artist originally working in ceramics who moved on to sculpture. After a sculpture crushed her wrist, she moved into the video art for which she is best known. But lucky for us, she still loves to draw. The words of Chris Stults in Cinema Scope, “The Multitude of Visible Thing,” ostensibly about her video work, equally apply to her drawings: “Leventhal’s videos are not the triumph of an all- seeing subjectivity, but rather an effort to reduce the barrier between her and the rest of the world, whether human, animal, or inanimate.” As Leventhal’s says, “I guess I’m just studyin’ things.”

Joshua Abelow’s seemingly naive paintings weave craft and childlike drawing with such sophistication it is no wonder that he is a rising art star. Art Is So Gay evokes a smile, while a beguiling self-portrait has a duck head perched atop a human head almost as a cultural sentinel.

One is entranced by the video Style Is Everything by Joe Mama-Nitzberg. The text, excerpts of Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp,” is eloquently read in English and signed in ASL, while the video alternately cuts to a dancer voguing to a chorus of “Style is everything”— words from the essay. Another video by Joshua Seidner is displayed on a monitor on the floor, perched on a skateboard. Seidner continues his work exploring the urban landscape and the homoeroticism of young men interacting, here seen clowning with each and a skateboard. Seidner’s videos all seem innocently shot, and one might ask: If this piece were on the floor

of MoMA or the Whitney, would one sense the gay camaraderie? Probably yes.

It is the new generation of gayness, and it is out there. ■ ..............................................................

Scott Hug holds an MA in graphic designer from Pratt Institute. As an artist he has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1997.

He produces and publishes K48, a publicationas-synthesis. K48 issue No. 8 ABRAK48DABRA was published Aug. 2012. Visit k48rules.com and thek48bullet.blogspot.com.

(top) B-OUT, Installation view, Andrew Edlin Gallery, 2012

(center) Jonathan Weinberg, In, 2000, Oil on panel, 8 x 10

(bottom) Jonathan Weinberg, Out, 2000, Oil on panel, 8 x 10

Be out. Be outside. Be outside of it. Be outside of the box. Be outside of the system. Be out of order. Be out of control. Be out of the ordinary. Be out of your hair. Be out of your mind. Be outrageous. Be outspoken. Be out loud. Be out of line. Be out of the loop. Be out of bounds. Be outcast. Be out of the Midwest. Be out of the closet. Be out of the Middle East. Be out of gas. Be out of sorts. Be out of power. Be out numbered. Be out for blood. Be out for the count. Be out bid. Be out of pocket. Be out of debt. Be out of commission. Be out of fashion. Be out of place. Be out of sight. Be out of reach. Be out of touch. Be out to lunch. Be out of breath. Be out of time. Be out of space. Be out of body. Be out of this world. —B-Out Exhibition Statement, Scott Hug

EXHIBITION ISSUE 44

Rare & Raw February 16–March 31, 2013 LLM By Ken Moffatt The exhibition Rare & Raw,

curated by Kelly McCray and Steph Rogerson, alerts us to the many complexities of LGBTT history by clearly situating our histories within a multiplicity of desires.

The curators work against some of the common errors of LGBTT history, such as modernist notions of linearity, key events, and heroic individuals. While this modernist type of mythmaking is important to a community that has been erased historically and continues to be socially marginalized, it remains overly simplistic. Rare & Raw reminds us that our history involves many genders, races, and

desires. It is also sensitive to the everyday reality of queer history that is informed by a broader social context. Since the LGBTT community has been historically erased, members need to make truth through interpretation and speculation rather than by a stubborn confidence in ‘fact’ that is often interpreted through a heteronormative lens. The artists in the exhibition allude to many complex histories that make up our community and the ways we continue to shape history through resistance and subversive acts.

Elegantly structured by pairing contemporary queer artists with one anoth-

er, these loose pairings are meant to comment on themes such as power, sexuality, history, and the queer gaze. The artists draw on historical art practices and/or archival material. In this manner, these works document a history that is sometimes real, other times imagined, and at times fictional yet always involves truthtelling through the telling of life stories.

The pairing of artists’ works creates an interesting interaction rather than a series of singular, declarative, historical statements of heroic acts of individuals. At times, the paired art works and artists are in tension with each other,

“The artists in the exhibition allude to many complex histories that make up our community and the ways we continue to shape history through resistance and subversive acts.”

(above) William E. Jones, Tearoom, 1962/2007, 16mm film transferred to video (color, silent), Ed. 4, 1 AP, 56 minutes, Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (right top) Will Munro, Mirrors, 2005, Silkscreen on mirror, 12 x 12 each, Courtesy Will Munro Estate, Paul Petro Collection, Gallery of York University, Photo Cheryl O Brien (right) Tara Mateik, Zurück an Absender (Return to Sender), 2005, Fabricated commemorative stamp and cancellations on 1936 Olympic postcard, 4 x 5.75 (far right) Tara Mateik, Zurück an Absender (Return to Sender), 2005, Stamp detail, video still image of Dora Ratjen (aka Hermann Ratjen) from Leni Riefenstahl s 1938 film, Olympia

20

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

but through this pairing history is rethought.

Los Angeles artist William E Jones is paired with Toronto artist Will Munro. William E. Jones’s video Tearoom, 1962/2007 is composed of videos that have surreptitiously recorded tearoom action within a public bathroom, in the Midwest United States. The video is constructed from 1962 police surveillance footage that was filmed from behind a two-way mirror and glory holes.

This video created from reconstructed surveillance tape makes us complicit in voyeurism as well as panopticon—the form of watching that seeks to discipline and control perverts. The video makes one marvel at the mean-spiritedness of the surveillance, but also at the irrepressible desire and excitement manifest in the men’s behavior. The tone is somber, secretive, and furtive. Will Munro’s Mirrors, 2005 is a series of silk-screened mirrors. Munro has silk-screened the names of legendary nightclubs that were refuges for queer persons in New York City and Toronto. The iconic script in bright pink from the clubs The Pyramid, Max Kansas City, Mudd Club (New York) and Vazaleen and Boom Boom Room (Toronto) interrupt our own reflections in the mir-

rors. In this manner, Munro draws out a differing history of desire where the gaze of desire is openly expressed and enjoyed by participants. In this case, our gaze is reflected back to us through mirrors and it is celebratory in tone. The bright pink text on the mirrors suggests a camp freedom and fun.

The pairing of G.B. Jones with Tom of Finland makes a comment on desire constrained and power possessed. Tom of Finland’s iconic images show oversexualized macho men in a fantastical world of pleasure. The images chosen for the exhibition illustrate jailed men behind bars gladly serving their powerful keepers, such as prison guards and the police. In each image, the bars of the cell lay between men involved in sexual acts.

Those men who are incarcerated and seemingly powerless happily engage in sex with uniformed men in power. With its overblown sexuality and masculinity, the work is a form of drag. G.B. Jones refers to the historical images of Tom of Finland by both honoring him in her recreations yet disrupting the masculinity. In Jones’s illustrations, scantily clad imprisoned women engage in the enjoyment of each other. In her work, prison cells are open and the women move freely among

(top left) G.B. Jones, Prison Breakout #1, 1991, Pencil on paper, 9 x 7 , Originally published in J.D.s, Issue 8 (1991) (top right) Tom of Finland, Untitled, 1966, Pencil on paper, 12.5 x 9 , Courtesy Tom of Finland Foundation (above) Zoe Leonard s The Fae Richards Photo Archive, 1993-1996, Photo installation (Detail), Courtesy of Eileen Harris Norton Foundation

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

21

WINDOW GALLERY ISSUE 44

(left) Kent Monkman (in collaboration with photographer Christopher Chapman), Vaudeville Star, Miss Chief: The Emergence of a Legend Series, Ed. 25, 2006, Chromogenic print on metallic paper, 6.5 x 4.5 , Collection MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) (above) Nina Levitt, Calamity, 1991, Color Photograph (diptych), 24 x 40

“Viewed as a whole, the exhibition helps us imagine and speculate on the many possibilities of gender and sexuality.” themselves; the sexualized women enjoy each other openly. Both artists suggest a certain freedom of desire as sexuality is freed from dyads—voyeurs and exhibitionists enjoy each other in threesomes and groups, and the most constraining of environments contributes to a hotbed of sexuality.

Zoe Leonard’s The Fae Richards Photo Archive, 1993-1996, mixes historical fact and fiction. The Archive is composed of seventy-eight silver gelatin prints, four chromogenic prints, and a notebook of seven pages of typescript documents of the life of a black lesbian actress. Fae Richards is given a birth date and date of death so that she lives from the early 20th century to after the Civil Rights movement. In Fae’s narrative there are stories about troubling social relations that perpetuate prejudice and suggest erasure, such as racism in the theater and same-sex love that is intimated. But Fae Richards’s life is staged, since she never existed, through the use of images of real persons for a contemporary audience.

While Fae Richards’s story is a fiction, her constructed life is entirely plausible

22

and realistic. One needs to read her photos and notebook to speculate about the nature of her life and to know that it stretches our taken-for-granted notions of sexuality, race, and gender. Tara Mateik based Zuruk an Absender (Return to Sender) on the real life of Dora Ratjen who, although born a male, competed in the 1936 Olympics as a female high jumper. The Nazi government was all too willing to exploit the gender ambivalence with which Hermann Ratjen was born. Mateik mixes historical fact with fiction through the creation of a postcard returned to sender because Hermann no longer exists as a man at the time of the Olympics. Mateik also creates a postal stamp affixed to the postcard using a Lefi Riefenstahl image of Dora. With the use of the Reifenstahl image, Dora is represented as both mythic as a woman, and nonexistent as a man. Mateik helps us imagine a truth that is based on hidden histories. Both Leonard and Mateik point to sexual and gender variance in surprising social contexts while cautioning against the oppressive dominant social structures within which gender and sexual variance exist.

The lens of sexuality and gender cuts through the historical retelling of the colonization of First Nations persons through the work of Kent Monkman and Nina Levitt. The telling of North American colonization has often been one of heroic men who are in battle with each other, with the brave Indigenous person on one hand and the conquering (male) pioneer on the other. Through images printed and framed as if they were antique daguerreotypes, Kent Monkman features his alter

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. In this series of studio portraits entitled The Emergence of a Legend, Miss Chief Testickle is dressed in the performance disguise of “Indians,” dressed as if to entertain Europeans. According to Monkman, he “challenges the authoritative version of history by playing the starring role in ‘period’ photographs.” The Cree artist introduces a subversive subjectivity and reverses the gaze on First Nations to play with those white men who documented the “Indian.” Nina Levitt draws upon archival images of a real person, Calamity Jane, renowned as a frontier fighter who fought First Nations persons. Through the reinvention of old photographs of Calamity Jane, Levitt draws attention to Calamity’s gender ambivalence and her butchness.

Viewed as a whole, the exhibition helps us imagine and speculate on the many possibilities of gender and sexuality. A panoply of desires are made available on their own and in conversation with each other. These manifestations of queerness exist in spite of and, in some cases, are enhanced by, oppressive sociocultural relationships. The hopeful tone is that we can revisit the archive and our histories and claim them anew. With the constant threat of erasure of queer persons in history, one might rightfully think of the historical record as static and irrelevant. The imaginative retelling and associational learning provided in Rare & Raw is not naive, since we are reminded that queer cultures continue to be at threat due to racism, homophobia, and gender intolerance. But as we reclaim our historical stories, through rigor and speculation, as well as through fact and fiction, a beautiful pause makes us reflect on what may have been but is not yet told. We are also invited to honor what has come before in order to imagine what we can be in the future. We tell historical ‘truth’ as long as it is open to fuller interpretation and multiplicities of narratives that honour queer persons. ■

#1 must have Nov. 20, 2012–April 21, 2013 LLM Curated by Julia Haas

Work by A. Slaven and Adrien Leavitt, artists from Seattle who publish #1 must have - a photo zine for queers, will be featured in the Windows Gallery at the Leslie-Lohman Museum from November 20, 2012 to April 21, 2013. Their work focuses on visibility, celebrating diverse queer people, and re-framing the queer experience outside of the victim paradigm often seen in popular culture.

............................................................

Ken Moffatt is a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. Editor Troubled Masculinities: Reimaging Urban Men (University of Toronto, 2012).

Author Shame and Men: A Queer Perspective on Masculinity for C Magazine (Summer 2012).

Kelly McCray is founder of BANKonART.net and co-founder of ArtBarrage.com. Steph Rogerson is a PhD candidate in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University.

Rare & Raw is the annual exhibition of the Art Association Queer Caucus of Art. Feb 16‒Mar 31, 2013. Opening Fri, Feb 15, 6-8 pm, Leslie-Lohman Museum

#1 must have, nico // shelby, nicole, erika, 2011-2012, Inkjet print, 32 x 74

#1 must have, marita, elaina // amber, evie, 2011-2012, Inkjet print, 32 x 74

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 44 ● WINTER 2012

23

Work by A. Slaven and Adrien Leavitt from #1 must have Nov. 20, 2012‒April 21, 2013 LLM, curated by Julia Haas. (left) #1 must have, nieves // sabra // BenDeLaCreme, 2011-2012, Inkjet print, 36 x 74 36 (right) #1 must have, gigi // ben, 2011-2012, Inkjet print, 36 x 74