Thanks for the Memories

You get to be a gay man of a certain age in the city that never sleeps, and sometimes you can find a personal connection to museum exhibits as I discovered at the New York Historical Society where work by Village Voice photographer Fred W. McDarrah was on display.  Anyone who's ever read this blog knows that Andy Warhol and the scene at the Factory drew me here more than anything else.  Here, McDarrah has photographed Cecil Beaton taking his picture with the Johnson twins. Jed (closest to Andy) was his caretaker after Valerie Solanas nearly killed him, and eventual lover.  Andy looks almost pretty, as if he put make-up on for the shoot.

Of course trans people were well-represented at the Factory and in the movies Andy made with Paul Morrissey.  Women In Revolt was my bewildering first exposure to the genre.  It featured three trans women whose freaky personae made me deeply uneasy.  McDarrah took this photo of Jackie Curtis at a party celebrating the publication of Rock Dreams by Guy Peellaert and Nik Cohn, one of my earliest pop culture purchases.

At the time, including David Bowie in the rock star pantheon gathered at this diner (where's Paul?) was a bold, unprecedented move, one of the reasons I sprung $8 from my very tight budget for the book. 

Lou Reed immortalized Candy Darling in "Walk on the Wild Side" around the same time, when I was a freshman at Columbia.

I stayed in New York the summer after my sophomore year.  Tom and I ventured to the 82 Club with Niko, a hip Argentinian fencing friend of his who plowed through my unread copy of Gravity's Rainbow while wearing not much more than a black thong and clogs on the South Lawn, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators camped more than half a century later. It's quite possible that this same contingent of "female impersonators" from the club, who marched in the 4th annual Gay Liberation Day parade--the forerunner of Pride--had teased us about our age and sexual orientation a few weeks earlier.  We definitely were a hit.

David and I went to see Charles Ludlam and his Ridiculous Theater Company perform in The Ventriloquist's Wife. The campy humor went way over our mostly untutored heads.  Less than a decade later, Ludlam, just 44, was gone. His obituary appeared on the front page of the New York Times, the first time the Old Gray Lady listed AIDS as a specific cause of death.

Arthur Bell wrote a column for the Village Voice which allowed me to follow New York's gay scene vicariously.  David and I somehow got invited to a party at his Upper West Side apartment.  It was as crowded as a gay bar which may explain (but does not excuse) why I steadied myself with a foot on one of his walls.  Bell, an activist as well as a journalist, organized protests against the movie Cruising.  I was doing exactly that when I stumbled upon the location shoot in the Ramble.  McDarrah caught Bell marching with Jill Johnston, his colleague at the Voice and author of Lesbian Nation, in the 2nd annual Gay Liberation Day parade, the first one I would have been able to attend, if so inclined.  It took six years for that happen, and then only as an observer.

Would you believe it took even longer for me to work up the courage to enter the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in the West Village, despite the definitive reassurances of proprietor Craig Rodwell?

Pride & Protest: Photographs by Fred W. McDarrah also includes two gay pioneers whose influence on my "lifestyle" was incalculable, in retrospect.

Marsha P. Johnson, Fourth Christopher Street Liberation Day March (1973)

Larry Kramer (1990)

Oddly, it was an exhibit of photographs by Arlene Gottfried that drew me to the Historical Society, my first cultural outing since returning from Florida, mostly because of this wonderful shot which appeared in a New York Times review.  A curator described her work as Diane Arbus without the snark.

"Lloyd Steir and Dogs at the Big Apple Circus" (1976)

Turns out, Gottfried, sister of comic Gilbert, was beginning her career around the time I graduated from college.  Both exhibits left me a little rueful about the professional road not taken, although the New York Daily News did once publish one of my ASPCA photos of a sea turtle rescue.

"Three Men With Afros" (1979)

"Ocean Beach Gay Couple" (1977)

"Marsha P. Johnson and Young Boy with Roses"  (1980)

Plenty of work hanging in other galleries also reminded me how creatively my adopted home of 50 years has been depicted in art.

"Liberty and Justice for All" by Peter Max (2001)

"927 5th Avenue" by Michiyo Fukushima (2010)

"Municipal Building" by Ben Shahn (1930s)

"Ernestine & Three Friends" by John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres (1992)

"Canal Street" by Martin Wong (1992)

"Contact 2,021" by Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock) (2021)

"Far Eastsiders, aka: Cowgirl Mama A.B & Son Wukong" by Oscar Yi Hou (2021)

"Nurse Tracey" by Tim Okamura (2021)

But as much as I love New York, I've really begun to wonder if it's worth the hassle, expense, noise and occasional incivility that my much easier snowbird life at the Folly throws into high relief in the days immediately following my return.   

At least for an afternoon, the Historical Society seemed to be saying "Hell, yes!"  

Museum Saturdays with Chris & Thom

With Chris in town exploring the vibes of post-retirement residence in New York City, the Three Amigos spent several successive Saturdays taking advantage of its museum offerings.

Homoeroticism @ the New York Historical Society:

Sultry J. C. Leyendecker spent five decades depicting idealized beefcake on magazine covers--more than 350 for the Saturday Evening Post--and in print ads.

1874-1951

Although the exhibit at the Historical Society was small, the thrust was unmistakable.  Look no further than below the tasseled belt in this Ivory soap ad!

He loved him some sailors, too.

"WWI American Sailor" 

"In The Yale Boathouse" (1905)

The size of the exhibit left us plenty of time to peruse other items in the museum's soup-to-nuts collection. Currier and Ives did a much better job of depicting the Battle of Gettysburg than the re-enactment Thom an I attended in June.

Anthony Roth Costanzo wore this outfit on the New York Metropolitan Opera float during the last New York City Pride Parade before the pandemic.  When theaters finally re-opened, his fabulous show at St. Ann's Warehouse with Justin Vivian Bond was the first that I saw.

If Tiffany lamps are your thing, this is the place to see too much of a good thing. Sometimes less is more, although they are beautifully displayed. 

Another bicycle for my file.  Imagine pedaling in that outfit, ladies.

Former Drug Dealers @ the Jewish Museum:

It's probably not how the curators of this superb exhibit would like you to think of the Sassoons, but as Chris observed as soon as we read about how the opium trade seeded the family's fortune:  "Maybe there's hope yet for the Sacklers."

David Sassoon, the "Treasurer of Bagdhad" and family patriarch, was forced to flee his homeland in the early 19th century.   He moved to India and China before his he and his descendants--known as the "Rothschilds of the East"--finally settled in England where their assiduous efforts at assimilation into polite society paid off handsomely.  Beauty ran in the family and marrying bankers helped, of course.  Shortly after wedding a German one, Rachel commissioned this lovely portrait but the other Sassoons disowned her after she converted from Judaism to Christianity.

Rachel Sassoon Beer by Henry Jones Thaddeus (1887)

This French Rothschild married into the Sassoon family and moved to London where she painted and ran with "The Souls," a group of "personages distinguished for their breeding, beauty, delicacy and discrimination of mind." Fun fact:  Jack Huston, he of mutilated face in Boardwalk Empire, is her great-great grandson!

Aline de Rothschild, Lady Sassoon

Aline's daughter Sybil parlayed her money and looks into becoming a titled member of the British aristocracy.  Cecil Beaton photographed the Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1930.  I would not have wanted to announce her name at an event.

Rather than use their wealth to fund cultural institutions like the Sacklers, the Sassoons collected art.  No surprise their tastes included Gainsborough.  What painter was more representative of Britain's 18th century establishment?

Major John Dade of Tannington, Suffolk by Thomas Gainsborough (ca 1755)

But Phillip, son of Aline and brother of Sybil, clearly had an eye for the unusual, too, acquiring works depicting people with something other than peaches and cream complexions.

"Head of Billy" by Glyn Warren Philpot (1912-13)

"Head of a Capri Girl" by John Singer Sargent (1878)

The Sassoon men weren't bad to look at either.  John Singer Sargent sketched Philip as a young man in 1912.  He seems to have spent a lot of his time posing for portraits.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Only one of 25 Jews in his graduating class at Oxford, he served in World War I and trained as a pilot afterward, eventually becoming the Under Secretary of State for Air.  

Sir Philip Sassoon by Philip de László (1915)

But more importantly, Philip, forever single and gay, managed to charm his way into the British aristocracy--including Edward VIII, whose abdication he supported--with house parties that evolved from the sybaritic to the discreet.  

1922

Sir Philip Sasson by John Singer Sargent (1923)

Amateur painter Winston Churchill was among those luminaries who attended the latter before Philip's premature death of 50 which spared him the pain of World War II as well as the embarrassment of underestimating Hitler.  The exhibit contrasts the future prime minister's talent with that of Sargent's. 

Ruins of the Cathedral of St. Vaast, Arras, 1918 by Winston Churchill (1920s) 

Well, yes, but could Sargent inspire nations with his speeches?

Ruined Cathedral at Arras by John Singer Sargent (1918)

Prior to this exhibit, Vidal and Siegfried were the only Sassoons I could name, and I knew more about the hairdresser than the writer.  Here's Siegfried as a boy advertising his beloved Aunt Rachel's newspaper.  Although his father had been disinherited for marrying outside the Jewish faith, Aunt Rachel (large portrait above) left him enough pounds sterling so that like his cousin Philip, he could buy his own country manor.

Young Siegfried Sassoon Dressed as a Page
by Thomas Ashby Flemons (1896)

Siegfried's mother plucked her son's first name from an opera, a favorite from Wagner's "Ring Cycle."

Siegfried Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot (1917)

Despite distinguished service in World War I, Sassoon was nearly court-martialed when he turned against it after losing his closest friend, with whom he may or may not have been having sexual relations.  If there's a genetic component to queerness, it appears to run in the Sassoon family.  Siegfried enjoyed relationships with men, including Ivor Novello and Stephen Tennant, whose rejection after six years together was quickly followed by marriage to a woman and the birth of a son.  But after divorcing his wife, he came back into the fold and befriended both E.M. Forster and J.R. Ackerley.

 

ca 1916

The exhibit includes Siegfried's war journals which informed his highly acclaimed poetry and novels.  More than anything else (except for perhaps the hair products!), they have established the family's legacy and erased the taint of the opium trade.

Even among writers, a picture can be worth a thousand words.  Siegfried captioned this drawing "The Soul of an Officer."

There are always new discoveries to be made in the Jewish Museum's permanent collection and temporary exhibits.

"Center Red" by Jack Youngerman (2017)

Unidentified Work (detail) by Kerry James Marshall

Sarah Bernhardt by Andy Warhol
(from the series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, 1980)

"Six Blue Barbras" by Deborah Kass (The Jewish Jackie Series, 1992)

Marilyn by Alex Katz (late 1960s)

Meyer Schapiro by Alice Neel (1983)

"Step and Screw: The Star of Code Switching" by Trenton Doyle Hancock (2020)

I forgot to identify the colored bottle shelf but did enjoy the disappearing act afforded by Ann Lilly's "Nuclear Family" (2017).

James Tissot, a painter I recalled from the Getty, spent the last couple of decades of his life illustrating the Old Testament.

Making the Scene @ the Guggenheim Museum:

I can't say I cared much for either "Sarah Sze:  Timelapse"

. . . or "Gego:  Measuring Infinity."

But it's always a pleasure to be inside Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic spiral and the people-watching was excellent.