The Archive: Issue 46 Summer 2013

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T HE ARCHI VE 46 The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

Robert Siegelman, Untitled, 1994, Large Format Polaroid, 24 x 20 in., Gift of Steven Muller

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 20,000 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 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, entertaining and challenging all who enter its doors.

Founders

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

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

CONTENTS THE ARCHIVE NUMBER 46 SUMMER 2013

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RECENT ACQUISITIONS̶2013: AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS RECENTLY ADDED TO THE MUSEUM S COLLECTIONS

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NUDE IN PUBLIC: SASCHA SCHNEIDER, HOMOEROTICISM AND THE MALE FORM CIRCA 1900 JONATHAN DAVID KATZ, CURATOR

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GALLERIES OF INTEREST LET S CLEAN HOUSE

HUNTER O HANIAN, MUSEUM DIRECTOR

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EVENT PROGRAMMING AT LLM

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DIGGING INTO THE PSYCHOSEXUAL PAST: THE DRAWINGS OF DOUGLAS BLAIR TURNBAUGH

JERRY KAJPUST, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS

BY PETER WEIERMAIR

Co-Founder & Director Emeritus Charles W. Leslie

Staff

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NEWS FROM PRINCE STREET

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RESEACHING THE MUSEUM S ARCHIVES

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NEWS ON THE LESLIE-LOHMAN COLLECTIONS

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QUEERING THE LANDSCAPE: JACOB LOVE S STATES

ROB HUGH ROSEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAMMATIC OPERATIONS

BRANDEN WALLACE, COLLECTIONS MANAGER

WAYNE SNELLEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR COLLECTIONS

BY DAMIAN OWEN-BOARD

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 Julia Haas, Curatorial and Communications Manager Branden Wallace, Collections Manager Todd Fruth, Office Manager Victor Trivero, Exhibition Lighting Stephanie Chambers, Bookkeeper Daniel Sander, Receptionist

Volunteer Staff

Cryder Bankes, Library Steven Goldstein, Collections, Administration Daniel Kitchen, Museum Advocate Oliver Klaassen, All Departments & Research Johnathan Lewis, Collections Stephan Likosky, Collections

Tai Lin, Collections Chuck Nitzberg, Events Tiffany Nova, Marketing & Communications Maddie Phinney, Research Cody Ross, Collections Frank Sheehan, Drawing Studio James Thacker, Graphic Design

The Archive

The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Number 46 Tom Saettel, Editor Joseph Cavalieri, Production and Design

©2013 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: Patrick Webb, By Punchinello s Bed, 1992, Oil on canvas, 78 x 58 in., Gift of Brian Kloppenberg and Patrick Webb

John Burton Harter, Danseure, 1996, Oil on board, 48 x 24 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: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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EXHIBITION ISSUE 46

Recent Acquisitions—2013

An Exhibition of Works Recently Added to the Museum’s Collections—August 8–September 8, LLM

(above) Joey Terrill, Still-Life with Forget-Me-Nots and One Week s Dose of Truvada, 2011-2012, Mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48 in., Museum purchase (right) Shelley Seccombe, Sunbather and Voyeur, Side of Pier 51, 1978, Digital C-print, 11 x 14 in., Gift of the artist

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The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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(left) Cover of Body Beautiful magazine, July, 1957, Offset Printing, 5.5 x 4 in., Anonymous Gift (Featuring: George Quaintance, Rodeo Victor, 1956, Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 in.) (below) George Stavrinos, Untitled, n.d., Pencil on paper, 25.5 x 27.75 in., Gift of Gilbert Lewis

As with any museum, the

Leslie-Lohman’s collections form a major part of who we are. We maintain two separate collections—a permanent collection and a study collection—both stored and preserved in the same way, and both are devoted to honoring the Museum’s rich artistic and cultural heritage.

It has been more than four years since the Museum has offered an exhibition of recent additions to its collections. As a result, everyone is excited about seeing the new pieces that have been acquired.

These pieces reflect the Museum’s area of interest and specialization—work which speaks to the LGBTQ experience and might be denied accesses to mainstream venues due to subject matter. To be accepted in the collections, the work must also be of high aesthetic quality or significant cultural importance.

This show, which will be curated and organized by the Museum staff, will be an opportunity for the public to see some of the work received over the past few years and which in many cases has only been seen by the Museum staff. It is an opportunity to exhibit the work of artists who might not be included in other exhibitions at the Museum. It also spotlights those donors who have contributed important works to the collections. Their role is vital to the Museum’s collections since the vast majority of the work was

“These pieces reflect the Museum’s area of interest and specialization—work which speaks to the LGBTQ experience and might be denied accesses to mainstream venues due to subject matter. To be accepted in the collections, the work must also be of high aesthetic quality or significant cultural importance.”

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donated by either individual artists or collectors. These important donors help shape the collections and the Museum is deeply grateful for their generosity.

The Recent Acquisitions—2013 exhibition will display more than fifty works of art by more than thirty artists. Paintings, drawings, photography, and threedimensional objects will be shown. Work will be included by Catherine Opie, Patrick Webb, George Stavrinos, David Wojnarowicz, Doug Blanchard, Duane Michals, George Towne, Sara Swaty, Bernard Perlin, Greg Gorman, Delmus Howe, Josef Kozak, and many, many others.

Join us for an opening reception to honor the artists and donors on Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 6:00 pm. To learn more about donating work to the collections, contact Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian or Deputy Director for Collections Wayne Snellen. ■ (above) Erwin Olaf, Squares, Joy, 1985, Silver gelatin print, Sheet size14 x 11 in., Leslie-Lohman Museum purchase with funds provided by Louis Wiley, Jr. © Erwin Olaf, Squares, Joy, 1985.

Courtesy of the Artist and Hasted Kraeutler, NYC. (right) Steven Muller, Untitled, 2013, Mixed media, 38 x 26 in., Gift of the artist

“This show, which will be curated and organized by the Museum staff, will be an opportunity for the public to see some of the work received over the past few years and which in many cases has only been seen by the Museum staff.”

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EXHIBITION ISSUE 46

Sascha Schneider, Herrscher (The Regent), 1895, Oil on canvas, 40 x 58 in., Courtesy of the Röder Collection

Nude in Public: Sascha Schneider, Homoeroticism and the Male Form circa 1900

By Jonathan David Katz, Curator

Sascha Schneider painted the

male figure almost exclusively, and yet was appointed to one of the most prestigious university teaching posts in Germany and became an intimate of the region’s Duke— who even commissioned Schneider to decorate a local theater. Schneider did so with a mural, again featuring nude men, and the Duke, who was not inclined towards his own sex, nonetheless found the results entirely to his liking. While the history of art is overwhelmingly a history of imaging the female nude, for a brief moment—and in Germany above all—it is instead a his-

tory of the male nude. Sascha Schneider (1870-1927) was both product and beneficiary of this unusual historical moment, one of the most fraught, contradictory and unresolved periods in the modern history of sexual regulation.

This strange historical interval, more developed in Germany in the early 20th century than anywhere else, goes by the English name of the Health and Hygiene Movement. In part a response to rapid industrialization, urban crowding, and the fear that modern life was weakening the inherent strength and drive of Germany’s

youth, this reformist movement proposed a bold solution, at once forward and backward looking: it advocated a return to a classical conception of the gymnasium—of training the body as well as the mind through youthful exercise outdoors, preferably in the nude, all in pursuit of a natural health and vitality. Conjoining an idealized youthful beauty, sport and bold nudity, Freikörperkultur (which literally means free body culture) made paintings, photographs, sculptures, and especially public murals that today look strikingly homoerotic, merely part of the visual

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EXHIBITION ISSUE 46

landscape of early twentieth-century Germany. Only in the Germany of this period could there be a magazine entitled Querschnitt (roughly translatable as Crosscut), published from 1921 to 1933, which combined in-depth reporting on cutting-edge art and literature with photos of nude young men boxing.

In bringing together realms that were once considered by definition utterly distinct, Querschnitt helps us understand the emergence of the cult of the body alongside, and as part of, innovations in art in the first quarter of the 20th century.

It will come as no surprise to our readers that the Free Body Culture

Movement attracted large numbers of homosexual participants, from artists to bodybuilders. But unlike other early manifestations of same-sex desire, this reformist movement proved successful in transforming what was once understood as merely an individual sexual pathology into a full-scale national obsession keyed to the very survival of German civilization itself. Of course, in part, such an advance necessitated an equal and opposite reaction, namely the explicit denying of any erotic interest in the male body in favor of framing it as beautiful in terms of strength, not desirability. Adherents of the movement claimed that only through the confident and shameless

“...painters of almost exclusively nude images of the male form, such as Sascha Schneider and his chief competitor, Ludwig von Hofmann, were not only not marginalized as “gay” artists (though as gay men they surely were), they were also elevated to key chairs in German universities and counted among the most respected public artists of their time.” (left) Sascha Schneider, Werdende Kraft (Growing Stronger), 1904, Oil on canvas, 79 x 54 in., Courtesy of the Röder Collection (above) Sascha Schneider, Das Gefühl der Abhängigkeit (The Feeling of Dependence), 1894, Chalk, charcoal, and paint on cardboard, 24 x 16 in., Courtesy of the Röder Collection

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exposure of strong, beautiful, male bodies, would young German men throw off the enervating effects of modern life and return to their natural vitality. So successful were they in pursuing this line of reasoning that painters of almost exclusively nude images of the male form, such as Sascha Schneider and his chief competitor, Ludwig von Hofmann, were not only not marginalized as “gay” artists (though as gay men they surely were), they were also elevated to key chairs in German universities and counted among the most respected public artists of their time. The emphasis on male nudity had a simple rationale: not only had modern life ostensibly put the German ideal of “manliness” under pressure—a dynamic that would have tragic repercussions with the rise of the Nazis—but since the erotic dimension of female nudity was widely acknowledged, male nudity was paradoxically framed as inherently purer and untainted by eros, as an image of German manhood and its strength and power without any admixture of desire.

In Dresden in 1919, Schneider founded what he called the Kraft Kunst Institut, the Institute for Strength and Art. In its titular conjunction of realms, we can see the clear stamp of this period’s unusual ideology.

The Institute featured Schneider’s painting and sculptures of nude male forms as interior decoration alongside its barbells, weight benches, sand pits and other exercise paraphernalia. Supported by a wealthy patron in Dresden who believed in its mission of training German bodies, the Institute was housed on the top floor of this patron’s department store. Advertising itself with Schneider’s images of male nudes, the Institute proudly proclaimed that its mission was to train the male body artistically, not simply for health but also for aesthetic purposes. While the younger men he actively sought could simply not afford to come, Schneider complained in his private correspondence that the older men who could afford the fees were not to his taste.

Yet at the same exact moment that Freikörperkultur was catching sight of handsome nude young men, ubiquitous in public spaces as diverse as stadiums and opera houses, another movement was brewing—the very first modern gayrights movement. Led by such pioneering figures as Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the Institute for Sexual Research (which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933), this new political movement sought to make same-sex relationships entirely legal, in part through claiming that gay people

were born gay, that same sex desire was as natural to some as heterosexuality was to others. But whereas Freikörperkultur sought to generalize an (unacknowledged) homoerotic sensibility across all of German culture, this new politics essentially set up the first self-described homosexual minority in history. Thus a collision was set in motion between those who worked to make homosexuality more tolerable by generalizing a gay aesthetic (though distinctly not a gay politics) across the culture at large and those who named their homosexuality, who specifically sought civil rights under the guise of inborn and natural difference.

Schneider, who emblematized Freikörperkultur in almost every work he ever did, nonetheless came to understand the limits of a social world that accepted homoeroticism but not homosexuals. He made the mistake of falling in love with a young man named Hellmuth Jahn, who moved to Weimar with him after he was appointed to the prestigious painting chair at Weimar University. Unfortunately, the apartment they rented was above the one

occupied by the region’s district attorney, and so they relocated and Schneider’s sister moved in to legitimize their cohabitation. Still, the younger man eventually tried to blackmail Schneider by threatening to reveal the true character of their relationship, and Schneider abandoned his teaching post in Weimar one step ahead of the police and moved to Italy, where he found the climate, aura of tolerance, and culture—with its celebration of classical male beauty—especially to his taste.

Schneider’s celebrated image, Werdende Kraft (Growing Stronger), vividly shows this alternate universe that celebrates in the developing bodies of young men. It was a widely exhibited, even celebrated, image that perfectly encapsulated the themes of Freikörperkultur.

A bearded, classicized strongman (whose image is derived from the Babylonian wall reliefs recovered at Ur by German archeologists, then recently arrived in Berlin) is depicted admiring, and encouraging, the developing biceps of a younger man. That this image could be widely reproduced amply underscores the entirely different social and political culture surrounding the male nude at this moment.

But Schneider’s fortunes as an artist were so intimately bound up with this historical interlude and its inherent contradictions that his career couldn’t survive its passing. When he died at age 57 in 1927, of complications from diabetes, his star was already dimming. By the end of World War II, he was largely forgotten. But through the efforts of one man, the German collector Hans-Gerd Röder, who became fascinated by this unknown figure while still in his twenties and began to seek out every work by Schneider he could find, a tattered reputation in modern art history has been painstakingly restored. Mr. and Mrs. Röder and their family have generously agreed to lend their collection of masterworks to the Leslie-Lohman Museum.

We will thus lead off our autumn 2013 season not only with the single most extensive one person exhibition of Sascha Schneider’s art ever mounted since his premature death, but an exhibition that is, moreover, the very first exhibition of Sascha Schneider’s art in this country. ■ ............................................................

Sascha Schneider, Athlet in Grundstellung (Athlete in Starting Position), 1907, Chalk on paper relined on canvas, 84 x 43 in., Courtesy of the Röder Collection

Nude in Public: Sascha Schneider, Homoeroticism and the Male Form circa 1900, Sept.

20‒Dec. 8, opening Thursday Sept. 20, 6-8pm, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, was curated

by Jonathan David Katz, president of the Leslie-Lohman Museum board of trustees, and director of the Visual Studies Doctoral Program, University at Buffalo.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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GALLERIES ISSUE 46

Galleries of Interest

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art leslielohman.org Museum Gallery, 26 Wooster St., NYC Thru Jul 7 Paul Thek and His Circle in the 1950s Jul 17‒28 Queers in Exile-Fresh Fruit Exhibition Aug 8‒Sep 8 Recent Acqusitions Sep 20‒Dec 8 Nude in Public: Sascha Schneider, Homoeroticism and the Male Form circa 1900 Dec 19 ‒Jan 5 GMHC Jan 17‒Mar 16 Not-So-Common Threads curated by John Chaich Mar 28‒May 25 Stroke curated by Robert W. Richards Window Gallery, 26 Wooster St., NYC Jun 23‒Jul 14 NEXT Magazine s Photo Contest Winners Jul 20-Oct 13 Asza West Oct 19‒Jan 26 Ketch Wehr Prince St. Gallery, 127B Prince St., NYC Jun 14‒29 Back to the Future, curated by Charles Leslie Jun 14-29 and Jul 12‒14 Lust in Uniform, in honor of the Blue Star Museum Program Jul 12-Jul 14 Radical Faeries launch party for the Summer 2013 Issue #154 of RFD

NEW YORK CITY ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25th St., NYC, clampart.com thru Jul 6 New York City, c. 1985, Photographs

by Armand Agresti, Amy Arbus, Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Janette Beckman, Larry Clark, Janet Delaney, Andrew Garn, Nan Goldin, Arlene Gottfried, Keizo Kitajima, Catherine McGann, Mark Morrisroe, Christine Osinski, Gunar Roze, Gail Thacker, and Brian Young

Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue, NYC, museumofsex.com thru Jul 14 My Life Ruined By Sex: The Works of William Kent; Ongoing Universe of Desire

Sin City Gallery, 107 E. Charleston Blvd, #100, Las Vegas, NV, sincitygallery.com thru Jul 16 Le Salon des Refusé du Peche; Aug 1‒Sep 16 Nancy Peach Erotic paintings

New-York Historical Society. 170 Central Park West nyhistory.org thru Sep 15 AIDS in New York: The First Five Years

The Advocate & Gochis Galleries, 1125 North McCadden Place, Los Angeles, CA, lagaycenter.org thru July 5 We Are Tongzhi

Participant Inc, 253 E. Houston St., NYC, participantinc.org thru Jul 14 Gordon Kurtti

MIDWEST

P•P•O•W, 535 West 22nd St., NYC, ppowgallery.com

NEW YORK CITY—BROOKLYN Brooklyn Community Pride Center 310 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn NY lgbtbrooklyn.org thru July 12 Mark Vinsun and Ricardo Osmondo Francis

The Spectrum 59 Montrose Ave., Brooklyn, NY, THIS. IS. ART. Ongoing Bi-monthly group exhibition

NORTHEAST

EUPOPE

Addison Gallery of Art, 180 Main St., Andover, MA andover.edu/Museums/Addison thru Jul 31 Secrets, Loss, Memory, and Courage: Works by Gay Male Artists, organized by Louis Wiley, Jr. Firehouse Gallery, 8 Walnut Street, Bordentown, NJ, firehousegallery.com Work by Eric Gibbons Kymara Gallery 2 Main St., Biddeford, ME kymara.com

Michael Mut Gallery, 97 Avenue C, NYC, michaelmutgallery.com Jun 26‒30 Wayne Hollowell: Drama Queen; Jul 10‒27 George Towne: Painted Love Munch Gallery, 245 Broome St., NYC, munchgallery. com thru Jun 30 Morten Hemmingsen I Believe in Death after Life, Jeffrey Owen Ralston Summer Home Collection; Jul 10‒Aug 11 Munch Represents+; Sep 4‒Oct 13 Morten Schelde

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Amsterdam

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

Antwerp

World Outgames woga2013.org Jul 31‒ Aug 11 Mooiman Gallery will display Queerussia

Barcelona

Lyman-Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA, lymaneyerart thru Jun 30 Group Exhibition; Jul 12‒Jul 24 Michael Lyons & Adam Noel, male figurative paintings; Aug 9‒Aug 21 William Cash and Robert Sherer, male figurative paintings and woodburnings; Aug 23‒Sep 4 Steve Cronkite, Phillip Gabrielli and Robert Moler, male figurative painting

Galería Artevistas, Passatge del Crèdit 4, Barcelona artevistas.com Jul 29‒Sep 8 Frederik Garcia SIFR, In collaboration with CIRCUIT FESTIVAL 2013

Rice/Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA ricepolakgallery.com thru Jul 3 Group Exhibition; Jul 4‒Jul 17 Steven Skollar; Aug 1‒Aug 14 Bruce Ackerson; Sep 12‒Dec 31 Group Exhibition The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA, warhol.org thru Sep 15 Nick Bubash: The Patron Saint of White Guys That Went Tribal and Other Works; thru Sep 15 Breyer P-Orridge: S/He Is Her/e; Ongoing I Just Want to Watch: Warhol s Film, Video, and Television

WEST Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood, CA, antebellumgallery.blogspot.com (cover for openings)

GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA, glbthistory.org/museum Ongoing Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating San Francisco s GLBT History; Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates From Collections Around the World

Envoy Enterprises, 87 Rivington St. NYC, envoyenterprises.com thru Jul 7 James J. Williams III, Leave A Stain; Jul-Aug Sam McKinniss

CANADA La Petite Mort Gallery, 306 Cumberland St., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, lapetitemortgallery.com Jul 5‒28 Le Cabinet des Curiosités/Group Exhibition; Sep 6‒29 Post Mortem: International Group Exhibit, In conjunction with YESSR6, 10 Chilean artists plus 10 artists working with La Petite Mort.

Splatterpool, 138 Bayard St., Brooklyn NY, splatterpool. com

ChimMaya Art Gallery, 5283 E Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA chimmayaart.com thru Jul 6 Carmine Santaniello

Gunar Roze, Manhattan 1982, #3, c.

1982/2013, C-print (Edition), 20 x 24 in., Courtesy ClampArt, NYC

Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N. Greenview Ave. Chicago, IL leatherarchives.org thru Jan 5 HIDE: an exhibition from Karl Hamilton-Cox of Art On Leather

Hall Spassov Gallery, 800 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, WA, hallspassov.com Aug 1‒31 Gretchen Gammell, Drawings and paintings JDC Fine Art 2400 Kettner Blvd, #208, San Diego, CA thru Aug 31 Jess T. Dugan: Every Breath We Drew, Photographs M+B, 612 North Almont Dr., Los Angeles, CA, mbart. com thru Jun 29 Daniel Gordon, The Green Line ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 626 North Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood, CA onearchives.org thru Jul 28 Stand Close, It s Shorter Than You Think: A show on feminist rage; thru Aug 25 Joey Terrill: Just What Is It About Today s Homos That Makes Them So Different, So Appealing?

Rio Bravo Fine Art, 110 N Broadway St., Truth or Consequences, NM riobravofineart.net Jul 13‒Aug 18 In Bloom: Chantal Elena Mitchell

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

Berlin

Frédérik Garcia, Máquina Metafísica, 2013, Enamel and acrylic on photograph, 39 x 25 in., Courtesy Galeria Artevistas, Barcelona

Brussels

Schwules Museum.

Mehringdamm 61, Berlin, schwulesmuseum. de thru Aug 18 Between Tradition and ModernEarly Paintings of Jochen Hass (1950-1955) Ongoing Transformation: Gender classification and struggles since 1800

Pink Art, rue Haute 207, Brussels, pinkart.be

Groningen, NL

Galerie MooiMan, Noorderstationsstraat 40, 9717 KP Groningen, NL, mooi-man.nl thru Jul 27 Queerussia: the hidden (p)art; Jul 31‒Aug 11 Queerussia will be displayed at World Outgames in Antwerp; Sept Zomerfruit (Summerfruit) Martin-Jan van Santen and Nebojsa Zdravkovic

London

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

Madrid

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

Paris

La Galerie au Bonheur du Jour, 11 rue Chabanais, Paris, aubonheurdujour.net thru Jul 13 Jean BoulletPassion or Subversion drawings, paintings, books.

Catalog of Jean Boullet exhibition; Sep 24-Nov 30Nus Masculin: Academic and Erotic Nudes 1860-2011; Ongoing Erotic objects, paintings and drawings ■

THE MUSEUM ISSUE 46

“Let’s Clean House” Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director

It was under this slogan that

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the World War II general, successfully ran for president of the United States in 1952. The Washington, D.C. of Roosevelt and Truman was believed to be an environment which allowed homosexuality to flourish, and Ike was determined to rid the government of gays and lesbians. Gay behavior certainly

was immoral, the theory went, and it would lead to national decline and posed a threat to national security. Gays were seen as similar to communists—mainstream society believed their clandestine subcultures, with their own meeting places, culture and mores—were intertwined.

Despite the progress made over the past decade, the LGBTQ community still faces

discrimination daily and the need for organizations like the Leslie-Lohman Museum is now more important than ever. One only needs to see the discrimination that exists against those who are HIV-positive—or those who choose to self-identify their gender—to fully understand how much more work there is to be done.

A recent exhibition at the Museum, Paul Thek And His Circle in the 1950s, looked at a group of gay men who strove to live their young lives without shame, in spite of the fact that the anti-gay movement was at full tilt. The value of the exhibition, beyond the individual pieces of art by skilled artists, is twofold. First, we wanted to show the established museum community that while it is laudable that they exhibit works by gay artists, to ignore this intimate detail of their lives misses the point of who they are, and thus the meaning of the work they create. We wanted to evidence that one’s sexual orientation can be portrayed in a professional museum setting in an honest and straightforward manner. Given the reaction to this exhibition, apparently we were successful. We hope other museums will understand that they can address these topics directly and follow suit.

Second, we wanted to provide leadership to artists working today. We wanted them to know that a group of people—individuals very similar to them—ignored the fact that even though the world viewed them in some lesser way, they rose above it and thrived. Young artists should develop and nurture the relationships with those they choose and make the work they want, regardless of what others will think or the impact of the market or commercial influences. It has been reassuring to see artists starting out their careers experience the Thek exhibit in this way. The strength they’ve drawn from it has been palpable.

Despite all the progress we’ve made over the past decade, we must all remember that the pendulum will always swing back. Conservatives and traditionalists, and those who believe their orientation is morally better than yours or mine, will do their best to undo the changes made.

The only hope we have is that institutions like ours will continue to serve through its fearless exploration of themes that effect everyone in the LGBTQ community. ■ Guests at the opening of Paul Thek and His Circle in the 1950s, LLM, Photo © Stanley Stellar

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SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 46

Event Programming at LLM Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations

The Museum continues to

attract new audiences through our public events programming. Winter/Spring 2013 was no exception.

Canadian-based artist Kent Monkman was at the Museum for a standing-roomonly lecture in March. Monkman, who is of both Cree and European descent, talked about his work in a variety of media: film/video, painting, installations, and performance. Much of his work recalls the history of early photographic portraiture, daguerreotypes, and paintings of the old Wild West. Monkman utilizes idealized themes that include the stereotyping of Native Americans and gays, Native American genocide, and colonization. He reinterprets these classic images to include a positive portrayal of those groups. His work, while built on former technologies and ideologies, remains tender, exquisite, and, most notably, mischievous.

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“During the talk, Monkman also discussed his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testicle, showing both painted and video performance images of Miss Chief.

During the talk, Monkman also discussed his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testicle, showing both painted and video performance images of Miss Chief. His Emergence of a Legend Series was on view during the Rare & Raw exhibition at the Museum. This talk is part of an ongoing lecture series jointly supported by the Leslie-Lohman Museum and Uni-

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

versity of Buffalo’s Department of Visual Arts. Visit kentmonkman.com to see more of Monkman’s work.

During the Making History, Making Art: The Work of Jonathan Ned Katz exhibition, featured artist Jonathan Ned Katz offered several personal tours of the exhibition and readings from his book, Coming of Age in Greenwich Village: A Memoir with Paintings, including a reading and book signing cosponsored by All Out Arts with Carol Polcovar and Susan Sherman. Kathleen Collins also read from her book, Risk of Change, a novel rich in its portrayal of older lesbian lives.

We also invited comic book artist JC Etheredge to have a book signing party and talk with Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian to honor Etheredge’s new book, Tongue in Cheek (Bruno Gmunder, 2013). “I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember but the erotica

(opposite page) Kent Monkman, Duel After the Masquerade, 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 30 in. (left) Tongue in Cheek (Bruno Gmunder, 2013) (below) Life Chances: HIV Criminalization and Trans Politics panel, April 24, 2013, (L to R) Laverne Cox, Dean Spade, Che Gossett, Mitchyll Mora and Sean Strub, Photo by Sam Feder

didn’t happen until adolescence,” said Etheredge. “I can trace it that accurately because I remember getting Little Mermaid coloring books specifically as reference to draw Prince Eric nude.

Looking back, I see that my work was heavily influenced by American comic books. The very first drawings I ever did for pay were erotic, though always female—boys in junior high paid me to draw sexy cartoon characters. I always knew I wanted to draw for a living but assumed I’d go into children’s art.”

“At Pratt,” Etheredge continued, “I had several teachers comment on the sexual leaning of my work and steer me in the direction of drawing porn. That’s when I “came out” about my erotic drawing. In 2001 I created two websites, one tame and one erotic, and started getting tons of requests from patrons willing to pay me to illustrate their wild fantasies, which has become the work I’m most proud of.” Visit Antiheroes.net to see more of Etheredge’s work.

Nearly 100 people were in attendance for the panel presented in April

by Visual AIDS, “Life Chances: HIV

Criminalization and Trans Politics.”

Moderated by actor Laverne Cox, the discussion included writer Che Gossett, Sean Strub from SeroProject.com, Mitchyll Mora from Streetwise and Safe, and lawyer Dean Spade. The panel discussion examined discriminatory laws and regulations such as “stop and frisk” and “condoms as evidence.” In addition, gender disclosure, safe prisons, and other rules that effect safety and dignity for trans people or those living with HIV were discussed. There was a spirited discussion between the audience and panel members. As one attendee tweeted: “Being willing to acknowledge that those of us in the margins are not all holding hands singing ‘kumbaya’ was very important.”

Many in attendance witnessed a productive and heated exchange during a historic discussion about the injustice some Americans face around gender.

Transcripts from the panel will soon be available from copresenters Visual AIDS and QUEEROCRACY, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and the Sex Worker Outreach Project.

Additionally, we recently partnered with the following organizations: • SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders)—Board appreciation evening • NGLCCNY (National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce)— monthly chamber mixer • Out Professionals—professional networking evening • Front Runners—monthly social mixer at the Prince Street gallery and project space • Lambda Legal—Young Professionals Group reception • Lambda Legal—Board Alumni reception • LeGal, (LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York and Lesbian & Gay Law Association Foundation of Greater New York)—judicial reception • The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center— cosponsored The Saint At Large preview party • GLBT Expo at the Javits Convention Center • Rainbow Book Fair ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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BOOKS ISSUE 46

Digging Into the Psychosexual Past: The Drawings of Douglas Blair Turnbaugh

By Peter Weiermair

Translated by Keith Green

Douglas Turnbaugh is certainly

no stranger to The Archive readers.

A former ballet dancer, a chronicler of the history of dance, an influential biographer of the Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant, the sponsor and friend (along with David Hockney) of the doomed young artist Patrick Angus, Mr. Turnbaugh has also reviewed and published works in this journal.

Above and beyond these diverse cultural endeavours, Douglas Turnbaugh stands out as a force to be reckoned with in the visual arts through the media of video, photography and, most significantly, his own drawing.

We have enjoyed Cherubim, where he makes use of captures from pornographic videos. Fascinated with the sexual ecstasy of the young actors, Turnbaugh shows us simply their contorted faces at the

moment of orgasm. The actual title of the book is Cherubim and the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. The similarity of these contemporary photos to Bernini’s famous classical work is striking.

Naturally one thinks, too, of Warhol’s Blow-Job or Mapplethorpe’s famous portrait of a face caught in ecstasy.

We also know Turnbaugh’s earlier work, the collection entitled Beat It: 28 Drawings (1983), devoted to his own expressive drawings.

Now he offers us another book with extraordinarily sensitive design, layout, and typography by Harvey Redding. It consists of drawings that Turnbaugh has preserved from his youth and early manhood.

What is so special about this work which at first glance looks like a facsimile of a child’s drawing book? It is the secret repository where Douglas Turnbaugh has

(left) Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Age 9 (right) Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Age 65

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The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

collected and annotated the drawings from the prepubescent—the most fascinating—and later years of his childhood.

They are the record of his most secret desires, his projections and obsessions poured into pictorial metaphors. Only his later drawings would reveal these secrets to his own consciousness when he put his pencil on a blank sheet of paper and observed: “[M]y hand began to move like a seismograph’s needle, impelled by unseen turmoil, and autonomous scribblings danced out metamorphosing into men.”

But in this early place there was still only an inkling, the slightest hint of the various roles he would like to play in society—roles which he didn’t dare express or even contemplate at that time. Both the repression and avowal of sexual feelings are represented here.

These innocent-seeming testaments to the yearnings of a child only offer fulfillment in the form of a drawing. They present an erotic, a then diffuse and in no way definitive, picture of his own role. They are documents of transfiguration, reinterpretations of a reality which runs counter to his inclinations.

And they constitute an important body of evidence that ranks higher in this autobiography than the author’s

“More than photographs, these drawings provide the observer with an imaginary gallery from which to understand and interpret the author. crucial “coming out” via the declaration of his erotic and sexual desires at the end of the book. These early drawings, which have thankfully survived to be annotated by the author, are made vibrantly alive by that uneasy discrepancy between desire and fulfillment.

They appear as an exegesis of these desires, even accentuating these desires

with their lightness and poetic charm.

More potent than photographs, these drawings provide the observer with an imaginary gallery from which to understand and interpret the author.

And then there are the author’s own musings on his childhood from the perspective of old age, a valuable text inspired by this self-induced confrontation.

Here then are the drawings, wide open and yet ambiguous. They are artifacts from an archeological dig into the erotic consciousness. ■ ............................................................

Peter Weiermair is the publisher of All Saints Press (Innsbruck), a curator, and an author.

He produced Treasures of Gay Art from the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (2008) and has written extensively on contemporary artists.

He is a member of the Leslie-Lohman board of directors, and has curated numerous exhibitons at Leslie-Lohman including Luigi & Luca (2011), Stanley Stellar (2011), Rolf Koppel (2012), and Diaries: An Anthology of Photography from Italy (2012).

FreeHand Sketchbook Drawings 1940-Present

by Douglas Blair Turnbaugh (Taurus Editions, 2013) is available at blurb.com/b/4067455freehand-sketchbook-drawings-1940-present. (top left) Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Kim, Starring Errol Flynn and Dean Stockwell, 1950, Color pencil on paper, 5 x 4 in. (top right) Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Parrot s Perch Torture, ca.1962, Pencil on paper, 8 x 8 in. (right) Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Presage of Ballet, ca. 1956, Pencil on paper, 10.5 x 8 in.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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PRINCE STREET GALLERY ISSUE 46

News from Prince Street Rob Hugh Rosen, Deputy Director for Programmatic Operations

In the spring of 2013,

hundreds of visitors descended into our old Prince Street basement gallery and current project space to view several weekend exhibitions where original works of art were offered for sale.

In March, we mounted XXX: Sensuality Through the Eyes of the Photographer, curated by Kymara Lonergan, an exhibition of the work of notable published photographers. In April, Boys of Summer, the artists of the Pines Nude Drawing Group, curated by Carlos Pisco and Shungaboy, and in May, Visions of Men, an erotic art fair, organized by Daniel Kitchen, with thirteen participating artists: Bill Crist, Darin DeField, JC Etheredge, Ricardo Francis, Anthony Gonzales, Chuck Nitzberg, Robert W. Richards, Dan Romer, Lucky Sanford, Shungaboy, Gary Speziale, Mark Visun, and Todd Yeager. In this show, collectors could—gleefully—claim their purchases at the moment of the transaction.

In June, Back to the Future, a group exhibition, will be curated by our cofounder Charles Leslie. Leslie has chosen seven artists who have two things in common: they all paint or draw, and they all have a history of patronage and encouragement by Leslie. The seven are Anthony Gonzales, Josef Kozak, Michael Mitchell, Joseph Radoccia, Robert W. Richards, Richard Taddei, and Bob Ziering.

Gonzales met Leslie in 2005 through the live erotic drawing sessions Leslie supports. He has participated in numerous Leslie-Lohman group shows, and in 2008 we hosted the launch of his book Bronx Boys published by Bruno Gmunder.

Josef Kozak was referred by an acquaintance to the Leslie/Lohman Gallery in the late 1990s. Kozak showed a portfolio of work and was soon included in a group exhibition. In addition to having commissioned Kozak to paint a mural for his New York City home, Leslie has been continuously collecting Kozak’s drawings and paintings, inspired by history, mythology, and exotic cultures.

Michael Mitchell met Leslie in the 1990s when he was a frequent visitor to the gallery. Mitchell’s large-scale works created at the L.U.R.E., a West-Village

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leather bar, were donated to our collection when the establishment closed in 2003. But, through the years, Leslie has been personally collecting Mitchell’s small-scale works on paper, several of

Josef Kozak, Untitled, c. 2012, Mixed media on tan paper, 19 x 14 in., Photograph by Johnathan M. Lewis

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

(right) Michael Mitchell, #2 from the series Zero G, 2010, Alcoholbased marker and colored pencil on Bienfang paper, 11.5 x 8.5 in. (below) Joseph Radoccia, Bryan, 2013, Oil on panel, 10 x 8 in. (bottom right) Robert W. Richards, Suit of Lights, 2012, Mixed media on paper, 25.75 x 19.75 in., Photograph

by Johnathan M. Lewis

which were reproduced in Treasures of Gay Art, published in 2008.

In 1995, Joseph Radoccia participated in the exhibition, ArtGroup Addresses AIDS at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery. Soon thereafter, Wayne Snellen introduced Radoccia to Leslie. In 1996, Radoccia’s work was shown in a painting invitational, and in 1999, he was given a solo show titled Founders Choice (IV), Love Game.

Radoccia describes his artistic relationship with Leslie as “18 years of admiration fueling inspiration. To me, his vision pierces through the scrims of academic justification, political posturing, and any pandering to the acceptance of the mainstream, and asks the single core question that matters: What do you love? Now celebrate that in your art!” Radoccia is currently the webmaster for LLM. In the late 1980s, when Robert W. Richards was prolifically creating illustrations for such magazines as Honcho and Torso, Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman reached out to Richards, asking to see his portfolio. Shortly thereafter, Leslie and Lohman exhibited his work in their gallery on Broome Street, before the inception of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. Since that time, Richards has both participated

PRINCE STREET GALLERY ISSUE 46

(right) Richard Taddei, Seated Nude A , 2012, Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in., Photo by Johnathan M. Lewis (below) Bob Ziering, The Kiss, 2009, Pastel on paper, 23 x 33 in.

in and curated numerous exhibitions at the Foundation. Currently, Richards is a member of the board of trustees of the Leslie-Lohman Museum and working on another curatorial project to be presented in the Museum at 26 Wooster Street in 2014.

Richard Taddei met the co-founders in 1970 when they were neighbors in Soho. In the early 1990s Taddei participated in a group show at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery, and has continued to exhibit numerous times at Leslie-Lohman for almost twenty years. In 2000, Taddei was invited by Leslie and Lohman to paint trompe l’oeil murals in their home in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Bob Ziering had had a very successful career as an illustrator in the world of advertising, while keeping his erotic work hidden away. Early in 2002, Leslie was the first person outside Ziering’s circle of close friends to be shown the erotic work. He immediately included Ziering in a group show, and in 2004 gave Ziering a solo show, Secret Sex in the Leslie/Lohman Gallery. Ziering is still thrilled that Leslie brought his art out of the closet!

Back to the Future opens Friday evening, June 14, and runs through Saturday, June 29.

On view simultaneously with Back to the Future will be Lust in Uniform*, an exhibition culled from the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s collection. Installed in the long entry hall, the intention is to cast light on the Museum’s participation in the Blue Star Museum Program, which is a collaboration of the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and museums across America, offering free admission to the nation’s military personnel during the summer.

Opening Friday evening July 12, and running through July 14, we will host The Radical Faeries magazine launch party for the summer 2013 Issue (#154) of RFD, which is dedicated to queer arts. According to Paul Wirhun, co-editor with Wallace Gorrell, RFD is one of the oldest queer quarterlies in the country, publishing continuously since 1974. As explained on its website, rfdmag. org, RFD is a “reader written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, radical faerie consciousness, nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives.” Wirhun is curating an accompanying art exhibition of work by artists represented in the issue and other local queer artists.

There are indefinite plans for an August exhibition of the art therapy program run by Housing Works, an organization devoted to helping people living with HIV/AIDS. Please see our website for updates. ■ * Lust in Uniform will run June 14–29, plus July 12–14.

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The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

THE COLLECTION ISSUE 46

Reseaching the Museum’s Archives Branden Wallace, Collections Manager

There is a striking similitude

David Stand, Self Editing: Gertrude!

(Throw this away- now!), 1959, Contact prints of 126mm negatives, 10.5 x 2.1 in.

between the effectiveness of a Museum and its ability to preserve and access the history related to its subject matter. As the job of art is to communicate, the preservation of the stories around its creation provides documentation for that history and the ideas they represent.

As Leslie-Lohman builds its collections, we are keenly aware that the artwork alone does not provide a complete history of queer art or the artist who makes it. Presently, the Museum maintains more than 2,000 art books on queer artists and their artwork. In addition, there are over 3,000 individual artist files of past and contemporary artists that contain documents, press articles, exhibition opening announcements, correspondence, and other ephemera about the artists and their work. We have several thousand journals and catalogs relating to the work of gay artists.

These files are a treasure trove of information. For example, in Neal Bate’s file you can see correspondence between Bate and a melancholy Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen), where Tom expressed doubt in his own artistic abilities and wondered whether or not he should continue making art. These intimate professional moments between fellow artists pepper the archives.

David Stand’s file contains a 1950s letter from the United States Postal Service which states he was “unfit to continue work” because he was a homosexual.

These documents are not only factually informative about the individuals, but shed great light on their state of mind as they made their work.

We are fortunate to be able to make our research files open to anyone who has a legitimate research project to do—whether it is for an academic activity, a media article, or simply a matter of curiosity about the background of a given artist. In order to access the research files, one simply has to complete a brief application obtained from Deputy Director Wayne Snellen or Collections Manager Branden Wallace to schedule an appointment for you to research the

relevant files. Everyone here believes that the resources we work so hard to build and maintain should be accessible to all to have interest in the information they contain.

Recently, an English Studies Ph.D. candidate at the Paris VII Diderot-University visited us and spent a few days researching in our archives. He said of his time spent there, “I found some rare archives about Robert Mapplethorpe’s first appearances, collected in the 1970s by Leslie-Lohman. These documents were

“David Stand’s file contains a 1950s letter from the United States Postal Service which states he was “unfit to continue work” because he was a homosexual.

These documents are not only factually informative about the individuals, but shed great light on their state of mind as they made their work.” produced in the context of early Mapplethorpe exhibitions and were critical resources for my research and nowhere to be found in other libraries.”

Come immerse yourself in the wealth of the Museum’s archive. ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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THE COLLECTION ISSUE 46

News on the Leslie-Lohman Collections Wayne Snellen, Deputy Director for Collections

The Leslie-Lohman Museum

maintains two collections, in accordance with museum guidelines, a permanent collection and a study collection. Each is preserved in a similar manner. They are subject to a well-defined accessions policy and are reviewed by the accessions committee and then the museum director makes recommendations to the board of directors regarding permanent accession.

Over the past few months, we have received some wonderful drawings that were part of a Dirty Little Drawings exhibition in 2007. We are happy to report that we have been given nearly 100 individual drawings from that exhibition as gifts from the artists. Included are works by Brian

Bednarek, Chris Collicott, Byron Gibbs, Michael Jacobs, John Kirslis, Yoav Madorsky, Evan Laurence, Samir Sobhy, Fred Strugats,and many others. More artists from that exhibition will also be donating work to us in the upcoming months.

In addition, over the past few months, the Museum received other donations from artists and collectors, including the following: The estate of Saul Bolasni donated five oil paintings by Mr. Bolasni.

John Benicewicz donated one of his own etchings.

Earl Carlile donated George Towne’s painting Barney Frank.

John Derek donated a painting

by Paul Russell.

Stephen Desroches donated sixteen items, including a movie poster by Todd Trexler, two Provincetown Carnival posters by F. Ronald Fowler, and work by Tim Otte, Bobby Miller, Michael McConnell, Joey Arias, Michael McConnell, Jay Critchley, Dina Martina, Derek Erdman, and Jamie Casertano, and a Cockettes poster.

Anthony Gonzales donated two of his own drawings and two copies of his book Bronx Boyz.

Peter Harvey donated his painting, Memorial.

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Gilbert Lewis donated a drawing

by George Stavrinos.

Rob Hugh Rosen donated one drawing by Elliott Gerber.

Shelley Seccombe donated three of her own photographs.

Richard Vechi donated seven of his own photographs.

We thank all those artists and donors who honor us with the gift of artwork. All told, there are more than 20,000 objects in the Museum’s collections. The list keeps growing and, with the help of volunteers and interns, we are busy cataloging the work as it arrives. We can always use more help, and if you have the interest and the time, we can certainly use the assistance. No special skills are needed to help us process the pieces and update

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

our entries. Please contact Wayne Snellen, Deputy Director for Collections or the Collections Manager, Branden Wallace, and we will be happy to talk to you about volunteering. ■ (above) John Benicewicz, Untitled, 2006, Etching (with some engraving and drypoint) on paper, Artist s trial proof, 11 x 11 in., Gift of the artist

THE COLLECTION ISSUE 46

(left) Saul Bolasni, Untitled, n.d., Oil on canvas, 38 x 26 in., Gift of the Estate of Saul Bolasni (below) Peter Harvey, Memorial, 1993, Oil on canvas, 39 x 32 in., Gift of the artist

(above) Brian Bednarek, Untitled, 2007, Pencil and crayon on paper, 5.5 x 5.5 in., Gift of the artist (right) Richard Vechi, Untitled (#6), n.d., C-print, 18 x 22 in., Gift of the artist

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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THE WINDOW GALLERY ISSUE 46

Queering the Landscape: Jacob Love’s States

By Damian Owen-Board

What does it mean to be

queer and what is queer anyway? Jacob Love goes some way to question what that word means in his work, States.

This ongoing project has been shot over the last three years on road trips across America. Presented here as diptychs, Love displays the ‘vastness’ of the American landscape hanging, literally, above the heads of those who inhabit it.

Love’s landscapes seem at first deeply familiar, following in the footsteps of the grand tradition perfected by Ansel Adams of using the camera as a tool to tame the supposedly untamable wilderness of the American landscape. In fact, it seems as if no time has passed between those painstakingly captured by Adams and Love’s States. However, the subversive act of inverting the landscapes—earth above, sky below—has taken the achingly familiar and injected a bewildering sense of otherness, or, rather, queerness to his pictures. Where once we felt we could understand, even dismiss, these common photographic sights/sites, now, through their eschewing, we are forced to confront their magnitude anew with a queer gaze.

This inversion creates a fundamental shift in how we perceive the world around us. Suddenly these solid awe-inspiring landmasses become mere shape and pattern, traversable where previously they had seemed insurmountable.

Trees hang down from the sky, not as trees but as mere organic matter and shape, decorative in the same way that the garland on the head of one of the portrait subjects is.

This transgressive action on Love’s part explains the calm optimism that stares out from the residents of States.

The landscapes no longer resemble monuments to America’s past but, through change, the possibility of its future. In the portraits, these almost mythic people are finding a way to be

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The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

“This inversion [earth above, sky below] creates a fundamental shift in how we perceive the world around us...This transgressive action on Love’s part explains the calm optimism that stares out from the residents of States.” both different from and uniquely part of the world around them.

In attempting to carve out a new queer identity for themselves, Love’s subjects begin to resemble the pioneers that tamed and formed the monumental landscape in the first place, but the existence they are carving for themselves is bound less by traditional established values than by modes they create themselves, fluidly as they move through life.

Surely that is at the heart of Love’s questioning of what it means to be queer—for him it is a protean and evolving state embracing rather than denying change. These constantly forming landscapes, and these constantly evolving people, are one and the same searching new ways of being. ■ ............................................................

States is on view in the Wooster St. Window Gallery, April 26‒June 21, 2013. Love completed his MA at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2008 and has exhibited in London, Paris, and Berlin. A book of his previous work, Line of Flight, was published by Tenderpixel Galley, London, in 2010. Love teaches photography at Goldsmiths.

Damian Owen-Board is an artist working in photography and video. He is a lecturer in photography as art practice at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has previously written about the work of Jacob Love in the book Line of Flight.

Upcoming exhibitions in the Wooster St. Window Gallery: NEXT Magazine s Photo Contest Winners, June 23‒July 14, 2013; Azsa West, July 20‒October 13, 2013; Ketch Wehr, October 19, 2013‒January 26, 2014.

(opposite page) Top: Jacob Love, Lot: 95f49d6e836e2da864bc7148 / Krystal, 2011, C-type print, 20x20 in.

Bottom: Jacob Love, Untitled (spur), 2011, C-type print, 20 x 20 in. (this page) Top: Jacob Love, Lot: 0e6b589d328396fabbbf922fbf / In-N-Out Untitled (butcher), 2011, C-type print, 20 x 20 in.

Bottom: Jacob Love, 2011, C-type print, 20 x 20 in.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 46 ● SUMMER 2013

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Top: Jacob Love, Lot: 7bf3800ddb7e3e3b044c347ebd / Exxon, 2011, C-type print, 20 x 20 in.

Bottom: Jacob Love, Untitled (bacc-anal), 2011, C-type print, 20 x 20 in.