A trip to the Bunker Art Space is always a treat, especially this year when I felt like a pig in shit!
Beyond The Rainbow
That's mostly because "Beyond The Rainbow," one of three exhibits this season, comprises dozens of works by contemporary LGBTQ+ artists, many of whom were unfamiliar. Lesbians seem to be underrepresented, perhaps because they face greater barriers in the art world or because the collection reflects the idiosyncratic taste of its owner,
Beth Rudin DeWoody. We all have our biases, after all.
 |
| "Emergence" by Uman (2021) |
DeWoody, however, implemented a thoughtful workaround by inviting a diverse group "from the community" (including artist
Mickalene Thomas) to curate the otherwise superb show.
I really, really coveted this small sketch. The subject and I are in the same privileged boat, although I've managed to float through most of my life without the proper nomenclature.
 |
| "Study of a Cis White Man (Ryan)" by Nash Glynn (2020) |
Until I learned that the artist who created this work transitioned from one gender to another, it seemed a little out of left field although it did bring back welcome memories of
Herr Cucaracha. I doubt if
my father would have appreciated the metaphor.
It's hard to imagine that the closeted (and tortured)
Anthony Perkins ever entered a photo booth, or that his picture would ever appear on a milk carton, exponentially increasing the campiness of this strip. Producer
Ryan Murphy really did a meta number on the
Psycho star in
Monster: The Ed Gein Story where Perkins appears as a conflicted character playing Gein in Alfred Hitchcock's iconic film.
This gay caballero is pretty in pink and packin', too!
Actually, the preponderance of exposed if (mostly) flaccid penises made me wonder if they had offended any bluenoses among the Palm Beach crowd that pays extra for guided tours of the Bunker Art Space.
Michael, the young, chatty photographer who checked us in seemed flustered by the question. "Some people are a little shocked but there haven't been any incidents," he ventured cautiously.
I'll admit this "tearoom-themed" wall shocked me a bit, perhaps because I feared public toilets for much of my young adult life. "The Would Be" by Robert Beck (2007) separates "Hustler" (left) by
Jimmy Wright (1975) from"Stall (Factory Bathroom, Long Island City, Queens)" by
Michael Chuapoco (2023) in what I'm guessing is a curatorial joke about a common location for gay cruising.
I overheard a docent describe this miniature piece as a metaphor for how HIV ravages the human body.
"Unfortunately," she continued in her plummy British accent, "most of the men you see on this wall were lost to AIDS." If my
David had lived, he would have caught up to me in age this month.
As much as I support the idea of encouraging the public to view art "freshly"--that is, without preconceived notions about the artist, genre or time period--the process for identifying works by matching numbered captions to thumbnail reproductions in cheap catalogs that visitors are discouraged from taking home is a pain in the ass. Worse, the staff ignored my e-mail request just a day after my visit to find out who had painted these two arresting works.
I'm guessing that the Salman depicted in this painting
The curatorial team also has done an excellent job of acknowledging our "gay elders." This "Portrait after a Snuffbox" by
George Sand (1846) may very well be the oldest work in the exhibit.
One gallery, furnished as a lavender-walled reading room, is delightfully called "A Wunderkammer of Weirdos." That's
Quentin Crisp, outside the
Chelsea Hotel in 1978.
Tom Healy, a poet, curator, and advocate for queer culture, had this to say in an essay about the room:
Let's start with Scott Covert's painting of William Burroughs with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. It looks like a summoning of their ghosts for a seance. I met both Burroughs and Ginsberg. Burroughs had a famously raspy but deep and oracular monotone--which someone described as a voice that was "half-preacher, half-hitman." Everyone called him the old bull. He was blunt and he loved pronouncements, like: "Artists are here to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed."
 |
| (2018-19) |
With the three flat items on this table, ceramicist
Seth Bogart has memorialized esssential elements of my introduction to gay culture: although I didn't pick up a matchbook on my sole excursion to the Spike, a famous New York City leather bar I treasure my copy of
Hollywood Babylon, a seminal text of apocryphal camp (see the death by enchilada of
Lupe Velez), and Larry Kramer's depiction of Fire Island promiscuity in
Faggots scared me away
until 1988 (and likely saved my life, too). The "Greek" Crisco container by
Scooter LaForge hit an anachronistic funny bone.
I would have guessed that
Paul Cadmus sketched this fellow. Wrong!
Instead, this brooding study of
Glennway Wescott, a poet and writer who lived much of the 20th century as an openly gay man, represents the gay artist I think most deserving of a major retrospective.
Joe Brainard, whom I previously knew only by name, created these two untitled works in 1975, the year I graduated from
college. They made me even more eager to read
his collected letters which end in 1994, a year before his death from AIDS-related pneumonia.
No LGBT-focused show would be complete without works--even lesser ones--by
Keith Haring and
David Wojnarowicz, two of my favorite artists, gay or straight.
 |
| Lovers (1980) |
 |
| "Untitled (Stroll Drawing)" (1985) |
When
Peter Hujar took this atmospheric portrait of
Darrel Ellis in 1981, the downtown New York City photographer and David Wojnarowicz had just become lovers. AIDS killed all three artists but only the white men became famous.
Funny, but I've never thought of either
Herb Ritts or
Tom Bianchi as anything other than commercial gay photographers and wouldn't expect to see their work in a museum. Ritts, whose celebrity portraits dominated glossy magazines in the '80s and '90s caught
Paul Ruebens at peak Peewee.
 |
| (1987) |
 |
| "Four Male Nudes By Pool" (1988) |
Books about Andy Warhol filled a case in the library where I could have spent many hours perusing the shelves which, according to chatty Michael, were repurposed from the Dade County pine used in the construction of the former toy factory now occupied by the Bunker Art Space.
The specially commissioned wall paper is something to behold.
 |
| "By. That. Time. Drenched. By. That Time" by Eve Fowler (2016) |
One pattern clashes photogenically with a collaged bucket chair
. . . but excising all those throbbing cocks to achieve the R-rated
Tom of Finland pattern can only have been a labor of love.
Companion Species (Witness)
 |
| "Modern Ceramic Cat Sculpture" by Harry Steinberg (undated) |
 |
| "Echo 2" by Jaune Quick-To-See Smith (2000) |
 |
| "Baako Bishee (Buffalo Above Us) by Wendy Red Star (detail, 2022) |
 |
| "Temple of Nourishment" by Sanaa Gateja (2022) |
 |
| "Hunters" by Shuvinai Ashoona (2015) |
 |
| "Fleeta" by G. Peter Jemison (1987) |
Reclamation
 |
| "I Have Been Here The Whole Time Whole" by Vanessa German (partial, 2019) |
 |
| "Untitled (Silver Shoe With Bunnies)" by May Wilson (1960) |
No comments:
Post a Comment