The Archive: Issue 51 Fall 2014 by Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

AUTUMN 2 0 1 4

T HE ARCHI VE 51 The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

CONTENTS THE ARCHIVE NUMBER 51 AUTUMN 2014

CLASSICAL NUDES AND THE MAKING OF QUEER HISTORY JONATHAN DAVID KATZ

COLLECTION BUILDING

NEWS FROM PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE

WINDOW GALLERY COLLABORATION WITH THE QUEER/ART/MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

HUNTER O HANIAN, MUSEUM DIRECTOR

ROB HUGH ROSEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAMMATIC OPERATIONS

15 IRREVERENT: A CELEBRATION OF CENSORSHIP JENNIFER TYBURCZY, GUEST CURATOR

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 over 22,000 objects in our collections, 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 educational art publication 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 Leslie-Lohman Museum embraces the rich creative history of the LGBTQ art community by informing, inspiring, educating, entertaining, and challenging all who enter its doors.

Founders

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

Board of Directors

GALLERIES OF INTEREST

HOW GAY WAS GORE VIDAL? HOW HIGH THE MOON? BOOK REVIEW OF IN BED WITH GORE VIDAL BY TIM TEEMAN DOUGLAS BLAIR TURNBAUGH

Jonathan David Katz, President Steven J. Goldstein, Vice-President Daniel R. Hanratty, Treasurer James M. Saslow, Secretary Deborah Bright John Caldwell

EVENT PROGRAMMING

Co-Founder & Director Emeritus

JERRY KAJPUST, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS

22 YOUR MOUTH S A ROLLER COASTER: NEW WORK BY CHUCK NITZBERG AND DAN ROMER AN INTERVIEW BY HUNTER O HANIAN

Back Cover:

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum

Jeﬀ Goodman Kymara Lonergan Cynthia Powell Robert W Richards Margaret Vendryes Ray Warman Peter Weiermair

Charles W. Leslie

Staff

Hunter O Hanian, Museum Director Wayne Snellen, Deputy Director for Collections Rob Hugh Rosen, Deputy Director for Programmatic Operations Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations Branden Wallace, Collections Manager Todd Fruth, Oﬃce Manager Kris Grey, Exhibitions and Communications Manager Cupid Ojala, PSPS Coordinator Stephanie Chambers, Bookkeeper Daniel Sander, Receptionist Johanna Galvis, Receptionist Noam Parness, Receptionist

Volunteer Staff

Cryder Bankes, Library Deborah Bright, Collections Nancy Canupp, Marketing, Operations Scott Dow, Intern Collections Steven Goldstein, Collections, Administration Natasha Gross, Collections Daniel Kitchen, Museum Advocate

Stephan Likosky, Collections Tai Lin, Collections Michael Maier, Collections Chuck Nitzberg, Events Noam Parness, Collections Hannah Turpin, Museum Fellow

The Archive

The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Number 51 Tom Saettel, Editor Joseph Cavalieri, Production and Design

©2014 The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. No part of this journal may be reproduced in any form without John Burton Harter, Bathing Man, 1995, Oil on board, 30 x 36 in. 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 is available for free in the Museum, and is mailed free of charge to LL Museum members.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum

26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013-2227 (212) 431-2609

info@leslielohman.org, leslielohman.org Gallery Hours: Tues.‒Wed. 12-6pm, Thur. 12-8, Fri‒Sun 12-6, Closed Mon. Closed on major holidays and between exhibitions. FRONT COVER: Wilhelm von Gloeden, Untitled , c 1900, Photograph, 7 x 5.5 in. Collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum, Founders gift.

EXHIBITION ISSUE 51

Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History October 17, 2014 – January 4, 2015 Leslie-Lohman Museum Sponsored by the John Burton Harter Charitable Trust Curated by Jonathan David Katz

For over 2500 years, we

have cohabited with one aesthetic archetype—by far the longest such relationship in the western canon: the classical nude. Not only is it the longest lasting, most influential visual form for representing the human body up to the present day, but it has become so powerfully naturalized as merely “the nude” that we have often lost the ability to see it as a specific historical type, with a particular history, geography, and canon. In order to begin to see the explicit historical outlines of the classical nude, the only thing we need to do is substitute the word naked. While the nude is an aesthetic type, the naked figure is not, and one of the great ironies of Western visual culture has been that those historical moments most opposed to the representation of nakedness have often also been the same ones most wedded to a conception of the classical nude. These nudes are in every sense of the term iconic; they are the building blocks of our visual culture. Yet the history of this most visible of all art forms is intimately intertwined with the history of one of the least visible—the history and iconography of same-sex desire. For many centuries now, certain men and women have scoured this most respectable of aesthetic types for secret signs that speak of them to them. And no wonder, for the nude has become the site of an identification with, and projection onto, the culture that first birthed it, a classical world that saw both samesex love and the human body as not only worthy of public representation, but as itself inherently beautiful. From the very first wide-scale recovery of the classical past in the Renaissance to the scholarly work of the great German classicist Johann Joachim Winckelmann and all the way to the present day—every time classical nudes have re-emerged into discourse or fashion—changing understandings of same-sex desire are in part responsible.

Indeed, holding together the diverse range of works in this exhibition is the simple thread of the classical nude as a sensitive barometer of changing social standards governing the homoerotic. So powerfully intertwined is the fate of the

Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici as Orpheus, c 1537-39, Oil on panel, 36.875 x 30.0625 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John Wintersteen, 1950. Please note: this painting is not included in the exhibition.

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nude and the homoerotic that the history of the classical nude can also, from an oblique angle, serve as a thumbnail history of changing ideas around homosexuality. When the great commercial and military power that was Florence in the Renaissance began to earn a reputation not all that distinct from San Francisco in the present day—and with a vocal crew of mostly clerical antagonists to match—the classical nude quickly emerged as the gold standard of artistic achievement. Artists such as Michelangelo made the nude the central pillar in their new temple to the human—as opposed to divine—spirit and crafted elaborate allegories that incorporated the homoerotic into a broader conception of human achievement. For example, the great German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s famous print The Men’s Bath from 1498 is a veritable compendium of bawdy sexual innuendo. Not only is the water spigot turned into a penis, but it has a cock as a handle. And note that the central bearded ﬁgure in a skimpy loincloth at eye level to the seat-

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

(clockwise from top left) Zanele Muholi, Caitlin and I, 2009, C-print, 17.125 x 23.75 in. (each panel). Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, NYC. Albrecht Dürer, The Men s Bath, 1498, Woodcut, 15 7/16 x 11 1/8 in. Gift of Samuel Isham, Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci), Untitled (study of a male ﬁgure for Ten Thousand Martyrs), c 152830, Red chalk on paper, 9.5 x 4.5 in. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Borghi. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Untitled (study of a male ﬁgure for The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome), c 1540, Black chalk on paper, 7.25 x 11.25 in. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Borghi.

ed figures is playing the flute. That flute returns as sexual innuendo in a painting by one of the greatest of all Renaissance artists, the Florentine mannerist Bronzino, who was so bold as to paint his patron Cosimo de’ Medici in the buff in an allegory of music, posed as the classical figure Orpheus. For Bronzino, whatever the particulars of his lifelong intimacy with his former master Pontormo (who is represented in the exhibition), not to mention his portraits’ obvious eroticization of handsome young men, we should not lose sight of the remarkable fact that in the Renaissance it was not only socially acceptable to portray the most powerful figures in Florence nude, but in the guise of Orpheus with a flute sticking out of his crotch like an erection. After all, it was Orpheus who, upon losing his beloved Eurydice to the god of the underworld, renounced women and in the words of Roman poet Ovid, “He was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his love to young boys, and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering, this side of manhood.” For Johann Joachim Winckelmann, scholarly and erotic pursuits were the same, until he was robbed and mur-

dered by an Italian hustler in 1768 at the age of 51. Celebrated as a great classicist, his openly homoerotic accounts of Greek art are widely acclaimed as the very first examples of what would shortly become a new scholarly discipline, art history. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Winckelmann’s influence was in part responsible for a new classicizing aesthetic that swept all of Europe and then jumped the ocean to become the dominant aesthetic mode in the US as well, as our first really national style: neo-classicism. By the early-tomid-19th century, as a direct outgrowth of neo-classicism, the male nude had become the standard by which to measure artistic achievement. The fervor for all things classical resulted in one of the strangest objects in the exhibition, a photo album assemblage of a postcard series called Lebender Marmor, or Living Marble. To make the images, nude male and female models were covered in marble dust, turning flesh into stone. They then adopted the poses of neoclassical and antique statuary, and the resulting late-19th century photographs served as a tasteful form of soft porn, images one would not be embarrassed

Jean Leon Gerome, The Serpent Charmer, 1894. Photogravure (issued by D. Appleton and Co.), 11 3/8 x 15 13/16 in. Collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum, Foundation Purchase.

to have out in the drawing room. But whatever could not be acknowledged at home could instead always be projected onto the other, and the rise of Orientalism in the mid-19th century was a classic instance of this. Jean-Léon Gérôme’s famous nude youth holding a large snake is clearly being ogled by elderly men, but close examination reveals that the men aren’t looking at the snake. By this point—and in Germany above all—male nudes were ubiquitous in public murals, a development that only began to taper off as the new science began to name and characterize a different human species, “the homosexual.” But what was originally named and deﬁned in an attempt to police and control soon became a banner announcing a new social and political movement. With the expatriate German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden and his cousin Wilhelm von Plüschow, old-school Orientalism merged with a nascent homosexual identity to produce images of a fantasyland

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in Sicily where beautiful youth lounged naked, cuddling together, and appearing sexually available. Their photographs were retailed throughout Europe, an implicit call to go south, away from the anti-homosexual hysteria stirred up by the trial of Oscar Wilde and toward a place where the lithesome bodies of poor, malleable youth were bought. But many of the earliest homoerotic images in the newly visible homosexual canon were by women, in part because while men lost status in declaring their homosexuality, for many women—conventionally forced to live under their father’s roof and then their husband’s with little to no independence—homosexual-

ity offered a means not only of declaring autonomy but even of competing with men for the affections of women. Although this hardly meant lesbians were well liked by men, it did suggest that women like Djuna Barnes felt less of an imperative to hide their homosexuality than did queer men at the time. And for some women insulated by wealth and cultural power, such as Natalie Barney, paintings like Chasseresse or The Huntress, an image of the goddess of the hunt Diana chucking a horned antelope—a priapic symbol—under the chin in a gesture of absolute control, were tantamount to an open declaration of lesbian identiﬁcation.

(clockwise from top left) Robert Mapplethorpe, Ajitto, 1981, Gelatin silver print, 18 x 14 in. Copyright Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. Herbert List, Plaster casts, Academy I, Munich, 1946, Gelatin silver print, 11.4 x 9 in. Collection of William Zewadski. Ruth Bernhard, Draped Torso, 1962, Selenium-toned silver gelatin print, 12.75 X 8.25 in. Courtesy of Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

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Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the classical nude was enlisted by gay photographer Herbert List as an emblem of the fall of empires. His images of the bombed-out remains of the Munich Academy’s plaster collection (plaster casts of antique statuary were used to teach drawing) is unforgettable. Though the figures are inert, the metaphorical relation to human lives laid waste is clear. Reversing that equation, Ruth Bernhard’s 1962 Draped Torso achieves such a classical pose and equilibrium that the viewer is led to see a flesh-and-blood figure as cold stone. By 2009, Caitlin and I, by Zanele

Muholi, reworks the classical nude into a complex postcolonial statement. The black South African photographer makes herself over into a pillow and support for a white woman. Hardly inanimate, it is the photographer’s knowing and direct gaze at us the viewers that makes the photograph work, a gaze that lets us know that everything in this staged photo is fully aware of the dangerous tropes it deploys. From the repeated citation of certain queer classical themes such as Narcissus or Ganymede or the Three Graces to the deployment of classical drapery, classicism continues to serve as the well-

spring of art even today. Robert Mapplethorpe mitigated the shock of his explicit homoeroticism by cloaking his photographs in a classicizing aura, lending a comfortable familiarity to images intended to shock. Today, classicism has become a kind of shorthand for an awareness of history, a centuries-long image vocabulary that can be manipulated at will. For queer artists, that past has long contained vestigial signs of an erotic identity only articulated fairly recently. To connect with that past was a source of strength, and a mode of solidarity, that pointed forward even as it looked back. ■ ............................................................

The Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History. October 18, 2014 to January 4, 2015, opening Thursday, October 18, 6-8pm, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, was curated by Jonathan David Katz, President of the LeslieLohman Museum Board of Trustees, and Director of the Visual Studies Doctoral Program, State University of New York at Buﬀalo.

(above) Del LaGrace Volcano, The Three Graces (Jasper, Suzie, & Gill, London), 1992, Digital c-print, 30 x 23.5 in. Collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum, Foundation purchase. (left) Friedrich O. Wolter, Drei Grazien, n.d., Photograph, 5.5 x 3.5 in. Collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum, Foundation Purchase. Example of Leben der Marmor (Living Marble.)

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Collection Building Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director

One of the most enjoyable

things about running a museum is the opportunity to build our collection. This summer we offered Permanency: Selections for the Permanent Collection, which showed some of the 1,323 objects that have been accessioned into the Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition contained the work of 39 artists with 64 individual objects. The work was varied as it represented well-known individuals such as David Hockey, Berenice Abbott, Robert Indiana, Deborah Kass, Peter Hujar, and George Platt Lynes, and it gave us the opportunity to showcase work by newer artists such as Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Leah DeVun, Josh McNey, and Alexander Kargaltsev. Most satisfying was the public support we received for our efforts through the steady stream of visitors into the Museum as well as great coverage in The New York Times, Hufﬁngton Post, and W Magazine. Beyond the images, however, were the stories of the artists and the community they created. It was wonderful to explore the work and life of George Platt Lynes. Having been raised in New Jersey, Lynes was sent to Paris at the age of 18 to study. There he met Gertrude Stein, Glenway Wescott, and other gay artists and writers. Upon return to the US, he opened a bookstore and then began a commercial photography practice. His circle included Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine, and others. Later, he moved to California before returning to New York in his later life. His commercial photography clients included: Harper’s, Vogue, Saks Fifth Avenue, and others. He also created many images for the American Ballet Company (now the New York City Ballet), as well as homoerotic images, some of which are in the collection of the Kinsey Institute. The work we exhibited depicted the model Carlos McClendon, considered the most famous of Lynes’s “unknown” models. It was taken two years after the end of World War II. Interestingly, in the upper left-hand corner of the photograph, one can see an oil painting. It is A Conversation Piece (1940) by Paul Cadmus, a group portrait of Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler, and George

Platt Lynes. The three men lived together in a colonial farmhouse in Clinton, New Jersey, sharing close ties in taste, work, and friends. Cadmus placed them on the grassy foreground among daily papers, art books, and Audubon’s fine print of the Peregrine hawk, in homage to Wescott’s short novel The Pilgrim Hawk. On the same wall in the exhibition, we exhibited a catalog by DAM! (Dyke Action Machine.) The collaboration began as a working group of Queer Nation and quickly evolved into a standalone unit whose membership remained anonymous for many years. It was later revealed that it is a two-person public art project founded in 1991 by artists Carrie Moyer and Sue Schaffner. DAM! presented a hybrid form of public campaigns that addressed civic issues packaged to fit into the commercialized streetscape. The campaigns dissected mainstream media by inserting lesbian images into recognizably commercial contexts, revealing how lesbians are and are not depicted in American popular culture. A typical DAM! campaign was comprised of 5,000 posters wheat-pasted over the course of one month. The image on the object displayed was part of a campaign begun in 1993 as a response to the Calvin Klein underwear advertising campaign that featured actor Mark Walhberg, to whom anti-gay statements and actions had been attributed. Simultaneously acknowledging the popularity of Calvin Klein underwear for lesbian and gay consumers, it also put identifiable lesbians—women who adhere to a queer aesthetic of attractiveness—into a homoerotic frame that fetishized the white, male, muscle-bound body. Elsewhere in the exhibition we showed the work of the artist Michael Kelley. Before the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation existed, Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman ran a commercial gallery on Broome Street in Soho that sold gay-themed and homoerotic artwork. In the late 70s, they offered Kelley a oneperson show. The show had a successful opening reception that resulted in eighteen of Kelley’s drawings being sold that evening. Although he was in New York at the time, Kelley never showed up for the opening. The following day, it was

George Platt Lynes, Carlos McLendon, 1947, Silver gelatin print,19 x 14.25 in. Gift of Douglass Roby.

discovered that Kelley had committed suicide that evening by hanging himself with his belt. Charles contacted Kelley’s family to inquire about what was to be done with the artwork and how he could return it to them. Kelly’s mother was abhorred that her son would commit to paper such “unspeakable acts” and wanted nothing to do with them. Later, Charles sent the family a check for all of the unsold artwork and Kelley’s share of the proceeds of those pieces that had sold. The check was never cashed or returned. Charles donated the work to the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation. Today, there are ninety-ﬁve drawings and one painting in the Leslie-Lohman collection by Kelley. On another wall, we displayed the work of Nan Goldin. Having grown up in a suburb of Boston, Goldin has made work speaking to the gay and lesbian community for more than forty years. Her ﬁrst exhibition, in 1973, featured denizens of the gay and transgender community in Boston. Other works, such as the Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986), documented the post-Stonewall gay, music, drug, and punk scenes. Goldin’s immense volume of work depicts the human condition, particularly during the years spent documenting the impact of AIDS on the gay community. “My photography, in the end,” she says, “didn’t do enough. It didn’t save Cookie [Mueller]. But over time, my

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photographs and other photography about people with AIDS have helped. It has definitely given a more human face to statistics. We need to keep putting images out there. But not ones that are digitally manipulated like almost everyone is doing now. We need to have reality instead of this believable-fiction crap that’s become so popular.” Next to the Goldin piece was work by Robert Indiana. His Hartley Elegies (1989-1994) is a series of images made as paintings and prints. They were inspired by Marsden Hartley’s War Motif series, which Hartley executed as a tribute to the young German soldier Karl von Freyburg, who died during World War I and with whom Hartley had a relationship. Indiana employs Hartley’s stylized visual language throughout the Elegies, while encoding them with deeper meaning. The piece on display is an interpretation of the original work, using the motifs of German World War I pageantry and the references to von Freyburg found in Hartley’s painting Portrait of a German Officer. These include the Iron Cross, which von Freyburg was awarded just before his death, and von Freyburg’s initials, “KvF.” Indiana also employs the original painting’s

red, green, black, white, blue, and yellow color scheme. Indiana transformed Hartley’s obvious brushwork into his signature hard-edged lines and bright saturated color. He also adds a significant motif, a large central ring found in many of the Elegies. In FÜR K.V.F., Hartley’s name is spelled out in red letters across the bottom. In other versions of the Elegies, Indiana inserted the date “October 7” between the years 1914 and 1989 in the bottom half of the work. October 7, 1914 was the date of von Freyburg’s death and October 7, 1989 was the date, seventy-five years later, that Indiana began working on the Elegies. Indiana asserts that he inserted himself into the series purposefully to associate himself with Hartley and von Freyburg’s relationship. By definition, museums like ours are object-based organizations. Through the preservation and exhibition of these objects, we educate future generations and ourselves. It is through our permanent collections that we are defined. Museums are known by how they care for, exhibit, and grow their collections. As we work hard to develop our permanent collection, we strive to represent the best art that speaks to and is made by the

LGBTQ community. We want to thank those donors who make the acquisition of new works possible and those who donate work to us—particularly artists and their families. We also want to thank the supporters of the Fritz Lohman Museum Fund and the members of the Pinto-Wight Society. ■

(top) Nan Goldin, Clemens at lunch at de Sade, Lacoste, France, 1999, C-print on paper, 13.75 x 9.25 in. Foundation purchase with funds provided by Louis Wiley, Jr. (above) Michael Kelley, Untitled, 1979, Graphite on paper, 20.688 x 14.938 in. Gift of Arthur Bennett Kouwenhoven. (left) Peter Hujar, Fran Lebowitz [at home in Morristown], 1974, Vintage gelatin silver print, 13.75 x 13.563 in. Gift of the Peter Hujar Archives.

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PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE ISSUE 51

The News from Prince Street Project Space Rob Hugh Rosen, Deputy Director of Programmatic Operations

Prince Street Project Space

127B Prince St., NYC. On the dates of exhibitions openings are on Friday 6-8pm and the gallery is open Saturday and Sunday noon-6pm, unless otherwise stated. September 26-28 Rm. XIV. Photographs

by Mark Mackillop. Mackillop calls these photographs his “Hotel Room Series.” Taken while he was on tour performing in West Side Story in Europe, the series began as a way to connect with friends back home. Instead of a written journal he documented his lonely and isolating down time in each of the hotel rooms with self-portraits taken using a timer. October 10-12 Under Siege. Photographs

by Brett Lindell. By marrying images of the erotic to movement, Lindell asks us to explore freedom after bliss and to strip away the articles of bondage, both social and sexual, in the pursuit of personal transcendence. He asks: Who do we yearn to become when the orgasm has subsided? Lindell will also release his new publication, Covers Magazine; Some Queens Have Issues, Others Have Subscriptions. Monday October 13 6-8pm Trans Literary

Evening. Poetry readings and writing performances organized by Catherine Fitzpatrick in cooperation with Topside Press, including Sybil Lamb, Casey Plett, and Olympia Perez. October 24-26 The Subject is Black. The

artist Lawrence Graham-Brown gathers eight artists of widely varied backgrounds for an exhibition and salon aiming to complicate the global conversation about the “black” body, a body that is perpetually in ﬂux, restrained, attacked, and often denied its full expression. These eight artists use the black body as the predominant theme, politicized in its sexuality and gender differences, to question its value in the world. GrahamBrown’s intention is to present the work of established, emerging, and unrecognized artists, thereby initiating new dialogue to foster and connect their experiences, and to document these experiences for the

awareness and enrichment of the greater art world, particularly at a time of persistent institutional oppression that denies these artists visibility. The artists are: Ricky Day, Florine Demosthene, J D Dragan, Gerard H. Gaskin, Archie Lindo, Carlo Quispe, Adejoke Tugbiyele, and Tony Whitﬁeld. Oct 26 4-5:30pm artist discussion Tuesday October 28 6-8pm Beauty

Underground. The Peter Cicchino Youth Project(PCYP) will host its ﬁrst annual

Mark MacKillop. Zurich, Switzerland, 2014, Digital photograph, 11 x 14 in. Brett Lindell, Dereck, Photograph, 13 x 19 in.

pop up art show. Sales will support PCYP’s work providing legal services for homeless and street-involved LGBTQ youth. Participating artists include Mel Odom, Scooter LaForge, Jessica Yatrofsky, Yana Toyber, Ethan James Green, Thomas Hammer, Joshua David McKenney, and many others.

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November 7-9 Your Mouth’s A Roller

Coaster: Visceral Imagery from The Basement. An exhibition of drawings and paintings by Chuck Nitzberg and Dan Romer. See article on page 22. November 14-16 Queer Art Mentorship

Visual Art Weekend. Queer/Art/Mentorship was founded on the belief that the more vibrant and supported the queer artistic community is the more porous its boundaries will become, thereby cultivating superior artistry and sustainable creative careers. Its mission is to support artists in the process of building a community of queer artists of all generations and mediums who know each other and each other’s work. The artists in this weekend exhibition, working in a variety of media, are: Colin Self and Lain Kay, Xena Semjonova, Moe Angelos, Troy Michie, Geoff Chadsey, and Pati Hertling. November 21-23 Queer Art Mentorship

Multidisciplinary Weekend— Nov 21 Evening screenings by Seyi Adebanjo, Yoruba Richen, Natalia Leite, and Vanessa Haroutunian, to be followed by a Q&A with Rick Herron. See leslielohman.org for times. Nov 22 Evening reading/book release with Ella Boureau, Nicole Goodwin, Geo Wyeth (aka HW Clobba), and Peter Knegt. See leslielohman.org for times. Nov 23 Evening event with Foundational Sharing. Performance, readings, conversation, zine release, with Bridget de Gersigny, Ted Kerr, Aldreen Valdez, and others. See leslielohman.org for times.

December 12-14 Boys of El Barrio, the

Original Latino Fan Club. Vintage graphic designs of Dana Bryan, presented by Tony Zanetta and Kymara Lonergan. In the 1980s erotic imagery of the “All American Boy” was widely accessible. Graphic artist Dana Bryan, aware that images of Latino men for whom he had a preference were difficult to find, began an adult video enterprise called Latino Fan Club. His first release, San Juan Six Pack in 1985, featured a cast of young, macho, mostly Puerto Rican models who were regulars at a popular Manhattan hustler bar. This exhibition of Bryan’s posters and stills, along with his videos will revisit a rapidly receding era of New York City X-rated underground culture. Dec 12 7-9pm Exhibition opening. Dec 13 7-9pm Pop Corn Porn Movie Night. A screening of selections from Bryan’s Real Latino Fan Club X-rated movies, and a Q&A by the film creator. ■ UPCOMING AT PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE Jan. 23-25, 2015 Christina

Schlesinger’s paintings on the “Tomboy” theme.

(left top) Dana Bryan (Latino Fan Club), The General, c 1998, Scan from 35mm slide. (left bottom) Adejoke Tugbiyele, Cinemas, 2014. Collage pri nted on archival acetate, 17 x 14 in. (below) Florine Demosnthene, Wonder Twins (from The Capture Series 20092014), Ink, charcoal, graphite and oil bar on polypropylene, 24 x 36 in.

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WINDOW GALLERY ISSUE 51

Collaboration with the Queer/Art/Mentorship Program This autumn and winter,

the Museum will embark on a new collaboration with the Queer/Art/Mentorship program based here in NYC. The program was founded on the belief that the more vibrant and supported the queer artistic community is, the more porous its boundaries will become, thereby cultivating superior artistry and sustainable creative careers. It is largely driven by the unique character of each of the mentor/ fellow pairs according to their respective needs and habits of communication. The ambitious program, founded in 2011 by film-maker Ira Sachs and Pilobolus Co-Executive Director Lily Binns, seeks to honor the differences between the generations within the queer artistic community and the diversity of choices, values, esthetics, and opportunities in artists’ lives. Its goal is to build an interconnected web of queer artists of all generations and mediums who know each other and each other’s work. Fellows are chosen through a two-step juried review process to select artists whose work and life reflect a thoughtful engagement with queer communities, stories, histories, politics, and/or aesthetics, and who demonstrate an earnest interest in and need for mentorship. Mentors are selected by invitation. Each session lasts approximately one year. There will be exhibitions of work by Q/A/M participants in the Wooster Street Windows Gallery running from late September 2014 until mid-February 2015, curated by 2014 Q/A/M Fellow Rick Heron. Participating artists include Seyi Adebanjo, Bridget de Gersigny, and Xe�a Stanislavovna Semjonová. The first of these exhibitions will feature Seyi Adebanjo Sept. 24–Nov. 19. In addition to work shown in the Wooster Street Windows Gallery, there will be exhibitions this autumn and winter in the Prince Street Project Space by Q/A/M participants including Colin Self & Lain Kay, Ella Boureau, Moe Angelos, Troy Michie, Yoruba Richen, Nicole Goodwin, Peter Knegt, Geoff Chadsey, Geo Wyeth, Natalia Leite, and Foundational Sharing with Bridget de Gersigny, Ted Kerr, and Aldreen Valdez. Visit Queerartmentorship.org for more details about the program. ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

WINDOW GALLERY ISSUE 51

(opposite page) Colin Self & Lain Kay, 2 Pretty Lyric Sheet, 2014, Digital collage, Dimensions variable. (above) Seyi Adebanjo, from Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles!, 2013, Digital photograph, Dimensions variable. (left) Xe a Stanislavovna SemjonovĂĄ and Kristin Wolford, Variation on Hand, I I , 2011, Photographic print, Dimensions variable.

The Wooster Streeet Window Gallery is a street-facing gallery featuring work by contemporary, emerging, and underrepresented LGBTQ artists who address issues of gender, identity, sex and pop culture. The Window Gallery is visible from the street, and is on view 24 hours a day.

The Archive: NO 51 â&#x2014;? AUTUMN 2014

EXHIBITION ISSUE 51

IRREVERENT: A CELEBRATION OF CENSORSHIP February 13 – April 19, 2015 Leslie-Lohman Museum Jennifer Tyburczy, Guest Curator

This exhibition is dedicated

to all the censors, would-be and actual, as it celebrates the unintended consequences of their failed attempts to suppress queer creativity. With a wink and a tickle, the LeslieLohman Museum and I give thanks to those who gave unprecedented publicity to the very artists and their artworks they attempted to smother with their prohibitions, back-room dealings and cover-ups,

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

(left) Michelle Handelman, Dorian: A Cinematic Perfume, 2009-2011, Film still from four-channel video, 63 min. Courtesy the artist. (below) Kent Monkman, Duel After the Masquerade, 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 30 in. Collection of Jennifer Dattels.

EXHIBITION ISSUE 51

spying, break-ins, and vandalizations. Underneath the legal briefs and beyond the warning signs, Irreverent gives the ﬁnger (or the ﬁst) to the phobic histories that brought so much attention to the no-no places of queer artistic life of the past three decades. Taking its inspiration from the censorship of Robert Mapplethorpe’s art in the 1980s and 1990s and the more recent withdrawal of David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery in 2010, the show traces a counter-history of artists, artworks, and exhibitions that were just too hot to handle for the taboo-frenzied sanitizers of the museum world. From the ransacking of Zanele Muholi’s apartment in South Africa; to the neo-Nazi axing of Andres Serrano’s A History of Sex in Lund, Sweden; to the Deacon-led protests of Alma López’s sensual icon Our Lady in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and to the underhanded re-

moval of Michelle Handelman’s ﬁlm, Dorian, in Austin, Texas, Irreverent brazenly displays these works and contextualizes them within the theatrical scenes of censorship that were directed by the self-anointed morality police. Sex—queer, dissident, explicit—is central to the exhibition, as it was for the censors who put the plunging necklines of queer sexual appetites on the art historical map. But as much as the exhibition revels in queer erotic pleasures, so too is Irreverent fascinated by how the defamers of queer life have consistently used sex to prohibit all kinds of border crossings as they relate to immigration and religion; to race, gender, and disability; and to globalization and capitalism. With this in mind, Irreverent invites you to celebrate the resilience, survival, and rebellion of the diverse social and political issues that queer artists audaciously depict in their work.

Barbara Nitke, Bathroom Kiss, 1995, Silver gelatin print, 14 x 21 in. Courtesy the artist.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

EXHIBITION ISSUE 51

Corrine Bot, Jack and Jill: Underwear, 2010, Photograph, 18 x 12 in. Courtesy the artist.

Artists slated to participate in the exhibition include Seray Ak, Baris Barlas, Corrine Bot, Alex Donis, Harmony Hammond, Michelle Handelman, Alma López,

Robert Mapplethorpe, Damla Mersin, Kent Monkman, Zanele Muholi, Barbara Nitke, Andres Serrano, Kimi Tayler, David Wojnarowicz, and Jason Woodson. ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

Jennifer Tyburczy is Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her book Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display is forthcoming by the University of Chicago Press in 2015.

Galleries of Interest

GALLERIES ISSUE 51

See Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum on the Back Cover NEW YORK CITY ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25th St., NYC, clampart. com Nov 20-Dec 20 Brian Finke: US Marshals Monya Rowe Gallery 34 Orchard St. monyarowegallery.com thru Nov 2 Let s Stay Together : Angela Dufresne paintings Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue, NYC, museumofsex.com thru Spring 2015 Funland: Pleasures and Perils of the Erotic Fairground; Ongoing The Eve of Porn: Linda Lovelace; Universe of Desire; Sex Life of Animals; Spotlight on the Collection Participant Inc, 253 E. Houston St., NYC, participantinc Nov 2- Dec 21 Greer Lankton, Love Me Team Gallery 83 Grand St. teamgal.com thru Oct 12 YEARBOOK: Ryan McGinley photographs

BROOKLYN & BRONX Figureworks 168 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY, ﬁgureworks.com Nov 14-Dec 21 My Sister s Doll, A Christmas Story. Group exhibition about doll making and gift giving.

NORTHEAST Firehouse Gallery, 8 Walnut Street, Bordentown, NJ, ﬁrehousegallery.com Work by Eric Gibbons Gallery Kayafas 450 Harrison Ave. Boston, MA gallerykayafas.com thru Oct 11 Every Breath We Drew: Jess T. Dugan photographs; Oct 17-Nov 29 Frank Egloﬀ, A. B. Miner, Julie Miller Rice/Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA ricepolakgallery.com thru Dec 31 Gallery Artist Group Show The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA, warhol.org thru Jan, 4, 2015 13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the 1964 World s Fair; Ongoing I Just Want to Watch: Warhol s Film, Video, and Television Vitruvian Gallery, LLC, 734 7th Street, SE, Washington, DC, vitruviangallery.com Wessel + O Connor Fine Art 7 N. Main St., Lambertville, NJ, wesseloconnor.com

GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA, glbthistory.org/ museum Ongoing Queer Past Becomes Present; Ongoing Biconic Flashpoints: 4 Decades of Bay Area Bisexual Politics; Ongoing 1964: The Year San Francisco Came Out Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, CA, highwaysperformance.org/highways JDC Fine Art 2400 Kettner Blvd, #208, San Diego, CA thru Nov 22 Her: Marjorie Salvaterra photography M+B, 612 North Almont Dr., Los Angeles, CA, mbart.com ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 909 W. Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA onearchives.org thru Jan 11, 2015 Montezland Rio Bravo Fine Art, 110 N Broadway St., Truth or Consequences, NM riobravoﬁneartgallery. com thru Oct 26 Fiberart 2014‒A Mixed Bag; Oct 11-Dec 28 Delmas Howe Fresh Air ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 626 North Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood, CA Sin City Gallery, 107 E. Charleston Blvd, #100, Las Vegas, NV, sincitygallery.com The Advocate & Gochis Galleries, 1125 North McCadden Place, Los Angeles, CA, lagaycenter.org Viking Union Gallery 516 High St. Bellingham, WA thru Oct 31 Jess Dugan, photography

MIDWEST Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N. Greenview Ave. Chicago, IL leatherarchives. org Ongoing Etienne; Leather Bar; Leather History Timeline; Fakir Musafar; From Sir to Grrr; Debates in Leather

SOUTH

Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood, CA, antebellumgallery.blogspot.com

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, AR,crystalbridges. org, thru Jan 19 Discovering American Art Now, Cobi Moules, Fahamu Pecou and others

Center for Sex & Culture 1349 Mission Street, San Francisco sexandculture.org

World Erotic Art Museum, 1205 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL, weam.com/web

WEST

Marjorie Salvaterra, Her Last Supper, 2013, Archival pigment print (Ed. 20), 30 x 44 in. © Marjorie Salvaterra. Courtesy jdc Fine Art, San Diego, CA.

Naruki Kukita, Kiss, 2014, Oil on canvas, 11 x 14 in. Courtesy La Petite Mort Gallery, Ottawa.

CANADA Ottawa La Petite Mort Gallery, 306 Cumberland St., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, lapetitemortgallery. com thru Nov 2 The Rebel, The Recruit & The Chosen: Matthew Stradling, Naruki Kukita, Jerome Galvin

EUPOPE Berlin Schwules Museum, Lutzowstrasse 73, Berlin, schwulesmuseum.de thru Oct 6 Naked Shame and Pretty Disgrace: Lothar Lamberts Underground: Pictures, Movies, Life; thru Nov 30 MY COMRADE‒THE DIVA, Theater of the front and the internment camps of WWI, curated by Anke Vetter

Groningen, NL Galerie MooiMan, Noorderstationsstraat 40, 9717KP Groningen, NL, mooi-man.nl

Madrid La Fresh Gallery, Conde de Aranda 5, Madrid, lafreshgallery.com Ongoing Bruce LaBruce, Gorka Postigo, Nicolás Santos, and Slava Mogutin

Munich Kunstbehandlung/Saatchi Gallery 40 Müller Strasse 40, Munich, kunstbehandlung.de thru Oct Robert C. Rore: New Work, painting

Paris La Galerie au Bonheur du Jour, 11 rue Chabanais, Paris, aubonheurdujour.net thru Nov 22 Tunisia 1905-1910 Lehnert and Landrock photographs; Ongoing Erotic objects, paintings and drawings. By appointment between exhibitions. Musée d Orsay,62 Rue de Lille musee-orsay.fr Oct 14-Jan 25 Sade: Attacking the Sun

Tampere, Finland Museum Centre Vapriikki, Alaverstaanraitti 5, Tampere, Finland thru Mar 15 Sealed with a Secret Correspondence of Tom of Finland

Vienna Leopold Museum, at the MuseumsQuartier, Vienna leopoldmuseum.org thru Oct 20 Line & Shape: 100 Master Drawings from the Leopold Collection

The Archive: NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

BOOKS ISSUE 51

How Gay Was Gore Vidal? How High The Moon? A Book Review of In Bed with Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master by Tim Teeman Douglas Blair Turnbaugh

New Yorker cartoon:

a little Boy Scout points to his merit badge sash, saying “This one’s for homophobia.” This is worthy of Gore Vidal. What color is your badge? “Round up the usual suspects!” Muslims are on the NYPD’s list of potential terrorists. Nazis color coded badges for their victims to wear. William F. Buckley, who Vidal once characterized as a crypto-Nazi, proposed tattoos for homosexuals, on the buttocks. People who refuse to be labeled are bashed by the groups they decline to identify with. Hannah Arendt wanted to

be seen as her own person, not as a “Jew.” Jews denounced her as anti-Semitic. Quentin Crisp and James Purdy did not want to wear the pink triangle [perhaps something in scarlet or rose?] and they were reviled by the “gay community” as self-hating homophobes. Nureyev was another person who was only himself. That was plenty. Gore Vidal would be Gore Vidal, take him or leave him, but nobody left him alone. An endearing, romantically melancholy cover portrait of the writer-as-young-man is sullied by a salacious title “In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master.” The title is worthy of a headline in one of Rupert Murdoch smutty newspapers. Its author, Tim Teeman, credits himself as a veteran journalist, for 14 years with Murdoch publications—so consider the source. Teeman wants to pin a gay badge on Gore Vidal’s corpse. He promises “the details of [Vidal’s] sex life...are the foundation of this book.” This is no scoop: the details of Vidal’s sex life, from puberty to his death at 86, are no secret, often told by Vidal himself—“I’ve tried everything except incest and square dancing.” Vidal, unapologetically his own man, became a celebrity. “Tattooist” William Buckley called him a faggot on national television. On an episode of “The Simpsons,” Lisa lamented that she would never kiss as many boys as Gore Vidal had. Teeman uses responses to questions asked of countless people [the book has no index], to justify his attack on Vidal’s character. His chapter headings are rhetorical questions, such as “Jimmy Trimble: His

(left) Cover of In Bed with Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master by Tim Teeman. Courtesy Riverdale Avenue Books. (above) Nazi Concentration Camp Badges, Mid 1930s, United States Holocaust Museum, Washington DC.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

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True Love?” and “Lovers or just Good Friends? Vidal’s Women.” His cover-all thesis question is a non-sequitur conundrum: “How gay was Gore Vidal?” He nudges his readers to “imagine the most withering of curled lips from the Master himself” that this would have provoked in Vidal. We readers would have asked Teeman how to take a measurement. Dr. Kinsey had a chart for sex preferences— from 1) opposite sex only to 9) same sex only—with plenty of variety in between. Vidal certainly had no patience with fools, and could convey withering contempt in a glance. Teeman’s patent hatred of his subject seems pathological, suggesting he may have been humiliated as a recipient of the Master’s “withering of curled lips” look. This book looks to be the blunt instrument of revenge. Seen by many as a champion of gay rights, Vidal’s first great contribution to gay liberation was his book The City and the Pillar (1948). It was the first [nonporn] gay novel, until then a strictly enforced taboo subject. “Gay” was shocking enough, but to write about two “normal” fourteen-year-old All-American boys—manly, athletic, self-assured, enjoying sex together—was wildly bold and dangerous. It was a life-saving message of brotherhood to thousand of gay men and boys who thought they were damned and alone. Also published in 1948, Dr. Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male dropped the bomb that about a third of the male population, including adolescents had had at least one homosexual encounter. Self-proclaimed guardians of status quo “morality” erupted with rage, and the outcry continues to this day. Banned, condemned, cursed, both books became best sellers. Abuse heaped on the authors was horrendously vicious. Kinsey was destroyed; Vidal gave his withering look of contempt to his assailants, kept on fucking [1000 boys before he was 25 years old, he said], and never stopped frightening the horses. Vidal describes the star-filled sky overhead the night he and his classmate Jimmy Trimble made love. “It was the first human happiness I had ever experienced.” They were fourteen years old, a vintage year for high-testosterone passion. Both boys later served on active duty in World War II. Jimmy was killed in battle on Iwo Jima in 1945. Gore idolized his love and grieved the rest of his life over his loss. He treasured a picture of Jimmy until the end. This is a Romeo-and-Juliet-strength, a tragic love story. Years later, Edward Albee wrote a powerful play about a man

(left) Harold Lang and Gore Vidal, Bermuda, 1947. © Quote Collection 2011. (right) Carl Van Vechtan, Gore Vidal, 1948, Photograph, 10 x 8 in. The Granger Collection, New York.

who confesses to his wife that he’s in love with somebody else, who happens to be a goat. Even Albee didn’t dare to write about loving a boy, he used a metaphor. Teeman wants us to believe that Vidal was a pederast. The charge alone instantly condemns the accused and a lynch mob forms. True or false, the allegation gouges a physical and emotional wound that can never heal. It is a favorite ploy in child custody trials. Teeman the witch-hunter points his withering finger at the first chapter in The City and the Pillar: the sexual encounter between two fourteenyear-old boys is autobiographical. (Gore was the older by four days, which makes him legally a statutory rapist.) For more vitriol in his witch’s brew, Teeman tosses in the zinger that Gore liked to visit Thailand. He claims that Witch Buckley kept a dossier documenting Gore’s pederastic molestations. (No one has ever seen it.) Notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of homosexuals in the State Department. The lawyer Joseph Welch famously asked the Senator, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” No one ever accused Gore Vidal of child abuse. No witness or “victim” has ever come forward. Dead men can’t sue for libel or slander, so Teeman is free to piss poison on the grave of a heroic man, a defining figure in American history.

Vidal had a life, incomprehensible to some, an inspiration to many. He was handsome, witty, and sexually attractive to men and women; had a brilliant mind put to full use; was an American patriot; made a lot of money through his multitude of talents. He had great friends in all walks of life; he had a great love in his life, Jimmy; and he had a life partner, the constant, tolerant, loyal Howard Auster at his side for 53 years. Gore is buried beside Howard within sight of Jimmy’s grave. R.I.P. ■ ...............................................................

Suggested Reading: Vidal s memoirs, Palimpsest and Point to Point Navigation; Scotty Bowers, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars. Its veracity endorsed by Vidal. And the latest great eulogy, Gore Vidal s United States of Fury by Johann Hari. See independent.co.uk/news for 9 August 2014. Suggested Films: The Education of Gore Vidal, American Masters, PBS, 2003. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, 2013 ...............................................................

Douglas Blair Turnbaugh is a writer, filmmaker, and artist. His accomplishments include: Ballets Russes, a documentary film; Cherubim, a book of photographs; Beat It More, a book of drawings; photographs published in Mein Schwules Auge #9; and the pre-production of his erotic film, Gesamtkunstwerk. His latest work is Free- Hand: Sketchbook Drawings 1940-Present from Taurus Editions, a book of his drawings.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 51

Events Programming Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations

Once again this summer

we were happy to partner with the All Out Arts 12th Annual Fresh Fruit Festival for the exhibition After Our Bodies Meet. Because we extended the exhibition length this year, there was a greater opportunity for some very interesting events. Our Bodies, Ourselves?, presented in conjunction with the Sarah Lawrence Women’s History Graduate Program, brought four award-winning women writers—Yalani Dream, Sham-e Ali Nayeem, Shye Sales, and Susan Sherman—from very different backgrounds and experiences to read and talk about women’s bodies both as a vehicle for creativity and as a focus of oppression. This international group spanning several generations and national, religious, and ethnic divisions, developed an important conversation about empowerment of women. Another evening brought the screening of four short experimental ﬁlms about the (above) Michael Fequieres, Neil Curtis̶Replace Clothes with Paint, 2013, Documentary ﬁlm, 17 minutes. (left) Ewan Duarte, Change Over Time, 2013, Film, 7 minutes.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 51

body, including the American premier of Unfinished by Law Suifung, the first experimental film on transgender issues by this Asian filmmaker. Change Over Time, by Ewan Durate, records his female-tomale transition and delivers a poignant message: “It’s not easier, just different—there is no transition finish line.” On a lighter note, we viewed the documentary by Michael Fequieres Neil Curtis—Replace Clothes with Paint about body painter Neil Curtis as he prepared for his 2012 New York City debut at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, and the short If You Are Auditioning For A Lesbian, You Already Have the Part, directed by Eli Rarey, showing an investigation in what it means to be a “lesbian.” SIGNIFIED held a fundraiser sprinkled with burlesque performers that drew over 100 supporters for Jay’s House, an organization committed to helping adult queers transition to permanent housing in a safe environment free of harassment and physical violence stemming from sexual orientation and/or gender pre-

sentation. Jay Toole, the inspirational director of this organization, was an addict and homeless in New York City for over twenty-ﬁve years and, after ﬁnally becoming clean in 1999, she secured housing. She now assists others with these same struggles. Also OP.LYNX, the Women’s Network of Out Professionals, held its monthly networking mixer here with a lively group of women who shared

cocktails and conversation while enjoying the compelling exhibition. August brought us the celebrated avant-garde theater artist Robert Wilson, who sat down with artist and longtime friend Peter Harvey and Leslie-Lohman’s Jonathan David Katz for a discussion about his storied career. Topics discussed included the relationship between sexuality and creativity; his collaborations with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Lady Gaga; and his founding of the Watermill Center, a unique environment for young and emerging artists from around the world, to explore new ideas. This talk was a rare opportunity to hear Robert Wilson, who seldom speaks publicly in New York. The Museum was honored to be chosen for this special speaking engagement. Wilson was very involved with the Museum’s 2012 Paul Thek exhibition, which would not have been possible without the support of the Watermill Center. ■ We are always adding new events to our programming at the Museum, so be sure to check our calendar section at LeslieLohman. org to keep up to date. Also, you can join our e-mail list by signing up on our website (Join Mailing List). You’ll receive our weekly update of events and happenings here at the Museum, and once a month you’ll receive our LeslieLohman Recommends, featuring exciting events and exhibitions happening throughout New York City and beyond. (above) Robert Wilson, Peter Harvey (left), Jonathan David Katz (right). (left) Our Bodies, Ourselves? panel discussion. (clockwise from top left) Yalini Dream, Sham-e Ali Nayeem, Shye Sales, Susan Sherman.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 51

Your Mouth’s A Roller Coaster

Visceral Imagery from The Basement New Work by Chuck Nitzberg and Dan Romer November 7– 10, 2014 Prince Street Project Space Two artists who have attended the Leslie-Lohman Drawing Studio for many years will exhibit their work in the Prince Street Project Space. The exhibition offers a rare glimpse into the gay drawing groups that have inspired both artists since meeting twelve years ago. Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian spoke with them about their upcoming exhibition.

DR: Having the camaraderie of the group has kept that old “standard” of the lone artist hunkered down in his studio at bay. Since I’ve always gravitated toward collaboration, the group satisﬁes me. Being part of a bigger picture forces me to have an even stronger personal vision so as not to be absorbed. It is also important to gaze through another’s eyes, especially another gay man’s. Camaraderie in desire is a lot of fun. It’s allowed me to explore the attraction/ repulsion aspect of observing the male form. It’s the power of the seduction and then being elated or disturbed by that fact. CN: The impact of the groups has been profound in two ways. Subjectively, theworkshops have allowed me an opportunity to explore the kind of artwork I want to make, and then to examine why I love drawing men with other men around. Particularly at the Leslie-Lohman drawing studio, the group dynamic sets up a sexually charged atmosphere that creates a feeling of empowerment, which, hopefully, translates to the page. HOH: Tell me more.

Hunter O’Hanian: I’m so happy we’re offering an exhibition of work by both of you. Tell me about your relationship with the LeslieLohman Drawing Studio. Chuck Nitzberg: I have a longstanding commitment to attend the group. I have kept that commitment since 2003. I also attend drawing groups organized at the Fashion Institute of Technology and elsewhere. Many of the other groups are also gay. Dan Romer: I’ve attended the drawing group from the days of The Queer Men’s Art Erotic Workshop to the present. There have been a few holes in my attendance, some unavoidable, some as intentional breathers. These days I try to go as often as possible, whether the model holds any fascination for me or not. That can actually work in my favor, allowing me to more objectively work on the idea that the boundary of the body is neither a part of the enclosed body, nor a part of the surrounding atmosphere. I also attend other groups as well. HOH: We will be showing work from those other groups in this exhibition as well. What has attracted you to these groups?

(above) Chuck Nitzberg, Boris, 2014, Mixed media on prepared paper, 19 x 17 in. (top left) Chuck Nitzberg, Because We Like You, 2014, Mixed media on prepared paper, 19 x 18.5 in.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 51

desire to have amemory imprint of the model/artist encounter, whether of the body or the atmosphere, is everything in my work. Life is not static; there is always something else to see at any given instant. My desire to have similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye is very much reﬂected in my art. The “how little” of me that is present? That would be fear. I am fearless to the point of being foolhardy when I am working, at times like the Fool from the tarot cards, always about to walk off the edge of the cliff. I learn more from my mistakes than I do from my successes. I just read an article on the ﬁgurative painter Marlene Dumas. She says, “art that moves you has something ungainly about it ... something going wrong.” I want to make art that moves you.. ■ ............................................................

Your Mouth s A Roller Coaster, Visceral Imagery from The Basement opens Friday Nov. 7 at 6pm and will be on view Nov. 8‒9 noon-6pm. Prince Street Project Space, 127B Prince St., NYC.

CN: The kind of questions I ask myself in a gay drawing group are different than in other drawing groups. Questions like, “What makes gay art gay?” Getting feedback from the group and connecting with other gay artists has been an invaluable experience. Also, by attending several workshops, each with a different ﬂavor, I can keep myself challenged and my work fresh. HOH: What are some of the challenges?

(left) Dan Romer, Rocky Seas, 2013, Mixed media on paper, 24 x 19 in. (top left) Dan Romer, Icarus, 2014, Mixed media on paper, 19 x 24 in.

CN: Formally, the biggest limitation of going to the workshops for so many years has been the repetitiveness of the overall layout, the poses, the timing of the poses, lighting, and the type of model—which all contribute to the overall sameness of the event. Over the years, I have tried to come up with different mediums, techniques, and premises. Recently, in order to vary my work, I have been experimenting with pre-painted papers made at home that I bring to the workshops to draw on. I have been playing with everything from acrylic interference to ceramic metallic paints. These loosely painted backgrounds create a tension to the more meticulously rendered ﬁgure drawn at the workshop. The contrasts of background to foreground and the mixture of mediums—such as what happens when gouache is painted over acrylic—create unexpected textures and shapes that add a surprising complexity to the overall effect of the artwork. The gay drawing groups, for me, have been a safe space to investigate a multitude of artistic endeavors, which has added clarity and focus to my work. HOH: About 10 years ago, Jack Pierson exhibited a series of images he called “self portraits,” but they were in fact photographs of other men. Is there a sense of self in the work you make at the Drawing Studio? CN: After a drawing session I usually hang one or two of the best drawings in my bedroom to look at daily, sometimes for months. The more interesting pieces ask, “What am I trying to say about me?” There are no answers, only more questions. I would say that after more than thirty years of doing commercial art where I catered to a mass market and had to sublimate myself to please the client, it is a feeling of great freedom to do artwork that reﬂects my true self. DR: For me, the Pierson images focused on desire as subject. My

Oh your eyes are lighted windows There’s a party going on inside Yes, your eyes are lighted windows There’s a party going on inside Your mouth’s a roller coaster Baby, I wanna take a ride. —From the song, Roller Coaster Blues, written for the musical Walk Tall, in 1954, lyrics by Marshall Barer, music by Dean Fuller. The musical previewed in Houston but never reached Broadway. The song was cut during the run in Texas. British actress Diana Dors released a recording of the song in 1960. Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times that is was a “little-known, obscure, sexy gem.”

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 51 ● AUTUMN 2014

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum

Classical Nudes / 26 Wooster Street October 17 2014 ‒ Jan 4, 2015

Examining the inﬂuence of the same-sex gaze as seen through the classical form from Antiquity to the Renaissance, 18th/19th Centuries, and present day. Curated by Jonathan David Katz. Unknown artist, Ruhm, 1910, Embossed print on paper, 4.5 x 7.5 in. LLM Collection, Foundation purchase.

Irreverent / 26 Wooster Street February 13‒April 19, 2015

Work by artists that has been censored from exhibitions due to its gay and sexual content. Curated by Jennifer Tyburczy. Zanele Muholi, Being (Detail, Ed. 8), 2007. Courtesy of the artist and the Yancey Richardson Gallery.

GMHC / 26 Wooster Street

January 22‒February 1, 2015

Works by participants in the GMHC art therapy program. Curated by GMHC volunteers. James Horner, At this Ungodly Hour, 2013, Acrylic on canvas.

Connection / 26 Wooster Street May 1-July 5, 2015

Twenty-ﬁve New York based queer artists working a wide variety of mediums that have developed an artistic community through social media platforms. Curated by Walt Cessna. Scooter LaForge, Andy Warhol s Insides, 2012, Oil on canvas, 40 x 36 in.