Monday, July 28, 2025

Artworks For Sale

Park Avenue makes quite the art gallery on a sunny afternoon whether your'e driving or walking.  Animal sculptor Michel Bassompierre is taking full advantage of the exposure for his resin apes and bears in a show called "Fragile Giants."   They range in price from $7,000 to $20,000.

"Le Miel n°5"
"Le Dominant n°5"
"Le Saumons n°1"
"L'Effluve n°1"
La Patriarche n°1"
"La Fratrie n°1a" 
"La Banquise n°3"
"Le Miel n°2"
"Le Majestueux"

Friday, July 25, 2025

Thunderstorms @ the Whitney

I feared the outdoor galleries might be closed at the Whitney on a free Friday night due to the severe thunderstorm forecast, as they had been at the Met the week before because of the heat.


Instead, a gallery featuring a large-scale work by artist Mary Heilman offered colorful seating to watch the skies darken over New Jersey.


Amy Sherald's 2018 portrait of Michelle Obama put her on my art map, although I didn't much care for its muted tones.  Turns out she's a lot more colorful even if she only paints Black people.

"Mama Has Made the Bread (How Things Are Measured)" (2018)
"Guide Me No More" (2011)
"It Made Sense... Mostly in Her Mind" (2001)
"Freeing herself was one thing, taking ownership of that freed self was another" (2013)
With a few exceptions--such as "If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It" (2019) which alludes to a sentence from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon--most of her portraits are the same size.


Pay attention to the titles.  Sherald, whose great-grandfather was a German-Jewish tailor, preaches a kind of gentle Black self-empowerment.

"A Bucket Full of Treasures (Papa Gave Me Sunshine to Put in My Pocket)" (2020)
In the Black community, the term "redbone" refers to people with lighter skin color, a category that includes Sherald who clearly finds the distinction meaningless.

"They Call Me Redbone, but l'd Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake" (2009)
This painting reminded me that our current president used bone spurs to evade the draft.

"American Grit" (2024)
It's been harder and harder lately to find solace in art when so much of it now has political associations.  The "Justice" Department decided that the police officer who shot and killed this emergency medical technician in her own home should serve only a day in jail.  A federal judge in Kentucky decided otherwise this week, sentencing the man to nearly three years.

Breonna Taylor (2020)
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibited Amy Sherald: American Sublime before it arrived at the Whitney.  Residents of the nation's capital were supposed to be in for the same treat until the National Portrait Gallery decided "Trans Forming Liberty" (2024) might offend the current occupant of the White House, who wants to name the Kennedy Center after his wife.  Even though Ivy League schools and white-shoe law firms have caved in the face of his creeping but relentless authoritarianism, Sherald cancelled the show rather than remove her painting.  That's what I call integrity--stand with Amy, a dentist's daughter from Columbus, Georgia!


Like I said earlier, pay attention to her titles.

"For Love, and for Country" (2022)
IMHO, Louise Nevelson's work has never been displayed to better effect.  


"Moon Gardenscape No. XIV (1969-77)
Marina Kurkow showcases her environmental concerns through animation and sculpture on the Whitney's Hyundai Terrace.  The Korean motor company also sponsors digital art at MoMA.

"The River Is A Circle" (with James Schmitz) (2025)

If I ever book a room at the Standard, I'll ask for a view of the Whitney.  Or maybe I should just grab a drink at Le Bain.  Who wants to join me?

"The River Is A Circle" (partial, with Blake Goble) (2025)

Zurkow also staked her claim to an interior gallery.  My patience for video art increases in direct proportion to the outside temperature.  I found "Mesocosm (Wink, TX)," another animated work from 2012, mesmerizing.  It depicts an actual sinkhole about a four-hour drive from El Paso that has been expanding since 2002 on property privately owned by an oil company. An edible helped me concentrate on finding the moving elements.


In the "Earth Eaters," (2025) Zurkow and James Schmitz create a world of floating islands endlessly plundered for their minerals by human beings who are represented by gold statues (putting orange wigs atop them probably would be a little too-on-the-nose).  The artists mashed up 16th century woodcuts by Georgius Agricola, the father of modern geology, war weaponry and artificial intelligence to produce an endless, unsettling loop of Mother Earth's exploitation.


Diane Arbus photographed this artist, whose work I don't ever recall seeing before although I've heard his name a lot.

"Dinner #15" by Lucas Samaras (1965)
I never tire of the Whitney's permanent collection

"Polar Bear Curl" by Sonya Kelliher-Combs (partial, 2017)
"Fall" by Alison Saar (partial, 2011)
"Ethel Scull 36 Times" by Andy Warhol (partial, 1963)
"Air Mail Stickers" by Yayoi Kusama (partial, 1962)
"The Moon by Day" by Margaret French (1939)
. . . or the views from its terraces.  The World Trade Center


and the Empire State Building loom in the distance.


Visitors will leave Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, an unusually witty exhibit, with a compendium of faux pas directed at the deaf community.  

"Degrees of Deaf Rage in Everyday Situations" (2018)
"Shit Hearing People Say to Me" (2019)

Monday, July 21, 2025

The Letters of Thom Gunn


Whatever possessed me to read more than 600 pages of letters penned by a poet?  I rarely even glance at the poetry The New Yorker publishes every week.

Well, to start with I definitely would have cruised Thom Gunn if I'd seen him standing under that truck route sign and he wrote poems about AIDS, notably "The Man With Night Sweats," which I do recall permeating my philistine consciousness favorably at some point in the 1990s, because it seemed tragically straightforward and resonant.  The contours of his life also intrigued me:  born in England, educated at Cambridge, expatriated to California, lived in Haight Ashbury during the period when San Francisco became the gay Mecca AND remained HIV negative.

There also was the fact that he was a generation older, and I've always been intrigued by writers--Philip Roth especially comes to mind--whose work can function as a guidepost about what lies ahead.

The news isn't good.

Well, how about this for resolutions?  No more speed after the age of 70, no more alcohol after 75, no more sex after 80 (probably not much more available at that age anyway), and die at 85, the last years being full of really good meals and lots of jokes. (February 17, 1997)

In reality, Gunn only made it to age 74.  He overdosed on a recreational drug cocktail, including crystal meth, not long after he and his speed freak "boyfriend," three decades his junior, broke up.  His family of friends, including Mike Kitay whom he identified as life partner, all hated the guy.  Several of them lived together with Gunn and Kitay (who had separate bedrooms) in an unconventional arrangement that reminded me of a share house in the Pines, so it must have been awful for them to witness the behavior of their aimless friend.

I got bored with the gym; and I start drinking cheap wine in the afternoon. (But somehow, I’m not really a lush, probably because it is such BAD wine.  My wants are very few:  drink, drugs, a mad biker with an imaginative cock and an infinitely hungry hole, a loving family, and a fairly warm climate.  Very Horatian.

Throughout, Gunn is completely forthright about his fondness for both drugs (he makes a pretty strong case for acid enhancing his verbal imagery) and sex, although the fact he supported the speed freak suggests that something more than gerontophilia--a life preserver in Gunn's later years--was at play.  His relative fame no doubt worked in his favor, too, even if "hunky poet" seems like an oxymoron. 

It's difficult not to connect Gunn's insatiable hunger for intoxication to the trauma he and his brother Ander, a beloved, lifelong correspondent, suffered as teen agers when their mother killed herself.  Shortly before his death, Gunn published "The Gas Poker," which refers to the tool she used.  It's no wonder he, who dishes constantly in these letters about poets living and dead, rarely has a negative word to say about Ted Hughes, similarly abandoned as a result of Sylvia Plath's suicide by the same means, even though the fellow Brit achieved greater rewnown.

Shop talk and the rhythms of an academic year characterize many of the letters; included among the correspondents are August Kleinzahler, a neighbor, and Clive Wilmer, two of the men who put the book together (along with Gunn biographer Michael Nott), which clearly was an act of love and deep respect.  For a man who endured more than his share of tragedy, he remains surprisingly upbeat, even comic when writing to his many friends, relatives and colleagues.

Susan Sontag has to KISS me—why? . . . I hate kissing people when I’m not horny.  I think it’s an irritating habit of elderly New Yorkers, much preferring a Prussian-type handshake myself, or even a stoned and nonchalant wave of the hand.  Hi there, stud, I’d sooner say to SS. (October 4, 1996)

That said, I much preferred his "pen pal" missives to gay men like New Yorker Billy Lux in which we discover that Gunn and Janis Joplin shared the same tattooist, although he got his body (right forearm) inked six years earlier than she.  Gunn's love for novels, both classic and contemporary, and pop culture, particularly his sympatico musical taste, surprised and kept me reading longer than I might have otherwise.  He sounds like a good hang.

AIDS first rears its ugly head in May 1983, when Gunn was 53.  Although he loses many close friends, he also develops a surprising perspective, perhaps due to his age.

“But I do think we—our generation on, that is—have had it unnaturally easy for most of our lives.  ALWAYS people have experienced lots of death near at hand until the discovery of antibiotics in WWII—my parents had school friends die, one of my mother’s sisters died of TB while young, both my grandmothers died before I was born.  But WE knew hardly anyone dying—if they died, it was of old age or through accident—so we forgot that if we were born to seek out happiness we were also born subject to disease.  I’m getting sententious, aren't  I?  But it has taken AIDS to remind us of what ever previous generation was familiar with, and to be aware that if we personally live to an advanced age, we shall be out there alone and in the cold.” (September 26, 1994)

Both the literary and academic domains must have been fairly forgiving of homosexuality even in Gunn's youth.  But he defended himself like a warrior when his preferred tribe--leather men--came under attack from Gregory Woods, a fellow poet. 
 
What I quarrel with chiefly is the way you have read my (sexual and some other) poetry as pretty well exclusively sadomasochistic in content or implied content.  To do so you can argue from only two poems:  one, "The Beaters," an early and bombastic poem in which I was rather childishly trying to shock, and two, "The Menace" . . . What I was trying to do in this second poem was to release leather bars from the rather crude assumptions made about them by straight people, newspapers and gays who either have never been in one or have only gone to one to find in it what they expect . . . 

However, you do at least, so far, have the justification that these two poems are about the subjects you say they are about.  The connection between yr (sic) examination of them and the rest of your argument seems to be found in the following remark: 'In the semiotics of cruising, black leather signals a greater or less interest in sadomasochism'. Having said this, you on to find sadomasochism in every poem in which a soldier or a motorcyclist figures.  Surely you must know how questionable your generalisation actually is; but even if it were true, the semiotics of cruising is not the same as the semiotics of poetry--at least I hope they aren't.  I have in fact said something in my prose about possible significance of the soldiers and bikers in my work, and I am really made sad to think of their being seen one and all as sexual sadists. (It might help you to remember that the movie 'The Wild One' came out at the same time as I wrote 'On the Move': I wonder if you are prepared to take this as being a sadomasochistic film?)

Having established your generalisation, you then go on to take poems that are not sexual in content or implication and interpret them as sexual poems, and to take sexual poems and interpret them as sadomasochistic poems.  Many of your readings completely astonish me: e.g. snow in one poem and distant smoke in another become semen for you; you see the Unsettled Motorcyclist making an 'anal' descent into the earth; and the poor wolf-boy becomes a 'catamite' at the end of his poem, the blood on his paws becoming the blood from where he has scratched his lover's body (ugh).  Come on now:  he drops on four feet because he has turned into a wolf, and his paws (only the back ones, I guess) are bleeding because he has been running barefoot through the stubble (the wound he receives in the one life carries through into the other). He has no lover in the poem; it wd (sic) be a much happier poem if he had.  But to understand this poem--or, I wd (sic) say, most poetry--you must possess a firm trust in the literal meaning of language.  If you can grasp the the literal situation, then my hope is that you might be able to apply it to other similar situations--even though they are not in the poem and the application is your work and not the author's.  Thus, the wolf-boy's situation fully grasped might be seen to apply to that of anyone else leading a double life--maybe sexually divided, or divided in other ways. (October 2, 1982)

What makes this rebuttal even more fascinating is the fact that Woods himself is a friend of Dorothy, who began chairing the Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University 16 years later!  Gunn's insistence that "you must possess a firm trust in the literal meaning of language" to understand poetry exposes what I always found to be most frustrating aspect of my college education:  hearing a professor's fanciful interpretation of art, literature or music and wondering WTF?!?  Where did that come from?

To be fair, Gunn's occasionally alienating fearlessness--"The Beater" above alludes to a dandy's "swastika-draped bed" and he included a series of poems written from the perspective of Jeffrey Dahmer in Boss Cupid, his final collection--isn't for the fainthearted but it's also the mindset that enabled him to tackle AIDS in way that particularized both its horror and the simple humanity of its victims.  

While the end of Gunn's life seems profoundly sad--retirement from writing and teaching clearly didn't suit him--his zest for life remained constant as did his crush on Keanu Reeves.  After celebrating his 64th birthday with a five-way he wrote: 

Age is apparently exactly like youth.  How reassuring.  (September 3, 1993)

As someone about to turn 72, I'm less sanguine, although I do recognize the legitimacy of his observation: we remain who we always have been.  





 


Sunday, July 20, 2025

Romantic Comedy (5+*)

 

It's as if Curtis Sittenfeld, one of my favorite contemporary authors, had plumbed the shallows of my mind to articulate exactly what I always had fantasized about in life but have never come close to achieving.

First. a dream job:  Sally Mintz, a career gal from the Midwest, writes for "The Night Owl," a weekly, late-night sketch comedy show with musical guests known by its acronym (TNO), just like its "live from New York" inspiration.  

Hearing the famous line never failed to release something in me, some ecstasy that was like lifting the tab on a soda can, or maybe like having an orgasm, or maybe like knowing I’d have an orgasm in the near future—some excitement and anticipation and nervousness and delight. The essential thing I’d failed to understand about TNO before working there was that, even though there were flubbed lines and late camera cuts and sketches that bombed, the live part wasn’t the show’s weakness; it was its strength. And really, so was the way all the preparation had to be crammed into a week. These were the things that made us inventive and wildly ambitious, that gave the show its unpredictability and intensity and magic.

Sally's ideas for internet dog searches are as amusing as anything I've ever seen on SNL but her humor, like her spiky personality, more typically has an edge.  When Noah Webster, a hunky singer/songwriter does double-duty as host and musical guest, Sally pitches a skit idea asking how come ordinary guys (i.e. not especially attractive) often manage to snare gorgeous female celebrities while the reverse almost never happens.  Turns out she's on a roll:  not only does the Lorne Michaels stand-in approve of the pitch, he chooses two of Sally's other ideas for the same show, too, a personal best, even though a last-minute complication forces the cancellation of "The Danny Horst Rule," named for her about-to-be-unlucky-in-love office mate.  My one brief bid at writing acclaim occurred in high school, during an enriched English class when Mr. LaGrone had been given us the highly unusual assignment of producing a satire on 1970 American life for the general assembly.  When I declared "Mom ran off with Colonel Sanders because he likes big breasts," it got the biggest laugh in spite of my shy delivery.

Second, insecurity:  During their very intense work week, Sally falls head-over-heels for Noah even though she so disdained "Making Love in July," his earliest, biggest hit that she's never paid much attention to his other work.  A divorced Indigo Girls-girl, she relies on a friend with benefits who sends her unsolicited dick pics to satisfy her physical needs. Unlike her male colleagues, Sally finds porn "narratively unsatisfying;" her week-long professional relationship with Noah is anything but. Sittenfeld steeps it in well-researched detail with a flair for eroticism that transcends mere heterosexual attraction.  But Sally constantly second-guesses her own appeal (she had me with a hamster tattoo anecdote), and ends up sabotaging a potential kiss at an after party with a snarky remark about Noah's reputed fondness for models. 

Third, being chosen:  If not for the pandemic, Sally no doubt would always remember Noah as the "one who got away."  But after a nasty bout with covid, he e-mails her out of the blue, initiating an intense correspondence/courtship from across the country.  

Obviously, endlessly emailing someone before meeting is a waste of time, but I do still wonder whether a person’s writing self is their realest self, their fakest self, or just a different self than their in-the-world self? Or maybe emailing with someone a lot before meeting is ill-advised not because the other person is real or fake but because there inevitably will be a discrepancy between your idea of them and the reality. 

If only I'd read that last sentence in 1996, when "Kill Barbie" and I met through Firefly, an internet community that brought people together based on their taste in music.  We bonded over the Pet Shop Boys and exchanged confessional e-mails at a rapid clip for a couple of months before business travel to south Florida gave us a chance to meet in person.  The venue he selected in South Beach was so dark and gloomy that it took no more than a glance at him sitting hunched over,  bearded at the bar, nursing a drink, to become a ghost (like I said earlier, shallow depths).  

Sittenfeld offers pretty persuasive evidence that a person's writing self actually is their best self.  Both Sally and Noah recall enough about each other that they have a jumping off point from which to build a virtual relationship that can survive the revelation of their vulnerabilities and mistakes  in a way that would be much more difficult face-to-face, or at least for two actual people not so talented as Sittenfeld in expressing themselves.  It's my favorite part of the book, a very meta expression of romance that could never work in a film or television adaptation because it's all happening in the characters' minds, with date and time stamps providing the only indication of the outside world.

Finally, a happy ending.  If the "IRL" final section is less convincing, it's not because Sittenfeld isn't hitting all the right notes in her set-up.  She again makes believable use of the pandemic, if one far removed from the experience of most people; in fact, she pretty much anticipates this reader's minor objections when Noah unexpectedly serenades Sally in front of the neighbors next door to her childhood home, the kind of "grand gesture" that romantic comedies employ and one the reunited couple have recently dissected in person:

I once heard a smart person point out that it’s hard to determine where the dividing line is between cheesiness and acceptable emotional extravagance.

He grinned again. “I didn’t tell you at the time, but I know exactly where the line is. When it’s happening to other people, it’s cheesy. When it’s happening to you, it’s wonderful.

Maybe I should have been reading Harlequin romances all along.  Or maybe not.  The crash that followed the exhilarating high of finishing Romantic Comedy felt almost like the enervating end of an actual fling.  Or, to paraphrase the TNO heel who nearly scarred Sally for life  by rebuffing her affection, I've confused reading Sittenfeld's convincing novel with experiencing real love.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Triple Header @ the Met

Two major exhibits and a bright new wing welcomed me back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time since December; unfortunately, summer heat closed the Roof Garden which will not see another new commission until 2030.  Unless I return before the end of October, the extraordinary sculpture of Petrit Halilaj will at least have offered a memorable final visit.


Sargent & Paris


I'm glad I saw this show after a recent episode of The Gilded Age--one of my favorite television series--aired.  John Singer Sargent has been commissioned to paint the daughter of a social climbing matron who's about to be married off to an English duke in need of an American fortune--new, of course--to maintain his 16th century manor house.  Their engagement is announced at the artist's unveiling of the portrait with Mrs. Astor and the rest of the Four Hundred in attendance.

Self-Portrait (1886)
Although Glady's portrait isn't as spare as Sargent's most famous--which would have been even more spare if its initial, scandalous reception hadn't resulted in the artist adding shoulder straps to his arriviste subject's dress--the prop does the job and provides an extraordinarily satisfying dramatic moment, akin to seeing Madame X luring Met visitors through several galleries like a siren.  Bravo to the exhibition designers!

"Madame X (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau)" (1883-84)
Sargent first made his mark at the Paris Salon of 1880 with this portrait of a woman in Morocco exotically perfuming herself with incense.  Critics and patrons alike fell for his white-on-white color palette.

"Smoke of Ambergris" (partial, 1880)
I'm more partial to his use of red.  The artist made waves depicting this French gynecologist attired in a dressing gown instead of the formal dress usually worn in male portraits.

"Dr. Pozzi at Home" (1881)
Sargent's talent and enormous canvases exposes the puny, simpering inadequacy of selfies in capturing a woman's allure.  He exhibited this painting at a Parisian gentleman's club to attract clients, a strategy that quickly paid dividends with husbands looking to please their wives.

"La Vicomtesse de Poilloue de Saint-Périer (Marie Jeanne de Kergolay)" (1883)
Call me a nitpicker, but Sargent was more skilled in capturing a woman's face than her hands.

"Madame Ramón Subercaseaux (Amalia Errázuriz y Urmeneta)" (1880)
The French government purchased this vibrant portrait of a flamenco dancer for its museum of contemporary art.  Sargent already had made a name for himself by the age of 36.

"La Carmencita (Carmen Dauset Moreno)" (ca 1890)
The Met remains discreet about Sargent's sexual orientation, identifying this Welsh hunk as a "lifelong friend" whose "surviving correspondence reveals a deep intimacy."  Read The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World by Paul Fisher for more salacious details about his same-sex attraction.

Albert de Belleroche (1883)
The Met encourages visitors to express their own creativity at the end of the exhibit.  The quality of the pencil sketching was surprisingly good says the man who barely can draw stick figures.




Superfine: Tailoring Black Style


I'm embarrassed to admit when I first learned that the Costume Institute was devoting a show to Black "dandies," a term I mostly associated with Edwardian England, I pictured over-the-top pimp finery.  Instead, the museum celebrates Black men dressing well as a triumph over adversity and stereotype. 

Nearly two and a half centuries separate these depictions of how other people see dandies and how they see themselves.  In this racist caricature, a British artist lampoons the stylish "pretensions" on display 

"The D- of [ l-playing at foils with her favorite lap dog Mungo
after expending near £10000 to make him a -*"
by William Austin (1773)
. . . while in this almost surrealistic photo, an African artist exults in his sartorial knowledge and splendor.

"Sartorial Anarchy #5" by Iké Udé (2012)
This beloved New Orleans gentleman, celebrating his 76th birthday, played bass drums and kazoo in the Treme Brass Band.  By pinning dollar bills to his jacket, Lionel Batiste amplified his good fortune and literally made himself look "money."

"Uncle Lionel's Birthday" by Andy Levin (2007)
Similarly, a French designer commented on the absence of Black American wealth in a collection called "Land of the Free" which debuted not long after the murder of George Floyd.

Jacket by Emeric Tchatchoua
(Autumn/Winter 2019-20, 3.PARADIS)
Mannequins wearing clothes mostly designed during the new millennium appear throughout the exhibit in various contexts.  


Although well chosen and beautifully displayed, the outfits sometimes seemed a little superficial in comparison to the more historical items also on view.

Ensembles by Kerby Jean-Raymond (Spring/Summer 2020, Pyer Moss) &
Edvin Thompson (Spring/Summer 2025, Theophilo)
Ensembles by Skepta (Spring/Summer 2025, MAINS) & Polo (2019, "Morehouse College")
Once again, I was struck by the fierce LGBTQ dignity that Diane Arbus memorializes in her work.  Eight years after she photographed this particular "lady," the aptly named Stormé de Larverie would participate in Stonewall.  Although she pointedly didn't care about her pronouns, she did insist that the landmark event be identified as a "rebellion" rather than riots.

"Miss Stormé de Larverie, The Lady Who Appears to be a Gentleman, New York City" (1961)
W.E.B. DuBois, an organizer of The Exhibition of American Negroes at the 1900 Worlds Fair in Paris. put his best foot forward when posing for an unknown photographer.  The exhibition compiled photos, statistical graphs, bibliographies and patents to showcase how much progress Blacks had made since Emancipation


Here's what Frederick Douglass had to say about this elegant timepiece from 1846:  "The possession of a watch in my young days was among the remote possibilities. I did not own myself."


Minstrel shows with white men performing in blackface during the 19th century initially acclimated Americans to seeing "Blacks" in formal dress, but 20th century entertainment--including vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood--finally provided them with a wider platform to express their well-attired talent, sometimes subversively.  "Cakewalk" dances like these recorded in 1903 were once a coded way for slaves to make fun of their highfalutin' owners.


Harlem's emergence as the cultural capital of Black America provided its residents a relatively safe space to develop their own highly developed, idiosyncratic style, including the zoot suit, a fashion trend soon imitated worldwide.

"Harlem Dandy (African American man [head & shoulders] wearing a hat with tilted brim)
by Miguel Covarrubias (ca 1930)
"Zoot Suit" by Charles Henry Alston (ca 1940)
This dance routine featuring the Four Step Brothers and Harold Nicholas from Carolina Blues (1944) puts a Hollywood spin on Harlem dandyism.  


The suit worn by Nicholas nods to Lucius Beebe, truly a Harlem Renaissance man, who sported something similar when he posed for the cover of Life magazine five years earlier. His new look had sounded the death knell for the zoot suit in the Black community.


Needless to say, my family didn't subscribe to Ebony or Jet when I was a teenager.  


But Time, Life and Look all included images of the Black Panthers who raised my consciousness about fashion as much as racial inequality.  Revolution never looked so good.


Just a few years later, athletes like Walt Frazier became Black male fashion plates. When he endorsed an athletic shoe--the first professional basketball player to do so--Puma named it "Clyde" (seen below along with one of his wide brim hats) because of Frazier's fondness for the gangster look he appropriated from Bonnie & Clyde


In "Looking for Langston" (1989), an absolutely fascinating meditation on Black queerness, Isaac Julien imagines a venue full of tuxedo clad men and women, including Langston Hughes, disguising their sexuality in conformity, another form of passing.
.

A stack of monogrammed Louis Vuitton luggage owned by André Leon Talley near the end of the exhibit also subtly acknowledges queerness, this time flamboyant, in the fashion world. It's hard not to wonder what ALT would have made of "Superfine" which, as far as I can recall, didn't include any caftans.



Arts of Africa, Ancient America & Oceania


I suppose a cynic might attribute the construction of a new wing to showcase what was once called "primitive" art as a strategy to shift attention away from its provenance.  Then again, if that were the case, why would the Met name it after Michael C. Rockefeller, whose adventurous acquisition of wood carvings by the Asmat tribe in Dutch New Guinea (now Indonesia) may have led to his mysterious disappearance at the age of 23?  His body was never recovered, and some say he was eaten by cannibals after his canoe overturned and he swam three miles to shore, not exactly the end you'd expect for the great-grandson of the man who founded Standard Oil.  The case could be made that Rockefeller paid for the Oceanic collection with his life, leaving behind a more significant legacy than young male members of the Getty and Kennedy dynasties who also suffered grisly fates. 

West Papuan Spirit Canoe (partial, 20th Century)
West Papuan Paddles (Early to mid-20th Century)
Sunlight illuminates these imposing slit gongs from Vanautu, no more than a century old.



No worries about the provenance of this ceremonial house ceiling from Papua New Guinea: The Met commissioned it in 1970 from artists in Mariwai, a village home to two different clans.  


Nearly 200 painted palm leaf stems allude to the villagers' dual clan heritage and their environment, including flying foxes, natural spirits, and the play of light on water in Oceania, which encompasses thousands of Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand among them.


Contemporary art from Oceania also is exhibited, including colorful variations of bark paintings similar to those that I saw at a gallery show last year. 

Baratjala Series by Nonggirrnga Marawili (partial, Australia, 2022-23)
Exhausted, I didn't spend as much time in the African or Central American galleries.

Initiation Headdress (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Late 19th-first quarter of 20th Century)
Throne of Njouteu (partial, Cameroon, Late 19th-Early 20th Century)
"Tabaski III" by Iba Ndiaye (1970)
The objects from Central and South America are significantly older than those found in the African and Oceanian collections, perhaps because stone is a much more durable medium. Nevertheless, displaying them in such close, thematic proximity seems forced.  They deserve more distinct treatment, like they get at the incomparable Volcanica in Mexico City.

Seated Elder (Columbia or Ecuador, 200BC-300AD)
Feathered Tunic (Peru, 1450-1625)