The Archive: Issue 50 Summer 2014 by Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

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T HE ARCHI VE 50 The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

CONTENTS THE ARCHIVE NUMBER 50 SUMMER 2014

PERMANENCY: SELECTIONS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

SLAVA MOGUTIN AND HIS NEW BOOK, FOOD CHAIN

HUNTER O HANIAN, MUSEUM DIRECTOR

AN INTERVIEW WITH SLAVA MOGUTIN BY HUNTER O HANIAN, MUSEUM DIRECTOR

EVENT PROGRAMMING

NEWS FROM PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE

JERRY KAJPUST, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS

ROB HUGH ROSEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAMMATIC OPERATIONS

BERNARD PERLIN (1918‒2014) MICHAEL SCHREIBER

REFLECTIONS THROUGH OTHERS

GALLERIES OF INTEREST

21 THE CLASSICAL NUDE AND THE MAKING OF QUEER HISTORY JONATHAN DAVID KATZ

ROBERT F. FIGUEROA DANIEL SANDER

Back Cover:

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum

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 of 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

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

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

Co-Founder & Director Emeritus 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 Scott Dow, Museum Fellow Stephen Dunford, Receptionist Steven Goldstein, Collections, Administration Robbie Gordy, Exhibitions Kavish Harjai, Marketing and PR Internship Daniel Kitchen, Museum Advocate

Stephan Likosky, Collections Matt Limb, Collections Internship Tai Lin, Collections Michael Maier, Collections Chuck Nitzberg, Events Jonnathan Sanchez Figuereo, Collections Internship Frank Sheehan, Drawing Studio Lauren Toppeta, Front Desk Docent and Education Internship

The Archive

The Archive is an educational journal published by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art to educate the general public about the Museum, its activities, and gay art. Tom Saettel, Editor Joseph Cavalieri, Production and Design John Burton Harter, Mayan Triptych (central panel), 1996, Acrylic on Board, 35 x 40 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: James Bidgood, Willow Tree (Bruce Kirkman), mid-1960s, Digital C-print, 19.688 x 15.438 in. Foundation purchase.

EXHIBITION ISSUE 50

Permanency:

Selections from the Permanent Collection August 14–September 28, 2014 Leslie-Lohman Museum Charles Henri Ford, Le Rideau Caramoisi, 1977, 11 x 14 in. Gift of Arthur Bennet Kouwenhoven.

Selected by members of the

Museum’s staff, Permanancy will feature over 70 items that have been recently accessioned into the permanent collection by the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation’s Board of Directors. While the Museum has over 20,000 objects in its possession, this exhibition will be but a sampling of the objects in the permanent collection. The exhibit will feature photographs, collages, paintings, drawings, and prints from the mid-20th century to 2014. The Museum maintains two separate collections—a permanent collection and a study collection—both stored and preserved in the same way, both devoted to honoring its rich artistic and cultural heritage. Since its accreditation as a museum in 2011, the Museum’s staff has worked hard to catalog the many items in its possession and recommend selections for accession in the permanent collection. It is our hope that the Museum’s per-

manent collection will one day be the deﬁnitive museum assemblage for gay and lesbian work. While we hope to have a representative sampling of gay artists with well-known careers, the Museum strives to build a collection with deep representation by artists whose work might not be accepted by other mainstream museums, but is of high aesthetic quality. This exhibition will include work by:

James Bidgood (1933–) See Cover image. Having moved to NY in 1951 with the idea that he would become a musical comedy star, Bidgood was heavily inﬂuenced by fairy tales, ballet, and Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s. Once in NYC, he earned roles in several off-Broadway plays and became a frequent drag performer. He attended Parsons and then began designing costumes for everything from NYC’s Junior

League Ball to Broadway productions to promotional films for Capazio. Some of those designs are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Meanwhile, he was photographing handsome young men for Joe Weider’s physique magazines, personal film projects, and his own still-image work. He often used male dancers and escorts for models. He reused costumes and set materials from his commercial jobs (not to mention chicken wire and aluminum foil), creating elaborate, dramatically lit environments in his tiny Hell’s Kitchen apartment. The result was lush, multifaceted Technicolor confections filled with underwater fantasy, Parisian street scenes, and hidden caves. Bidgood completed most of his photographs and filmmaking between 1963 and 1971. This body of work has inspired a generation of gay artists, as his fanciful look at the idolized male form placed in an imaginary setting has been often imitated but never duplicated. In addition to his still images, Bidgood is known for the iconic film, Pink Narcissus, released in 1971.

Charles Henri Ford (1908-2002) Originally from Mississippi, Ford was a poet, novelist, filmmaker, and collage artist who spent much of his life in New York. He was the partner of artist Pavel Tchelitchew until Tchelitchew’s death in 1957 in Rome. As a young man, he became part of Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris and befriended other artists such as Man Ray, Djuna Barnes, and Janet Flanner. Ford was considered America’s first Surrealist poet and, by some, a precursor to the artists of the New York School. Upon his return to New York in the 1930s, his circle included George Platt Lynes, Lincoln Kirstein, William S. Burroughs, and e e cummings. With Parker Tyler, Ford wrote The Young and Evil in 1933 (banned in the US until 1960s), a gay novel about life in Greenwich Village, initiating a flood of gay fiction. In New

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Berenice Abbott, Jane Heap, c. 1923-26, Silver gelatin print, 13 x 10 in. Foundation purchase with funds provided by Alix L.L. Ritchie and Marty Davis.

York, Ford co-published the magazine View with contributions by Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Henry Miller, Georgia O’Keeffe, and many others. He was part of a group of artists that included Ray Johnson and he was virtually unrecognized outside of his own circle.

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) Having made images for more than 60 years, Abbott’s work has ranged from black-and-white images of urban design, skyscrapers, and scientiﬁc photographs to her community in Paris in the 1920s. In the 1930s she was hired by the Federal Art Project to document the city and she created the Changing New York series of photographs. Raised in Ohio, she moved to Paris 1921 where she apprenticed for Man Ray. Several years later, she opened her own studio in Paris and began to make portraits of her community, the literary and artistic lesbians in her circle including Margaret Anderson, Sylvia Beach, Janet Flanner, Jane Heap, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Djuna Barnes, and others. Ingo Swann (1933-2013) Originally from Colorado, Swann spent most of his adult life in New York, speciﬁcally at his home and studio on the Bowery. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology, but was a self taught artist. Swann developed international fame for

Art Museum at the University of West Georgia. All of his gay-themed work, including fourteen paintings and more then 200 collages, was donated to the LeslieLohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

having co-founded “remote viewing,” a technique that allows the viewer to see a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates and developed in part with funding provided by the CIA. He was considered a leader in parapsychology, spending decades speaking and writing on the subject. Having worked at the UN for a decade, Swann left in 1968 to pursue his life as an artist and writer, creating hundreds of paintings and collages. Although his artwork found its way into some private collections, including that of Texas-based real estate developer Trammell Crow, his artistic achievements were largely unknown during his lifetime. Upon his death, his family donated many of his paintings to the American Visionary

Ingo Swann, A Nightmare Having a Nightmare, n.d., Collage, 9.2 x 12.12 in. Gift of the Ingo Swann Estate.

Deborah Kass (1952–) New York based and the partner of artist Patricia Cronin, Kass’s work has been shown worldwide. The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh had a mid-career retrospective of her work in 2012. Her work features references to popular culture, including Disney cartoons, and uses methods lifted from mass production. In her Nov., 2012 Art in America review, critic Faye Hirch wrote, “In her big,

Deborah Kass, Talking Dick #21, 1990, Gouache and vinyl paint on paper, 15.75 x 9.75 in. Foundation purchase with funds provided by Louis Wiley, Jr.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

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(clockwise from top left) Peter Hujar, Standing Male Nude: Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976, Pigmented ink print, 14.7 x 14.75 in. Gift of the Peter Hujar Archives.

pop-infused paintings, however, Kass is no cool-headed Duchampian, and her borrowings are anything but polite. Coming of age in the era of the Pictures Generation, and pursuing its lessons throughout her threedecade career, Kass has pilfered details of well-known 20th-century paintings and snatched the glamour of Warhol’s stars for her own Jewish, lesbian, and feminist idols (and herself ).”

Peter Hujar (1934-1987) Among the many photographers Hujar influenced is Nan Goldin, who wrote in the 1994 catalogue, Peter Hujar: A Retrospective: “He was a magician, he hypnotized his subjects. He never forced exposure, he seduced people to want to reveal all to him.” Stephen Koch, who knew Hujar personally for decades and is the director of the Peter Hujar Archives, describes Hujar’s personal life this way: “Peter slept with at least 6,000 people. I am not exaggerating. He told [writer] Fran Lebowitz that he had never enjoyed sex. I don’t believe that, but I saw there was something in him that experienced his aloneness as withdrawn from passion. He didn’t talk about relationships. But he would talk a lot about desire, what was beautiful. He once said to me, in reference to his nudes, ‘the sight of naked flesh for me is like a physical blow.’” Koch continues, “I believe that what I’m doing (directing the Hujar Archive), for any artist, has to be done. It’s true of literature as well. If you do not have somebody fighting

Peter Hujar, Seated Male Nude: Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976, Pigmented ink print, 14.75 x 14.75 in. Gift of the Peter Hujar Archives. Peter Hujar, Bruce de Sainte Croix masturbating, 1976, Pigmented ink print, 14.7 x 14.7 in. Gift of the Peter Hujar Archives.

for you, you’re in trouble. And most artists leave it to their widow, or their lover. Nice people, and the artist loved them, but usually incompetent. One of the prime fantasies is that you’re going to be discovered after you die. The truth is, it doesn’t work unless someone makes sure you’re discovered. If you’re Vincent, you’ve got to have your Theo.”

In December of 2013, the Hujar Archive donated 30 prints of his work to the Museum’s collection, selected by Koch, Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian, and Museum Board President Jonathan David Katz. The Museum is now the only institution that owns all three pieces in the Bruce de Sainte Croix series.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

EXHIBITION ISSUE 50 (left) Hockney, David, Two boys aged 23 or 24, from Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy Ed. 26/75, 1966, Etching and aquatint on wove paper, 13.75 x 8.75 in, Foundation purchase with funds provided by Ray Warman and Dan Kiser. (below) Clarity Haynes, Study, Portrait of Janie, 2012, Pencil on paper, 7.4 x 9.2 in. Foundation purchase.

student in the early 1980s, I asked to see this work in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the curator took me to a different part of the viewing room, away from other scholars, lest they be scandalized. In short, this image occupied an uneasy position between art and pornography, simply on the grounds of its subject matter. In an era of winks, codes, and other indirect means of queer expression, Hockney’s expressly gay imagery was a form of activist politics. And the fact that this was made as a print, in an edition of 75 copies, rather than as a painting which needed only one buyer, ensured that Hockney’s activist imagery circulated throughout the art market. But most signiﬁcantly, this was a gay image of comfortable, even sweet, same-sex domesticity, a romantic scenario in an era when images of gay sex were increasingly visible, but images of gay love practically non-existent.”

David Hockney (1933–) Considered one of the leading ﬁgures in art of the 20th century, the Tate Museum in London notes David Hockney’s ability to “reintegrate a personal subject matter into his art. He began tentatively by copying fragments of poems on to his paintings. ...These cryptic messages soon gave way to open declarations in a series of paintings produced in 1960–61 on the theme of homosexual love.”

Of Hockney’s print in the Museum collection, Jonathan David Katz says, “David Hockney’s original print Two Boys aged 23 or 24, from a suite entitled “Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy,” is one of the most signiﬁcant LGBTQ prints of the 20th century. Completed in 1966, three years before the Stonewall riots, its unabashed homoeroticism was unprecedented in the art market—so much so that when, as a grad

Clarity Haynes (1971–) Born in Texas, Haynes is a New York-based artist who seeks to explore the social meaning of the female body in the context of a culture primarily sexist. Haynes says, “the body itself, coded as either male or female, is not actually so black and white. The difference between art that deals with the body now and much of that of the 1970s reﬂects the inﬂuence of postmodernism and queer studies. Biology and gender identity are no longer inextricably linked; binaries are suspect. My work includes portraits of those born with male bodies who have transitioned, as well as those living in female bodies whose identities do not match those dictated by society.”

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Having exhibited her work widely, Haynes’s Breast Portrait Journals have involved more then 500 participants over the past ﬁfteen years. Art historian Beth GershNesic wrote, “Clarity Haynes paints and draws the invisible: ordinary women whose bodies do not conform to the classical ideal or our contemporary celebrity culture.”

John Perreault (1937–) New York based, Perreault is an art critic, teacher, curator, writer, and art maker, having exhibited his work for more then three decades and won numerous awards, including an NEA grant in 1967 for art criticism. For nearly a decade he was the chief art critic at the Village Voice. He says, “I have championed new art of all kinds: from Minimalism and Earth Art to Realist painting; from Pattern Painting to Performance Art; from Street Works to ceramics and design. As a young poet, I began as a critic by writing short reviews for ArtNews when it was the Artforum of its day, graduated to articles, and then as a freelancer went on to write for more publications than I can list.” Larry Stanton (1947-1984) Arthur Lambert, Stanton’s former lover who manages his estate and is presently working on a film about him, wrote, “Larry Stanton lived and painted in Manhattan until he died of AIDS at the age of 37 in 1984. His best work came from the short period beginning in 1981 after he recovered from a psychotic episode for which he was briefly institutionalized and in which alcohol and the death of his mother played a significant role. When he returned to his work, he found in it a new commitment that became all engrossing. (above) John Perreault, Untitled, n.d., Oil on canvas, 25 x 21 in. Gift Of Arthur Bennet Kouwenhoven. (left) Larry Stanton, Untitled, page from sketchbook, 1975, Mixed media on paper, 18 x 24 in. Gift Of Arthur Bennet Kouwenhoven.

“In NYC’s Greenwich Village, he became a familiar sight, starting every day in the early afternoon drinking coffee at the same spot while balancing his sketchbook and drawing someone who caught his eye. His studio developed into a gathering place for artists and writers, enticed by this charm, his looks, and the work he was doing. They, his friends and his family became subjects for his portraits. But it was the boys he encountered in his nocturnal expeditions that became the main focus for his art. “In the late 1970s and early 80s, New York City was a magnet for boys who came here from all over the country. Many were escaping from homes and families where being gay was not accepted. Larry’s looks and personality made him attractive to some of these boys and, in turn, they

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became willing models. His work provides a telling picture of faces from a segment of NYC life which would shortly disappear with the advent of AIDS.”

Ray Johnson (1927-1995) Upon Johnson’s death, Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times, “Make room for Ray Johnson whose place in history has been only vaguely defined. Johnson’s beguiling, challenging art has an exquisite clarity and emotional intensity that makes it much more than simply a remarkable mirror of its time, although it is that, too.” Born in Michigan, Johnson spent his adult life in New York. He studied painting with Josef Albers, Lyonel Feininger, and Robert Motherwell. Johnson was a seminal Pop Art figure as well as an early conceptualist and an early pioneer of mail art. His preferred medium—the collage— brought together text and popular culture. As his Richard Feigen Gallery biography notes, “Johnson’s innovativeness spread beyond the confines of the purely visual. Johnson not only operated in what Rauschenberg famously called ‘the gap between art and life,’ but he also erased the distinction between them. His entire being—a reflection of his obsessively creative mind—was actually one continuous ‘work of art.’” Alexander Kargaltsev (1985–) An artist, writer, photographer, actor, and film director, Kargaltsev immigrated to the United States in 2010 and received political asylum because of the Russian government’s persecution of gays and lesbians. In recent years Kargaltsev has used his art to serve as a sharp stick in the eye to Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay gaze. His book Asylum documents the rebirth of young Russians who have found political refuge in the US because of persecution in their own county. During the Sochi Olympics, Kargaltsev earned worldwide recognition when he responded to a controversial photo of Moscow gallerist Dasha Zhukova, in which she sits on a chair composed of a semi-nude black woman with her legs up in the air. In a bid to reverse the “visual injustice and offence” of the Zhukova photo, Kargaltsev reshot the image with a naked black man sitting on a naked white man on his back with his legs aloft. In an interview with Out There Magazine, Kargaltsev said he found Zhukova’s image “appalling and unacceptable. I was forced to flee my native Russia because of ubiquitous homophobia and xenophobia and it deeply saddens me to see that racism is now being glamorized and thus made not only acceptable but trendy by the likes of Ms. Zhukova.” Using Russia’s anti-LGBT legislation as its primary dramatic motif, Kargaltsev’s recent play, Crematorium, combines drama, poetry, music, dance, art, and design to explore society’s attempt to stifle the individual. ■

Ray Johnson, Olive Oil & Mickey Mouse, ca. 1973, Ink on paper, 9.75 x 8.5 in. Foundation purchase with ﬁnancial support by Louis Wiley, Jr.

Alexander Kargaltsev, Black and White, 2014, Archival digital C-print, 19.9 x 29.9 in. Gift of the artist.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

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Strength in Numbers Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director

In May, a few of us from

the Museum attended the American Alliance of Museums’ annual conference in Seattle. These opportunities are extremely valuable as we work to build the LeslieLohman Museum into a world-class facility. Accredited by the New York State Board of Regents, we operate the Museum in compliance with AAM standards and will seek its accreditation at some point in the future. Apart from the learning that happens at sessions on topics ranging from writing the perfect NEA application to the proper way to insure a museum collection, the conference is an opportunity for us to better understand our considerable reach. We were asked to to help organize a panel on LGBTQ exhibition topics at next year’s conference in Atlanta. That panel will look at how topics of sexual orientation have been routinely ignored by mainstream museums and how easily it is to incorporate these themes. The conference in Seattle also allowed us to further achieve our goal of seeing our work extend beyond Wooster Street as I was able to meet again with David Jobin, the director of the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, and conﬁrmed that a portion of our recent exhibition, Stroke: From Under the Mattress to the Museum Wall, curated by Robert W Richards, will travel to the Stonewall’s new exhibition space in Wilton Manors in spring 2015. Having Stroke travel to Fort Lauderdale is very important for two reasons. First, the exhibition was very popular and resonated with so many people, regardless of age, race, or gender. It led to extensive coverage in the mainstream media and attracted everyone from art history students at St. Francis College in Brooklyn to legendary fashion designer Calvin Klein. In fact, the exhibition set a new record for highest single daily attendance, a trend that seems consistent for us with overall Museum attendance for the ﬁrst quarter of 2014 up 185% over the same quarter in 2013. The second reason why it’s important is that, in a short time, we have been able to start a trend of having our exhibitions travel to other cities. Last fall’s Nude in Public: Sasha Schneider - Homoeroticism

and the Male Form c. 1900, curated by Jonathan D. Katz, traveled to the Schwules Museum in Berlin where it was on display until the end of June 2014. Our upcoming The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History exhibition, opening in October 2014, is having a preview exhibition at the ONE Archives Foundation gallery in West Hollywood. The ONE Archives Foundation is the oldest continuing LGBTQ organization in the United States and the largest repository of LGBTQ materials in the world. The Classical Nude preview exhibition will be on display there all summer in 2014. In addition to these exhibitions, we presented at the Un-Straight Museum conference this summer at the Museum of Liverpool. What started as a single exhibition in Charles and Fritz’s loft in Soho has now blossomed into an organization that can reach audiences worldwide. Your support is what makes this possible and helps us build the future and continue our reach. ■

A preview of The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History is on view at the ONE Archives Gallery & Museum in West Hollywood, CA, June 29‒September 7. The full exhibition will be on view in the Leslie-Lohman Museum October 17, 2014 through January 4, 2015. The exhibition has been curated by Jonathan David Katz.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

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Slava Mogutin and His New Book, Food Chain

HOH: As a young man you were charged with crimes such as “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence,” “inﬂaming social, national, and religious division,” “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions.” What did you do to garner these charges?

An Interview with Slava Mogutin by Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director

Slava Mogutin launched his new book, Food Chain, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in May 2014 to a packed house. In his introduction, Robert W Richards called Slava “the purest form of an artist.” Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian sat down with the artist/ writer and chatted about his life, art, and new book.

Hunter O’Hanian: What was life like growing up in Kemerovo, Siberia? What were your creative inﬂuences? How did you spend your time? Slava Mogutin: There’s a common stereotype about Siberia being a place where they send criminals. Both my parents were from the south of Russia but they ended up there because they were teachers sent there to educate local kids as a practice after their graduation. I remember the summers being annoyingly short and the winters horrifyingly long and dark, and I was often sick in bed, reading nonstop and dreaming of a better life in a better place. My father became a proliﬁc journalist and writer who authored many children’s books and several books of poetry that were frequently quoted at my school by our Russian literature teacher. Despite his anti-Soviet views, he was forced to join the Communist Party in order to get published and travel. We had more books than furniture and our enormous library became a place of refuge for me. I was obsessed with the idea that I was the reincarnation of Peter the Great, and I read all the books about his time and spent days carrying on conversations with my court and generals and conducting imaginary battles with my enemies. I was a lonely kid with a wild imagination. HOH: How was your world different when you moved to Moscow at 14?

SM: I found myself in the middle of revolutionary Moscow, fighting against the military coup aimed to overthrow Gorbachev’s government and restore the old Soviet regime. A few years later another coup followed. This time it was a popular coup against Gorbachev’s government itself, led by the infamous drunkard Boris Yeltsin. It was a very exciting and euphoric time of Perestroika and Glasnost. I was like a sponge, absorbing all the writers that were previously banned in the USSR—Nabokov, Bukowski, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, and, of course, James Baldwin and William S. Burroughs. While exploring my own sexuality, I was exploring Moscow’s gay underground, with its first speakeasy bars, discos and bohemian salons, where I met many fantastic artists who later became the stars of post-Perestroika art—Timur Novikov, Sergei Bugaev-Afrika, Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe, Oleg Kulik, and Andrey Bartenev among them. It was the beginning of my own artistic path. In retrospect, Moscow of the early 1990s reminds me of Weimar Berlin in the 1920s. It was a fleeting moment of freedom before the brutal crackdown that followed with Putin coming to power. I consider myself lucky to have lived through it and tell my story.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

SM: These Orwellian charges were routinely used against dissidents back in the Soviet times and, most recently, against the members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot. If found guilty of all charges, I could face a prison sentence of up to seven years. Being an openly queer dissident, to be thrown to Russian jail would basically spell out my death sentence. I was continuously harassed by the Russian authorities over a period of three years prior to my departure. I had to flee the country and seek political asylum. At the time I was only 21 and it seemed a very dramatic, if not impossible, decision. I had an open invitation from my friends at the French Embassy but I chose asylum in the US, since my boyfriend at the time was an American and I didn’t speak a word of French. I flew to New York with an invitation from Columbia University for a series of lectures and immediately filed for the asylum. HOH: Much of Food Chain seems autobiographical. How much is true and how much is fiction? Did these stories lead to the charges against you? SM: I was prosecuted for my journalism, which is not included in this book. More specifically, I was prosecuted for my articles and interviews dealing with gay issues and the war in Chechnya, but the main reason was the fact that I came out and outed several prominent personalities and politicians, including the right-wing leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, at the time when homosexuality was an absolute taboo in the Russian media and psyche. And even though homosexuality was officially decriminalized in 1993, the general homophobic atmosphere prevailed both in press and politics. The official harassment escalated after my attempt to officially register the first same-sex marriage in Russia. Naturally, it failed.

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Although it made headlines around the world, it turned me into a total pariah and my life into living hell, with late-night visits from the police and plain-clothed detectives and 24-hour surveillance. I could no longer publish my work. Two of the newspapers I was most closely associated with were shut down and lost their publishing licenses. My court hearings were televised on national TV, and the government press condemned me as “an agent of Western porn and drug trafﬁcking.” Little did they know that years later I would engage myself in the porn industry—ﬁrst as a model and actor, then as a photographer for magazines like Honcho, Inches, and Playgirl. That’s how my photographer’s career really took off... (LOL)!

HOH: Your book gives the impression that you had a very sexual life as a young man. Is that true? SM: I just turned 40, and I must say that one of the advantages of getting older is that you don’t spend as much time on sex as you do in your youth. I used to think about sex twenty-four hours a day and it got me into many troubles, which you can ﬁnd out from reading Food Chain. But sex also helped me to meet people and travel places, and sometimes paid my bills. Nowadays making art for me is just as

exciting as making love, and I learned how to channel my kinky fantasies and fetishes into my work. Being a photographer, I tend to meet a lot of attractive horny guys who are comfortable with their bodies and sexuality, but I ﬁnd it more satisfying to photograph them than to fuck them. Ultimately, as the title text of Food Chain reads, “You’re what you fuck. You’re who you eat.”

HOH: The stories are very intimate. How do you feel about putting this part of your life out there? SM: Publishing new work is always exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time—it’s like putting your guts on display. But once you have this new body of work published, you can forget it and move on. Leaving behind the emotions and experiences—both good and bad—documented, dissected, and reflected upon... I find it very cathartic and therapeutic. HOH: The stories are poetic. However, many were written in your native Russian and then later translated into English. How happy are you with the way the stories ended up? SM: I couldn’t be happier with the way Food Chain came out. It was a challenge to find translators who were willing to

work on my writings because of the subject matter, which is pretty explicit and graphic, as well as the slang and deconstructed grammar. It took nearly twenty years to put these translations together and edit them in a cohesive and meaningful way. I think of this book as an illustrated novel with every chapter written in its own style, from my early teenage poems and manifestos to the latest short stories written in my adopted language and texts made of cut up newspaper headlines.

HOH: Your current creative practice is in many ways connected to your partner Brian Kenny. How do you inﬂuence each other’s work as artists? SM: Brian and I have been collaborating from the day we met. We come from very different backgrounds and we’re very different both artistically and on a personal level. Even our horoscopes say that we aren’t compatible, but ten years later we’re still enjoying living and working together, which is not always easy. Every relationship is about give and take, and I think our differences and talents complement each other in a very dynamic way, which allows us to become a third person or The Third Mind, as Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs called their lifelong collaboration. We call it SUPERM. ■

(above) Slava Mogutin, Gay s Anatomy, 2007, Newspaper and paint marker on canvas panel, 12 x 9 in. (right) Slava Mogutin (with Brian Kenny) , Pimped, 2007, Newspaper, paint marker and human hair on canvas panel, 6 x 8 in.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 50

Event Programming Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations

STROKE: From Under the Mattress to the Museum Walls opened the weekend of March 28 to great crowds and rave reviews, especially by Tim Murphy whose article appeared in the Sunday Style section of The New York Times. Apart from its record-breaking one-day attendance of over 200 people, STROKE featured numerous events and activities tied in to its run, including personalized tours every weekend full of intriguing stories and amusing anecdotes by the artist and curator Robert W Richards. On Tuesday April 1, the Museum hosted a panel discussion with three colorfully distinctive artists: Mel Odom, Michael Kirwan along with Robert W Richards, who discussed the ups-anddowns and ins-and-outs of their long and varied careers. Subjects ranged from discussions on the process of developing illustrations from manuscript, their relationships with art directors, to their personal reasons for doing the work— money, art, sex. Their answers were always surprising, and they certainly didn’t always agree with one another. It was a very lively and spirited evening! Bedtime Stories, presented on April 22, showcased four performers reading

(top) Robert w. Richards conductiong a weekend tour of STROKE: From Under the Mattress to the Museum. (above) STROKE panel discussion with Mel Odom, Michael Kirwan, and Robert W Richards (right) Bedtime Stories, April 22, showcasing four performers reading original stories from the men s magazines of the early 1980s.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 50

original stories from the men’s magazines of the early 1980s. Branden Wallace, one of four performers, was happy to share his experience of the event: “Robert, who moderated the event, put all the readers at ease, and encouraged each of us to work on a delivery which was titillating but would inform the audience that these stories can also be hilarious. Being dyslexic, reading in front of a crowd is not something I enjoy, so I made sure to pick a story weeks in advance and showed my selection to Robert. To my ﬁrst choice he said, ‘No, that is too dreamy. What would work best is raunchy—sleaze will be much more engaging.’ So I picked something really raunchy—so raunchy I think it even surprised Robert! After Robert introduced me that night, I was very conﬁdent in my reading of Men by Jason Klein from the March 1982 issue of Honcho. What a delight! I loved the event and the opportunity to repeat the phrase ‘mixture of cum and Crisco’ three times during the reading.” On the last day of the exhibition a members-only closing party was held which featured portfolios of work chosen by our Collections Department that gave members an exclusive look at some remarkable work that did not make it to the walls for this exhibition. Guests toasted the curator, enjoying wine and light food as they took in this exhibition for the last time.

Deux Ombres —a ﬁlm by Juano Diaz, who wrote, directed, and starred in this visually stunning ﬁlm —looks at how we deal with love, loss, and all things in between. It was showcased at the Museum on April 8th to a packed house that responded to

its often surreal and touching symbolism. Among the museum guests sharing this fabulous evening were Diaz’s partner, Joey Arias, who did the music for the film along with Cocorosie, and many personal friends of Diaz and Arias. After the film, an in-depth Q&A session was moderated by Hunter O’Hanian during which Diaz shared his life story, both the good and the bad, and how he persevered. At the end of the evening, Diaz generously donated a print of one of the film’s storyboards to the Museum’s collections. On April 29th, the Lambda Literary Foundation held a reading of the writings by the finalists for the 26th Annual Lambda Literary Awards at the Museum. Over 25 finalists read. The event was a warm-up to LLF’s 26th Annual Awards ceremony held on June 2nd at Cooper Union and hosted by Kate Clinton. Among those who read at the Museum two received Lammies: Jerry Rosco in the Gay Memoir/ Biography category as editor of A Heaven of Words: Last Journals, by Glenway Wescott (University of Wisconsin Press), and Hilton Als in LGBT Nonfiction for White Girls (McSweeney’s Publishing.) To round out the evening, the Bureau of General Services Queer Division was on hand to sell books by these very inspiring nominees.

(clockwise from top left) Juano Diaz and Hunter O Hanian during in the Q&A after the screening of Diaz s ﬁlm Deux Ombres. Storyboard by Juano Diaz for his ﬁlm Deux Ombres, donated to the Museum s collections by Diaz.

Headmaster, the biannual print magazine for the sophisticated man-lover, issue #6 and the new boxed set of issues #1‒6.

A reception was held on May 8th by Headmaster to launch their latest issue, Volume 6, and introduced the limited edition box set of ﬁrst their 6 issues. Headmaster is a biannual print magazine for the sophisticated man-lover who appreciates smart writing and thoughtprovoking art. ■

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE ISSUE 50

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

In April, two weekend PSPS

exhibitions gave artists represented in the museum exhibition STROKE an opportunity to sell their work. The weekend of April 4-6 included Kent, Michael Kirwan, and Benoit Prevot. April 18- 20 included Robert W Richards and Richard Rosenfeld. As a result, works by these artists were added to many private collections. Other PSPS activities include: May 2-4: Masculine Desires, the 4th Leslie-

Lohman Gay Erotic Art Fair organized by Daniel Kitchen. Twelve artists were chosen by Kitchen to participate; Roger Batilo, Anthony Gonzales, DAL, David Livingston, Joseph Modica, Chuck NItzberg, Freddy Pena, Shungaboy, Mark Vinsun, Branden Wallace, David Wolfe, and Todd Yeager. Each of the artists displayed his work on the walls of PSPS, and in portfolios. May 16-18: Hero Worship. According to

JC Etheredge, the organizer, the exhibition “threw light on the inherent relationship between comics and contemporary gay male erotic art. Both are generally known for their depictions of beautifully idealized anatomy, accentuating the aspects of the male physique that indicate strength and power. The artists included represented just a small sample of a vast community who share an almost universally understood illustrative language.” Artists included were: Beefy Blimps, Rob Clarke, JC Etheredge, Anthony Gonzales, Michael Mitchell, and Lucky Sanford, all based in New York; Belasco, based in Los Angeles; and Patrick Fillion, based in Vancouver, Canada. June 13-17: It Had to Be Done: The

Patrick Fillion, Doc Solando vs the Blue Balls from the Fifth Dimension, 2013, Pencil, inks, and digital color, 19 x 13 in. Illustration created for the France-based fan magazine, DOKKUN (print).

Antic Art of Shane Velazquez. For his opening reception on Friday the 13th, Velazquez organized several performance pieces in the form of a variety show. The evening was hosted by Drea Coney Lorraine, with performances by Scary

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

Frank Melleno (1943-2010), 10, 1978, Digitally restored enlargement of original Polaroid, 10 x 10 in. Courtesy of Gary Freeman and Daniel Melleno. A candid moment is captured between two guys in the hallway next to Room 10. One has a room key on his wrist and the other holds a paper cup generally used for the acid punch during parties.

Ben, Tigger Ferguson, Faux Pas, Kinetic Architecture, Matt Dallow, David Sloan, Lucky Charming, Angelique A’la Mode, and Miss Cherry Delight. July 11-13: The Fairoaks Baths, an

exhibition organized by Gary Freeman of images scanned from original Polaroids by Frank Melleno (19432010). The Fairoaks Baths was operated by the members of the Waller Street commune in San Francisco, and in 1978 Melleno began working as their night manager. He soon began photographing the evening gatherings with his Polaroid camera, posting the images on a bulletin board for patrons to review and enjoy. They were delighted to have their images shown, just as people today delight in seeing their photographs in magazines or on Facebook; it was celebratory and liberating.

PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE ISSUE 50

Before his death, in preparation for the ﬁrst formal exhibition of the images, Melleno wrote: “I kept the Polaroids in a cardboard box for nearly 30 years. On rare occasion, I would look at them, especially if I learned that someone pictured had died. It was a comfort and joy to see these images of men I had cared for when they were in their prime. They serve to remind me about both the joys and the ephemeral quality of life. It’s a pleasure to be able to share these images of a fabled era with others.” July 25-27: Sharp Objects, a two-person

exhibition of the photography of Walt Cessna and Natasha Gornik. The artists are New York-based photographers, writers, bloggers, and self-described “visual and experience addicts.” Their provocative works are sharply focused on personal visual experiences, sexuality, the people in their lives, and their perception of the male gaze. Cessna and Gornik have collaborated often over the past three years and this is their ﬁrst exhibition together. Their work can be viewed on their blogs: http://waltcessna.tumblr.com/ and http://www.natashagornik.com/blog/ ■ (above) Walt Cessna, Pit, 2011, Giclee, 11 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist. (left) Natasha Gornik, Beautiful Jo, 2012, Archival inkjet print, 16 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Upcoming at Prince Street Project Space Sept 12-14 : Housing Works Art Therapy Program exhibition and fundraiser.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

LEGACY ISSUE 50

Bernard Perlin

(1918–2014) Michael Schreiber

Bernard Perlin, a celebrated

artist with works in the Leslie-Lohman Collections and in other major museums, died January 14 at age 95. He was the last living member of a great New York artistic gay “cabal” of the 1940s and 50s that included George Platt Lynes, Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Lincoln Kirstein, and Paul Cadmus. In life and in his art, Bernard Perlin was an inveterate explorer, one who pushed boundaries socially, politically, and artistically. He saw much cultural change occur for the LGBTQ community over the course of his long life and was an active advocate for it—from his early involvement in the

Bernard Perlin, Portrait of George Platt Lynes, 1954, Silverpoint on paper, 18 x 14.5 in. Gift of the artist.

New York “underground” gay culture of the 1930s, to his multiple arrests in the United States and France for “homosexual acts”, to the participation of his circle of friends in Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s pioneering studies on homosexuality, to the celebratory political and emotional act of legally marrying his partner of 54 years, Edward Newell, in 2009. Throughout his long and varied career as

Bernard Perlin, Soldiers in the South Paciﬁc, 1942-45, Ink on paper, 12 x 18 in. Gift of the artist.

an artist, Perlin’s studies of the male body, both on canvas and in silverpoint, were plentiful and exquisitely realized. They form a continuous thread through his oeuvre, from his figure studies of the 1930s to the homoerotic images of soldiers and sailors in World War II and from drawings of the young men who hustled near the Spanish Steps in Rome in the early 1950s to nude oils based on mythological themes. Perlin’s gay sensibility pervades his other work in landscape and still life: lush, sensuous colors and forms that lift the “real” into the realm of the magical. Indeed, in the 1940s and 50s, Bernard Perlin was part of a group of gay painters called the “Magic Realists”: in this extraordinary company were his equally celebrated friends Cadmus, Jared French, and George Tooker. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Bernard Perlin was born in 1918 in Richmond, Virginia. He was sent to art school in New York at age 15 and had early success as a muralist for public works projects. After being rejected for military service during World War II because of his professed homosexuality, Perlin went to work for the U.S. Office of War Information, designing popular propaganda posters for the war effort. He then became a war artist-correspondent for Life and Fortune magazines, working alongside commando forces in occupied Greece and later covering the war and its aftermath in the South Pacific and Asia. Returning to the United States, Perlin embarked on a series of “social realist” paintings, recording scenes of life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. During that time, he also became a successful il-

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

lustrator for magazines such as Harper’s and Collier’s, continuing his relationship with those magazines as well as with Fortune well into the 1960s. Perlin lived and painted in Italy from 1948 until 1954. There, he began to move away from the realism of his previous work and instead to paint, in his words, “beautiful pictures”—landscapes, still lifes, figures. He returned to New York to document the “cocktail culture” of the late 1950s, producing a remarkably bold series of “night pictures” that included scenes of jazz clubs, street boys, and underground gay bars—the last very daring “public” works for the time. Perlin himself was part of the upper echelon of New York gay society at the time, a glittering “cufflink crowd” that included the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Truman Capote. Perlin left the New York art scene for Connecticut in 1959 and for the next several decades continued his work as a figurative painter. He took a long hiatus from his work following the devastating loss of a lover to AIDS, but had resumed painting in recent years. At the time of his passing, he was at work on a new series of male nudes. Bernard Perlin: Painter of Life and Light, a retrospective exhibition, was held at the Anna Zorina Gallery in New York from June 30–July 19, 2014. More information about Bernard Perlin’s life and art can be found at www.BernardPerlin.com. ■ .........................................................

Michael Schreiber is curator for the estate of Bernard Perlin and the author of a forthcoming book on Perlin s life and art. He is an art historian and teacher in Chicago.

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 50

Reﬂections Through Others The Museum’s summer

exhibition, After Our Bodies Meet: The Art of Resistance, gave visitors an opportunity to examine the female form in a way seldom seen and perhaps allowed us all to look at ourselves a little differently. Curator Alexis Heller brought us a look at the female form which not only made us think about how women view themselves, but allowed us to examine the entire range of gender-based representations which often rely upon depiction of genitalia. As one insightful observer noted,

“It does a disservice to say this exhibition is only about feminism. This show is about how all of us—male and female, gay and straight—allow ourselves to be represented in typical ways.” Presented in connection with the Fresh Fruit Festival, the exhibition contained the work of eleven female and transgender artists spanning more than 30 years. Katherine Brooks wrote in her review in Hufﬁngton Post, “One painting or artwork can chip away at our cultural beliefs, sure, attempting to shift the ways in which

we view the male and female body. But there’s power in numbers, and diversity of ideas is the best weapon against a monolithic perspective. Such is the frequent mantra of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. From exhibitions of early erotic art to surveys of queer craft, the art haven has been masterful at bringing together groups of painters, sculptors and photographers who play tug-of-war with LGBT and feminist issues.” Containing fewer objects than shown in other recent exhibitions, Heller proved that less is more as she provided intense moments to make her points. The powerful opening piece was by Chitra Ganesh, a Brooklyn based artist who draws inspiration from Indian comic books, Hindu mythology, and American science ﬁction. Ganesh’s surrealistic and hybridized female forms collide beauty and abjection, commemorating marginalized and excluded ﬁgures from art, history, and literature. Ganesh’s work imagines a queer future rooted in our past yet beyond our current comprehension. Sophia Wallace’s installation, CLITERACY, 100 Natural Laws (2012), occupied an entire wall with its white neon and tenfoot-high wall panels containing a range of contexts and media to disrupt hierarchical conceptions of sexuality, which challenge phallocentric biases in science, law, philosophy, politics, feminism, and the art world. Wallace focused on the clitoris

(above) Chitra Ganesh,Writing on the Wall, 2013, Archival chromogenic print, 20 x 26 in. Courtesy of the artist. (left) Chitra Ganesh, Atlas, 2013, Archival chromogenic print, 70 x 52 in. Courtesy of the artist.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 50

and female pleasure to counteract the history of scientiﬁc misinformation regarding women’s bodies and the concomitant oppression therein. Indeed, the need for work like this to be created and exhibited was proven by a review of the exhibition that appeared in the Psychology Today blog and was censored by its editors. The reviewer had posted the article with the title “14 Crazy Amazing Facts about the Clitoris.” When discovered by the editors, the title was quickly changed to “14 Crazy Amazing Facts about Female Sexuality.” The writer was scolded and sanctioned for using the word “clitoris” in the title. The exhibition also contained ﬁve pieces of self-portraiture by Laura Aguilar that spanned more than 20 years. Simply said, the artist was tired of not seeing people with body forms similar to hers represented. Her

work attempts to shed light on marginalized identities and bodies excluded from mainstream culture and art history. Aguilar continues to challenge the expectations of classical female beauty by foregrounding her large Chicana lesbian body. With her face typically obscured from the camera’s lens, these “landscape portraits” also present a form of self-determined objectiﬁcation, abstracting Aguilar’s body in a manner that is at once vulnerable and powerful. In an attempt to show some of the roots of feminism-based work from the 20th century, Heller chose to include pieces by Audre Lorde, Cathy Cade, and Tee Corrine. Caribbean-American writer, activist, and feminist Audre Lorde was, in her own words, a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” During the 1960s, Lorde vocally challenged mainstream feminism’s simplis-

(above) Zanele Muholi, Case 200/07/2007, MURDER (from the series Isilumo siyaluma), 2007, Digital print on cotton rag of a digital collage of menstrual blood stains 43 x 41 in. Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York and Stevenson, Capetown/Johannesburg. (left) Catherine Opie, Self Portrait/Nursing, 2004, C-print, 41 x 32.25 in. ©Catherine Opie. Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

tic focus on gender, arguing for recognition of all the intersections of identity—including class, race, age, gender, and health. Critical of the ways dominant group identities could erase individual differences, Lorde considered community crucial to liberation and realizing a future. While some of today’s feminist activists have reclaimed porn as a didactic and self-affirming medium, Lorde’s message captures the importance of openly embracing one’s sexuality as a method of self-affirmation and political agency. During the emergence of lesbian feminist publications in the early 1970s, Cathy Cade became one of the foremost photographers responsible for documenting lesbians as independently powerful and fiercely loving forces within their homes and society. Championing a wide spectrum of lesbianism, Cade’s subjects included radical activists, women of color, disabled women, fat women, and pregnant women. While most lesbian feminist artists of the 1970s resisted depicting the female body in order to evade the male gaze, Tee Corinne created erotic images of lesbians, for lesbians. One of Corinne’s strategies for resisting the objectification of female bodies was to abstract them using solarization and mirrors. These processes provided a sense of privacy and distance for her subjects while also symbolizing lesbians’ fractured and obscured social status. Conversely, Corinne also depicted lesbian sexuality through more explicit means, by making photographs and drawings of women’s genitalia, the latter reproduced in her famous 1975 publication, Cunt Coloring Book.

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EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 50

(left) Cathy Cade, Last Days, 1989, Digital exhibition print, 17 x 25 in. Collection of University of California, Berkeley. (below) Laura Aguilar, Grounded #114, 2006, Photographic exhibition print, 19.56 x 19.56 in. Courtesy of the artist and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

Work by four other artists rounded out the exhibition. Allyson Mitchell’s textile, Shebacca, takes inspiration from a 1970s Playboy centerfold and the bodies of real activists, colliding oppositional sexual politics and aesthetics to form a queer utopia of desire and difference. Zanele Muholi’s five portraits reflected lesbian women and transgender people from townships in South Africa, Toronto, and London. Her two digital menstrual blood collages in the exhibition memorialize the rape and murder of black lesbians in South Africa. Becoming An Image (2012), by Heather Cassils, combined performance, sculpture, photography, and sound to explore notions of witnessing, documentation, and memory. By using the documentation of a performance, the visitor saw how Cassils employed mixed martial arts techniques to brutally “sculpt” a 1500-pound block of clay in a pitch-black room. With use of an iconic image, Catherine Opie re-imagines the hyper-feminine Virgin Mary in her own form, fusing together contrasting forms of gender expression and family values. Finally, in Extraordinary Pregnancies (2010), Chris E. Vargas casts himself as Thomas Beatie, a transman who infamously created a media firestorm by fashioning himself as the first pregnant man. For Vargas, Beatie’s story presents the opportunity to identify beyond binaries, to acknowledge the human need for acceptance and defiance, perhaps in a single piece, captioning the focus of the entire exhibition. ■ ..............................................................

Hunter O Hanian and David Serotte contributed to this article.

Laura Aguilar, Grounded #114, 2006, Photographic exhibition print, 19.56 x 19.56 in. Courtesy of the artist and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

GALLERIES ISSUE 50

Galleries of Interest

See Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum Back Cover NEW YORK CITY Andrew Edlin Gallery, 134 10th Ave, NYC, edlingallery.com thru Aug 16 Purple States group exhitbiion curated by Sam Gordon ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25th St., NYC, clampart. com Sept 11-Oct 11 Mark Beard: Alter Egos, paintings and sculpture Munch Gallery, 245 Broome St., NYC, munchgallery.com thru Aug 10 Summer Exhibition 2014: Erik Foss, Hein Koh, Scooter LaForge, Amos Mac 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 New York Public Library Jeﬀerson Market Branch, 425 Ave. of the Americas, queerbookdiorama.tumblr.com Aug-Sept Queer Book Diorama Show Participant Inc, 253 E. Houston St., NYC, participantinc thru Aug 17 Zoe Beloﬀ, The Days of the Commune, Installation and screenings Sept 7-Oct 12 NEGROGOTHIC, A Manifesto, The Aesthetics of M. Lamar; Nov 2- Dec 21 Greer Lankton, Love Me

Fine Arts Work Center, 24 Pearl St, Provincetown, MA. fawc.org Aug 22 to Sept 2 Queer Fellows, curated by Hunter O Hanian Firehouse Gallery, 8 Walnut Street, Bordentown, NJ, ﬁrehousegallery.com Work by Eric Gibbons Hersh Fine Art, Glen Cove, NY hershﬁneart. com thru August 12 Love and Observed, Portraits by Women Artists Lyman-Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA, lymaneyerart Rice/Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA ricepolakgallery.com Aug 14-27 Patrick Webb, paintings; Sept 12-Dec 31 Gallery Artist Group Show The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA, warhol.org thru Aug 24 Halston and Warhol: Silver and Suede; Sept 27-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

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave. whitney.org thru Oct 19 Jeﬀ Koons: A Retrospective

WEST

BROOKLYN

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

Figureworks 168 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY, ﬁgureworks.com Sept 12-Oct 5 And the winner is... , Group exhibition Life on Mars Gallery, 56 Bogart St., Brooklyn, lifeonmarsgallery.com thru Aug 21 Summer Invitational Exhibition, Clarity Haynes and others.

NORTHEAST A Gallery 192 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA, agalleryart.com Aug 13-19 David Sokosh, photography; Aug 20-26 Jamie Castertano, photography Deluca Gallery 432 Commercial St. Provincetown, MA pattydelucagallery.com Aug 22-Sept 5 Patty DeLuca, Scooter LaForge, Ken Lockwood

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

Coagula Curatorial, Los Angeles, CA coagulacuratorial.com Jun 28-Jul 19 QUEER BIENNIAL l: LA/NY and parts in between 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 Hall Spassov Gallery, 319 3rd Ave. S, Seattle, WA, hallspassov.com Aug 7-31 Gretchen Gammel: Muscle Memory, paintings. ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 909 W. Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA onearchives.org ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 626 North Robertson Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA onearchives.org thru Sept 7 The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History, Curated by Jonathan David Katz, in collaboration with Leslie-Lohman Museum; Sept 20-Jan 11, 2015 Montezland Rio Bravo Fine Art, 110 N Broadway St., Truth or Consequences, NM riobravoﬁneart. net Sept 13-Oct 26 Fiberart 2014‒A Mixed Bag

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 Sanz I Vila, Chicas, 2014, Acrylic and pencil on paper, 12 x 20 in. From My Home, Galería Artevistas, Barcelona.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, AR,crystalbridges. org, Sep 13-Jan 19 Discovering American Art Now, Cobi Moules, Fahamu Pecou and others

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

Marriage during the war in Albert, France, postcard written in 1918, Source: Schwules Museum, Collection Travestie. From 30 MY COMRADE‒THE DIVA, Theater of the front and the internment camps of WWI, Schwules Museum.

CANADA Ottawa La Petite Mort Gallery, 306 Cumberland St., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, lapetitemortgallery.com thru Aug 14 Felipe Bracelis: Creatures I Saw; Aug 15-28 Aitch & Saddo: Coﬃns; Sept 5-28 Alex Bartosik: New Works & Performance

EUPOPE Barcelona Galería Artevistas, Passatge del Crèdit 4, Barcelona, artevistas.com thru Aug 31 My Home, Sanz I Vila, drawings

Berlin NGBK, Oranienstrasse 25 ngbk.de thru Aug 10 What Is Queer Today Is Not Queer Tomorrow Schwules Museum, Lutzowstrasse 73, Berlin, schwulesmuseum.de thru Aug 13 Dragan Simicevic: Dream Within A Dream; thru Oct 6 Naked Shame and Pretty Disgrace: Lothar Lamberts Underground: Pictures, Movies, Life; Sept 5-Nov 30 MY COMRADE‒THE DIVA, Theater of the front and the internment camps of WWI, curated by Anke Vetter; Sept 14-Oct 11 World of Moomins

Groningen, NL Galerie MooiMan, Noorderstationsstraat 40, 9717KP Groningen, NL

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 Ongoing Erotic objects, paintings and drawings. By appointment between exhibitons. Musée d Orsay, Sept 28 Carpeaux (1827-1875), Sculptor for the Empire Oct 14-Jan 25 Sade: Attacking the Sun

Vienna Leopold Museum, at the MuseumsQuartier, Vienna leopoldmuseum.org thru Sept 15 And Yet There Was Art: Austria 1914-1918 Schiele, Egger-Lienz, Kolig; thru Oct 20 Line & Shape: 100 Master Drawings from the Leopold Collection

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 50

The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History October 18, 2014 – January 4, 2015 Leslie-Lohman Museum Curated by Jonathan David Katz Sponsored by the John Burton Harter Charitable Trust

The Museum will undertake the most

ambitious exhibition in its history in the autumn of 2014 when it opens The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History. Curated by Jonathan David Katz, the exhibition’s central premise is that the image of the classical past is a recurring touchstone in the historical development of same-sex representation and, as such, constitutes a sensitive barometer of the shifting constructions of what we today call LGBT or queer culture. The classical past is thus queer culture’s central original myth, and its representation offers insight about the culture that appropriated it. In tracing this trajectory

(top left) Imperial Roman Male Torso (perhaps Apollo), 1st Century CE, Thasian Marble (no restoration), 39 in. ht. After the Apollo Sauroktonos type developed by Praxiteles, Fourth Century BCE. Eastern Empire, probably Greece. American private collection, 1988. Previously, New York market. Courtesy Antiquarium, Ltd. Fine Ancient Arts Gallery, NYC. (above) School of Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594-1665), probably by Gaspard Dughet (French, 16151675) and Carlo Maratti (Italian, 1625-1713), Bacchanal, c 1664-1670, Oil on canvas, 36 x 50 in. Courtesy the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, gift of Mr. Arthur L. Erlanger, 66.49. (left) Jess (Burgess Franklin Collins, American, 1923‒2004, Boy Party, 1954, Oil on plywood, 56 x 32 in. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Odyssia Skouras, 1998.6.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

EXHIBITIONS ISSUE 50

of the classical nude across history, this exhibition concentrates on four periods: Antiquity, Renaissance, 19th Century, and Modern/Contemporary. It is important to note that work by women and people of color within this genre really only begin to appear in the last period. The exhibition will contain nearly a hundred objects of sculpture, painting, drawing, and photography from sources such as the Library of Congress, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The New York Public Library, Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Archives of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Art, and many other sources. The exhibition will contain work by Djuna Barnes, Aubrey Beardsley, James Bidgood, Romaine Brooks, Paul Cadmus, Heather Cassils, Tee Corinne,

(above) Paul Cadmus, Bar Italia, 1953-1955, Tempera on wood. 37.5 x 45.25 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.

Romaine Brooks, Chasseresse, 1920, Oil on canvas, 51.3 x 38.3 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist.

F. Holland Day, George Dureau, Albrecht Dürer, Jim French, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Nan Goldin, Duncan Grant, Sunil Gupta, Lyle Ashton Harris, John Burton Harter, Jess, Herbert List, George Platt Lynes, Andrea Mantegna, Hans von Marees, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Michelangelo, Pierre et Gilles, Jacopo Pontormo, Herb Ritts, Guido Reni, Thorvaldsen, Del LaGrace Volcano, and others. A complete catalog will be available. A preview of the exhibition is on view at ONE Archive Gallery in West Hollywood, CA form June 29 to September 7, 2014. ■

F. Holland Day, Untitled, c 1907, Platinum print with hand coloring, 9.5 x 7.4 in. The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-37384.

The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

WINDOW GALLERY ISSUE 50

Robert F. Figueroa:

Tom, Dick,and Harry: The Everyday Man Series July 18–September 28, 2014 Daniel Sander

The Leslie Lohman-Museum’s

Wooster Street Window Gallery offers an installation of photographs by Florida-based artist Robert F. Figueroa. Entitled Tom, Dick, and Harry: The Everyday Man Series, the photographs comprising this series are formal headshot portraits of action figures in the style of oversized Polaroids. Originally envisioned as more mundane and repetitive passport photographs, the artist arrived at this format after a printing accident provided one of the photographs with a border reminiscent of a Polaroid. In producing this series of images, the artist drew on a number of influences, alternately personal, professional, and art historical. Born in Cuba and emigrating to the United States at age seven, the artist recalls, “One of my first toys upon arrival to the U.S. in 1966 was a G.I. Joe figure, which had just recently been introduced as a new toy for boys. Without realizing any sort of sexuality at that early age, I knew I had a strong attachment to these figures. I didn’t necessarily want to grow up being just like one of them, but I knew I wanted to surround myself with men like them.” On the one hand, then, the designation “everyday” gestures to a quotidian masculinity embodied in the uniformed physicality of action figures and the archetypes on which they draw. On the other hand, however, these everyday men are idealized, treated as the exemplary subjects of formal portrait photographs. The artist notes how he has paid “extra attention to the backdrop, the lighting, etc. to highlight “what I felt to be some of their outstanding features, giving each individual a somewhat unique personality.” This attention evokes Figueroa’s early profession as head of post production at Raleigh Film Studios in Hollywood, as well as his affection for the bright, saturated Technicolor of 40s and 50s Hollywood musicals.

Figueroa has since earned a BFA with a minor in art history from Florida International University. His interests in both an athleticized masculinity and film are evident in the motion studies of nineteenth-century English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who the artist cites as his first photographic influence. However, where Muybridge was motivated by a scientific understanding of the body, the lushness of Figueroa’s photographs, evident across his oeuvre, suggests a proximity to, identification with, and desire for his subjects that diminishes the distance of objective inquiry. Against the standardization implied by the mechanically reproduced action figure, the artist’s intent with these photographs is to be provocative in the same way that profile photographs on social media are. Through our contemplation of this photographic series, the artist poses the questions: “Can we feel we know someone based solely on their online profile photographs? Is it possible for an inanimate toy to provoke the same feelings?” ■ ..........................................................

Daniel J. Sander is an artist and academic whose work concerning libidinal materialism and queer nihilism has been exhibited, published, and performed internationally. He is currently a doctoral student in performance studies at New York University. Robert F. Figueroa, (top to bottom) Alrik, Len, Rod, and Rolf, 2013, Archival pigment print (Ed. 12), 30 x 24 in.

The Wooster St. Window Gallery is a street-facing gallery featuring work by contemporary, emerging, and under-represented 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: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 50 ● SUMMER 2014

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum

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.

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

Work by artists which that has been censored from exhibitions due to its gay and sexual content. Curated by Jennifer Tyburczy.

Pemanency / 26 Wooster Street August 14 ‒ September 28, 2014

This exhibition will focus on recently accessioned items into the Museum’s Permanent Collection. The exhibition will contain approximately 60 objects and will contain work by Deborah Kass, Peter Hujar, Robert Indiana, David Hockney, Nan Goldin, Red Grooms, Harmony Hammond, Ray Johnson and many others. Curated by the Leslie-Lohman Museum staff.

Zanele Muholi, Being (Detail, Ed. 8), 2007. Courtesy of the artist and the Yancey Richardson Gallery.

Dyke Action Machine, Do You Love the Dyke in Your Life?, 1995, Lithograph, 11.75 x 18.875 in. Foundation purchase.

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

Examining different historical moments (Antiquity, Renaissance, 18th/19th Centuries, Modern/Contemporary), and how artists made over the classical past in their image. Curated by Jonathan David Katz. Unknown artist, Ruhm, 1910, Embossed print on paper, 4.5 x 7.5 in. LLM Collection, Foundation purchase.

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.