There Once Was An Old Queer Named Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

In a beautiful pea green boat,

They took some honey, & plenty of money,

Wrapped up in a five pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

& sang to a small guitar,

'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?'

They sailed away, for a year & a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows

& there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'

So they took it away, & were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, & slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

& hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

It is as simple as ABC to take joy in a gay 19th century writer named as the notable innovator of nonsense.

Today marks the 199th birthday of Edward Lear, an important English illustrator & landscape painter, but more widely known as the writer of an original kind of nonsense verse & for his perfect limericks. His genius is clear in his nonsense poems, with a world of peculiar, phantasmagorical, preposterous creature in nonsense word, with a dash of deep underlying melancholy. Their quality is matched in the limerick & his pen &ink drawings.

Lear was a homosexual who suffered all his life from ill health & depression that he named- “The Morbids”.

He mostly lived abroad. Even though he was naturally timid, he was a constant & courageous traveler who explored: Italy, Greece, Albania, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, India & Ceylon. An indefatigable artist, he produced great number of pen & watercolor sketches of great topographical accuracy. He made his living from these pieces & large oil paintings.

After his nomadic life he lived with his celebrated cat –Foss in San Remo, on the Mediterranean coast, at a house he named "Villa Tennyson." For companions he counted on a circle of friends, correspondents, & his chef- Giorgis. Foss died in 1886 & was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson. After a long decline in his health, Lear died at his villa in 1888. Lear's funeral was a sad, solitary affair; not one of Lear's many lifelong friends being able to attend.

In his lifetime, Lear published 3 volumes of bird & animal drawings, 7 illustrated travel books, 4 books of nonsense: The Book of Nonsense (1869), Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany & Alphabets (1871), More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, & Botany (1872), & Laughable Lyrics (1877), plus a posthumous release- Queery Leary Nonsense (1911).

There was an Old Man on a hill,
Who seldom, if ever, stood still;
He ran up & down,
In his Grandmother's gown,
Which adorned that Old Man on a hill.


The Post Apocalyptic Bohemian: Stephen
He liked men for no tangible reason
A frontal lobotomy
Cured him of sodomy
But ruined his plans for the season.

Born On This Day-May 8th... Tom Of Finland

The first time I saw a Tom of Finland drawing was in a downtown Spokane used book store near the bus station in the 1970. The image, buried at the back of a men’s physique magazine (this is pre-MEN’S HEALTH, but the same idea), was in a small ad for more “special” publications. It jumped out at me like a great big erection. It depicted a pair of muscular butch men with big chins & broad grins grabbing each other's bubble butts & straining packages while winking at the reader. I was startled & aroused. Tom of Finland's pornographic drawings of hunky, fuck-booted, big butted beefcakes banging the booty in charcoals, pencil, ink, & watercolors had my full attention, & remonded me that I would need to get to a gym.

Tom was born Touko Laaksonen in Kaarina, Finland, in 1920. His work is literally the masturbatory fantasies of a lonely young homosexual Finnish boy; he began drawing in his bedroom in the 1940s. Tom worked as an illustrator in the Finnish advertising business until the early 1970s, when he became a full time gay pornographer. He sold the idea of the male body as a pleased, pleasuring & pleasured thing decades before Calvin Klein thought of it.


Tom's greatest achievement was in drawing gay men who were masculine, happy & proud at a time when they were supposed to be effeminate, neurotic & shameful. This is certainly the reason why so many gay men are Tom of Finland fans. Today's gay porn is just a footnote to Tom of Finland, endless loops of a garage full of “regular guys” with huge cocks & massive pecs having spontaneous, shameless sex at the drop of the monkey wrench. His achievement was more than just making gay men feel good about themselves, or the feel of leather.

Tom had a profound influence on gay culture because, in a world that insisted gay men were sissies, Tom portrayed them as confident, macho & aggressive. Every drawing features a lumberjack, cop, construction worker, cowboy, biker, sailor or soldier. Not a florist, choreographer or dress designer in the bunch. He suggested something more than the masculinity in gay men. Tom turned it around on the straight world; you couldn't be masculine unless you were gay.

Before Tom, no one drew men like he did, unabashed sex objects & sex subjects, giving them exaggerated big chins, strong jaws, full lips, bubble butts, full bulges. His idea of masculinity & virility end up looking so... well, yummy. They seem to be seeking the attentions of the powerful Abercrombie & Fitch photographer Bruce Weber (a big Tom fan), or perhaps a Levi's commercial.

Tom's big break came in the 1950s from Physique Pictorial, semi-legal gay American magazine disguised as a straight men's bodybuilding magazine, which frequently put Tom's men on the cover. Half a century later, & 19 years after his death in 1991, the world has turned around & real men who look like Tom's drawings now appear on the cover of magazines like Men's Health. I was reading one while waiting to get my haircut at 7 Bucks A Whack (the perfect Tom of Finland business name) & the thing was full of advice on how straight men can turn themselves into something out of Tom of Finland.

The big question begs- is it art or is it porn? David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe & Andy Warhol were admirers & collectors of Tom's work. Not bad for a pornographer. He continues to have gallery shows & his work is in the permanent collections of 7 museums, including MOMA. While the debate goes on whether Tom's fuck machines constitute art, anyone can see that the macho men of Tom of Finland are hung… they're hung in museums.


* These were the most post-able images I could dig up.

Born On This Day- May 4th... American Artist Keith Haring

Someone stole my beloved Keith Haring Swatch watch. I think I know who it was, but when queried, they denied any possibility that they were responsible for it having gone missing. I saw the same one today on EBay for $1600. The Husband: “you couldn’t get $1600 for that watch. You loved that Swatch into a state of being 'very used'. I wish I had $1600, I would buy you a new one.”

For most of the 1980s, I had prints of Keith Haring drawings & paintings, torn from Interview Magazines & displayed on the fridge. Unbelievable, there is a Haring, held by a Warhol magnet on my 2010 stainless steel refrigerator this morning. Some things just don’t change. The display face on my cell phone is by Keith Haring.

Keith Allen Haring was born May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania, & grew up in Kutztown, a small Pennsylvania Dutch farm community. As a child, he fervently drew cartoons & gradually progressing to more complex compositions. He saw a display of Andy Warhol's work when he was in his teens, & was impressed by that artist's flat lines, his use of pop icons & mundane objects, & Warhol’s concept of mass-produced art. Warhol's elevation of the commonplace into art would be the crux of Haring's art.

He moved to NYC in 1980, to be at the center of both the art world & the gay community. He began to create his own graffiti of ambiguous looking animals & a human figure on all 4s, in the city's subways. Haring was employed as an assistant to gallery owner Tony Shafrazi, who gave him his first major exhibition in 1982.

During the mid-1980s, Haring's work brought him wealth & celebrity. His fans included Yoko Ono, Dennis Hopper, & even Andy Warhol himself. Madonna, explains that his art had such a vast appeal because "there was a lot of innocence & a joy that was coupled with a brutal awareness of the world."

Haring was among the generation of gay men lost in the first wave of the AIDS epidemic. He was diagnosed in late 1988, but continued his art until the very end, when he could no longer hold a pencil or brush. Haring's bold lines & figures carry poignant messages of vitality & unity. His legacy made an impact on late 20th century art.

Until his death Keith Haring was devoted to creating cultural awareness about the disease & other gay rights issues. The Keith Haring Foundation was established in 1989 to assist AIDS related & children's charities, & still maintains the archives of his work. Haring generously contributed his talents to art workshops with children, created logos & posters for public service agencies, & produced murals, sculptures, & paintings to benefit health centers & disadvantaged communities. His foundation continues his legacy indefinitely. He leaves me a vision for the future.

The missing Swatch... where is it?

Haring by Annie Leibovitz

"My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can. Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man & the world. It lives through magic."

Keith Haring was 31 years old when he died in NYC in 1990. He would have been 53 years old today. I cried this morning thinking about writing this post. For Keith being gone too soon, too young. For my loss of innocence. For my missing Keith Haring Original Swatch.

Born On This Day- April 15th...Renaissance Man, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

In his childhood, the Husband was so entranced by a book on the life of Leonardo da Vinci that he taught himself to write in "mirror", that can only be read by holding it up to a reflection, a skill practiced by the often secretive Leonardo. The Husband can still do the mirror writing to this day & is himself, a bit of a Renaissance man.

Self Portrait

Leonardo da Vinci was denied an education & a profession because he was born out of wedlock in 1452. One of the few professions for the son of a middle class notary & a peasant girl was art. Despite the stigma of being a bastard Leonardo mastered anatomy, architecture, botany, cartography, engineering, mathematics, music, poetry, science, sculpture, sketching, &… painting. He used to sleep 2 hours every day. A left-handed dyslexic, he tried to paint with both of his hands. He was a loner, but also adopted a child which he raised with extra care. He destroyed most of his work.

When he was 24, Leonardo & 3 young companions were arrested on the charge of sodomy. No witnesses appeared against them & eventually the charges were dropped. Although he was not convicted, the accusation may have tormented Leonardo throughout his life. It seems clear to me that Leonardo was homosexual. He kept his private life very private, but throughout his entire life, Leonardo surrounded himself with attractive men. His relationship with the beautiful curly haired Gian Giacomo de' Caprotti lasted 20 years. In the last 10 years of Leonardo's life, his companion was the much younger Francesco Melzi, who would later serve as the executor of Leonardo’s estate.


Leonardo possessed the greatest mind of the Italian Renaissance. He wanted to know the workings of what he saw in nature. his inventions & scientific studies were centuries ahead of his time. He was the first person to ingunuity, & intellectual inquiringness show him to be the epitome of the Renaissance spirit. 6 centuries later, the world is still in awe.

Born 536 Years Ago Today- Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

I am so very lucky indeed; I have actually seen his work, not just in Art History 101, but close up. In Italy.

Some of the most famous, poetry, sculpture, painting & architecture in the world was created by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, who spent most of his lengthy career creating colossal works of art for 7 consecutive Popes. Regarded as the greatest living artist of his day, he remains one of the impressive artists of all time. Among his creations: the Pieta, David, the Sistine Chapel, the Laurentian Library, the Last Judgment, St. Peter's Basilica. The Renaissance painter & sculptor whose frescoes adorn the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was put in charge of the restoration of St. Peter’s by Pope Paul III in 1546, a job he held until his death in 1564. His greatest contribution to the basilica is its central dome or cupola, a universally acknowledged architectural triumph.

Michelangelo wrote 48 epigrams commemorating the adoration of his young lover Cecchino dei Bracci who died at age 16. The drawings, with legs spread wide & thighs for days, are of Tommaso De'Cavalieri, a handsome young nobleman, whom he met in 1532 when he was 57 & Tommaso 23. Michelangelo wrote 300 beautiful, astounding sonnets to him that became a much loved book after his death. Michelangelo wrote love letters & ardent poems to him & in 1533 sent him a series of erotic drawings, the most famous of which depicts Zeus disguised as an eagle abducting a young Ganymede. In Michelangelo's drawing, the eagle presses its body tightly against the back of the smiling, yielding Ganymede. The drawings, with legs spread wide & the thighs to die for, were likely in the image of Tommaso De'Cavalieri. The 2 men were lovers for over 30 years.

 Michelangelo's poems to Cavalieri were extravagant:


“Your name nourishes my heart & soul filing each with such sweetness
If my eyes had their share of you, only think how happy I would be.
Were I two slippers he could own &
use as base to his majestic weight,
I would enjoy two snowy feet at least.”


“If I must be defeated to be blessed,
Don't marvel that one, naked & alone,
should prove a prisoner of an armored knight.
The love I speak of aspires to the heights;
woman is too dissimilar, & it ill becomes
a wise & manly heart to burn for her.”


Michelangelo seems to have more inhibited about his sexuality than Leonardo da Vinci, but Leonardo lived in Florence & Michelangelo in Rome, a generation later, & the time & place were not as permissive.

& then there is that 13 foot hunk of rock hard man that I met one day at The Academia in Florence. We had such a hot time.

Gorey Story

"When I think of other things that attain cult status, they strike me as somewhat feebleminded. I mean, I suppose it's better being a cult object than nothing at all. But I don't see how anyone has time to be really famous. I might get people dropping by who are slightly... unhinged."

Early morning, & I am up to view some favorite blogs, look at the news & begin to formulate a post for my bloggy place on the Internet. I ran into the Husband, who had found his way out of our bed, as I started gathering items from our sizable collection of Edward Gorey materials. The Husband: “Hmmm… it must be Mr. Gorey’s birthday today!”

Edward Gorey- artist & author was the master of the comic macabre & has delighted me for my entire life. Indeed, the Husband & I discovered we were both big fans of Gorey’s work at the very start of our relationship 33 years ago.


To this day, I am enthralled & enchanted by his skilled spidery drawings & his stories poisonous & poetic stories of cursed children, fainting femmes, shadowy specters, threatening topiary & eccentric events in eerie Victorian gardens, woods & mansions.


Gorey’s works are witty, woeful, devious & delirious to the point of obsession. He was one of the most aptly named notables in American art & literature. In creating a large body of small works, he has made an indelible imprint on my outlook & taste.


Gorey wrote more than 100 books & illustrated more than 60 by other authors. He was also a designer of theater productions, including revues based on his own stories & Dracula with a young & very sexy Frank Langella, for which he did sets, costumes & lights. It was a Broadway hit that I saw twice in 1977. I was enthralled.


I saw him on occasion around Manhattan in the mid-1970s. He looked like one of his own creations, indeed his image lurks on the fringe of some of his drawings. Toweringly tall, with a wild white beard & hair, & a ring in each ear & on most of his fingers, when he lived in NYC, he went about town a raccoon coat. Gorey was known to be genial & gentle, & spoke in antiquated terms, using words like "jeepers", “swell”, & "zingy." He was known for his sweetness, good nature & fine spirit.


Gorey was passionate about the ballet, & for years he attended all performances of works by George Balanchine at the NYC Ballet. He invented stories about ballets & operas & designed sets, costumes & drop curtains for them. He lived for a long time in a cluttered UWS apartment, & after the ballet season he would retreat to his home on Cape Cod. After Balanchine's death in 1983, Gorey decided to leave NYC permanently.


In 1986 he moved into a 200 year old house that was said to have been haunted. In 1994, he told an interviewer of the strange disappearance of all the finials from his lamps along with his collection of tiny teddy bears.


Last week, my buddy- the Designer/Rapper Lil’Jake picked up, off the coffee table, our much loved copy of Elephant House: or The Home Of Edward Gorey, the engaging & engrossing picture book of Gorey’s Cape Cod home. The house was is a much larger version of Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, filled with esoteric objects like a toilet with a tabletop.He displayed none of his own art work. But, there was a definitive Gorey touch: poison ivy creeped inside through cracks in the wall.

Like me, Gorey packed his home with books, most of them Victorian, but he also watched soap operas & rented horror movies from the nearby video store He shared his life with a plethora of pussies. The many cats had the run of the house & furniture. If a stray showed up at his door, he would immediately welcome it in. After his death a friend moved into the house to take care of the many cats. Gorey liked to tell of the time that the cats were on a couch & suddenly: "everyone turned with eyes wide, as if someone, or something, unseen had entered the room.”


Edward St. John Gorey was born in Chicago on Feb. 22, 1925. Gorey: "I like to think of myself as a pale, pathetic, solitary child. But it was not true." He taught himself to read at 3, & by 5, he had read Dracula & Alice in Wonderland, a pair of books that were to have a profound effect on his life. He taught himself to draw & eventually took courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. Gorey attended Harvard, where he majored in French literature & was roommates with my favorite poet- Frank O'Hara. He & O'Hara joined the Poets Theater in Cambridge, with Gorey as a designer, director & playwright.


After graduation he worked in the art department at Doubleday, staying late in the office to create his own books. When he could not find a publisher, he simply did it himself & founded- Fantod Press. Gorey sold his books directly to stores. His first book, The Unstrung Harp, was published in 1953.


His little books could be bizarre in the extreme. The Husband & I collect his alphabet books that chronicle the catastrophes of the doomed, deceived by fate. His earliest-The Gashlycrumb Tinies begins with: "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs" & ends with "Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin."


Gorey used his stunning crosshatched line drawings, done with pen & ink to create his world of barren back roads, relinquished railway stations & storm struck formal gardens where the moon is menacing, & no sun shines. A tiny face peers through the curtained window of a big black automobile. Frightful beasts are perched on a precipice & upstairs in the attic. Death is by drowning, dismemberment or being dropped by the Devil into a flaming pit. The Beastly Baby is a bulbous blob carried away by an eagle & exploding in midair.


My admiration extends to his poetry & prose. Gorey invented his own geography with place names: Nether Postlude, Backwater Hall in Mortshire, between West Elbow & Penetralia, & the Cycle Cemetery near Dingy Cruet, Blots. He also enjoyed anagramming his own name, as Edward Gorey became Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde & D. Awdrey-Gore.


My first Gorey book was a gift from my parents for my 5th birthday in 1959-The Doubtful Guest. This small tome tells of a strange, hook-nosed creature, wearing a long scarf & tennis shoes, who shows up uninvited at a dreary mansion & soon becomes a permanent member of the family, peering up flues in the fireplace, tearing up books & sleepwalking through the house, & after 17 years he showed no intention of going away.


Once when he was asked why he wrote so much about murder & other forms of violence, Gorey answered: "Well, I don't know. I guess I'm interested in real life." With the general morbidness of the Victorian era, Gorey channels a 19th century aesthetic that allows him to get away with more of this than if his style were modern.


A favorite-The Hapless Child is the tragic story of a little orphaned girl who runs away from the mistresses at her cruel boarding school, only to be kidnapped & sold to a brute who makes her his slave. She escapes, on the brink of death, but is then run down & killed in the street by a wagon driven by her father, who’s back from the war, the rumors of his demise greatly exaggerated.


Gorey is probably most famous for animating the timeless intro to PBS’ Mystery!. He never had any children of his own, though he drew plenty of them. Looking at his work today as I prepared this post, I reread The Gashleycrumb Tinies, a deliciously morbid, alphabetical catalog of 26 children’s deaths. I wish to share to some of Gorey’s most striking & sometimes shocking drawings involving children, many creepier than I had even remembered:

There are a great many Gorey books available, all his work is still in print, & there are also collectibles: greeting cards, T-shirts, & calendars (indeed there is a 2011 calendar on my desk as a write this, a birthday gift from The Husband. If you wish to know his work, start with Amphigorey (1972), & it’s 2 sequels- Amphigorey Too (1977), & Amphigorey Also (1981).

In 1994, at age 69, soon after he was told he had prostate cancer: "I thought, 'Oh gee, why haven't I burst into total screaming hysterics? I'm the opposite of hypochondriacally. I'm not entirely enamored of the idea of living forever."

Born On This Day- February 13th... American Artist Grant Wood

If you have been following this little blog thing, you will know that I have a passion for 20th century American Art. Grant Wood's work is quintessential 20th century American Art, I now we know there has always been a gay twist.

Grant Wood’s American Gothic is one of the most parodied & iconic American images. The work was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago after it was unveiled there to the public in 1930 to much scrutiny. Ever since, the painting has captured a certain resonance with the American public, but its historical reception has had somewhat of a turbulent ride. The painting is admonished & celebrated, dismissed & parodied. The work is a dour portrait of a farmer & a woman in front of a neo-gothic farmhouse in Iowa. The woman’s sullen look is echoed in the farmer’s direct but blank gaze, pitchfork in hand looking not the least bit amused. The Models were the artist's sister & dentist.


Last autumn, a biography of Grant Wood by Tripp Evans- Grant Wood, A Life, lifts the lid off many of the lies & secrets which have surrounded the artist’s life story & digs deeper than ever before into his complex personality. Evans acknowledges Wood’s homosexuality, which earlier biographers left out entirely.

Self Portrait by the Artist

There are some delicious ironies to the acknowledgement of Grant Wood being gay. For decades, Wood has been celebrated as a spokesman for the conservative values of the close-minded set. To me, the essence of our country's Constitution is a willingness to allow diversity, change & the supposed narrow mindedness of the Midwest is a bit of myth: Iowa, after all, was the 3rd state in the country to legalize gay marriage. Wood survived happily in small town Cedar Rapids, where local businessmen protected him from the consequences of his gayness.


Wood is often described as a sort of homespun American farmer who celebrated traditional American values. But in fact, his life as a farm boy ended at the age of 10, when his father died suddenly of a heart attack & Wood, his mother & his sister moved to Cedar Rapids. His values & choice of professions were not ones that were often endorsed in early 20th century Iowa. Wood’s father was a severe Quaker, who once insisted that he return a book of fairy tales: “We Quakers only read about true things.” He would surely have never approved of his son’s career as an artist, & he would have approved of the nagging secret of Wood’s life- he was a homosexual.


Evidence of Grant’s gayness has been hidden in plain sight for years. Grant’s mentor-Thomas Hart Benton, confided to many of his friends & students that he believed that Wood was gay, & it’s even part of Wood’s files at the University of Iowa, where 5 of Wood’s colleagues made the accusation during a nasty dispute pitting Wood, who had never been to college, against his better educated faculty colleagues. Indeed, the artist was fired from his position on the faculty when it was discovered that he was having an affair with his male private secretary. Evans is the first author of a bio of Wood to take this important fact into account. During Grant’s time homosexuality was a crime that could be punished by imprisonment or castration, & even rumors could end a career or make an artist a social outcast. Wood’s art is a strange mix of revelation & concealment.

Daughters Of Revolution

In Appraisal

Everything about Wood’s art carries some sort of double meaning & complexity. He was fascinated by changes of gender. In his Daughters of Revolution he pictures 3 founding fathers in drag, as members of the D.A.R. For In Appraisal, he transformed his friend Edward Rowan into a farm woman. Wood was fascinated by masks. Wood’s art has an element of “let’s pretend.” Wood's Gothic folk-art style is a way of suggesting that the work has some sort of double layer, a representation of something real & something else,with a big dash of wit. Wood was always vague & inconsistent when asked what his paintings represented, apparently because he sought to avoid criticism when his subjects or his neighbors were offended. On different occasions, he described the figures in American Gothic as city or country people, & as a man with his daughter or as a man with his wife.


Is America finally ready to embrace a gay Grant Wood? Or will Conservative Christian Right Wingers rise up to deny his gayness, or to denounce him as wicked? Since American Art History 101, American Gothic has always struck me as high camp & a little queer. I always saw the piece as satire rather than a celebration of The American Spirit. For many art lovers in the heartland, this new book & it’s well documented discovery of Wood's gayness will not be a terrible shock. Just possibly, America is finally ready for Grant Wood to come out of the closet.


Grant died of liver cancer in Iowa City, one day before his 51st birthday. In the end, Wood’s American Gothic stands next to masterpieces like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa & Edvard Munch's Scream as truly recognizable & iconic across the world.

Born On This Day- January 12th... Favorite Artist John Singer Sargent

Portrait of Sargent by Boldini

The question remains- was he homosexual? I have always felt that I could tell from his work & sensitivities that he was gay, but we will really never know about one of my favorite American artists- John Singer Sargent. It seems almost unbelievable now, but I once owned a small pencil sketch of Actress Ethel Barrymore by this favorite artist. It was signed- "to Ethel, from JS Sargent 1911”, & it was presented in a small silver art deco frame. It was a gift to me from actress Fay Wray with whom I had an acquaintance in the early 1970s. I eventually gave this piece away to someone that I thought I was in love with. We no longer speak. A lesson learned? No... I continue to give things that I love to people that I love. Do you have your eye on something?

When I lived for a year in Boston (1972-73), I would spend hours wandering the galleries at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, with it's lovely collection of Sargent's. I would sit & wonder at his paintings & cruise the arty type guys. John Singer Sargent's work seem to attract like minded viewers.

The iconic full-length portrait of New Orleans beauty Virginie Gautreau (1884) brought Sargent notoriety. Considered brazen, the portrait of Madame Gautreau in a strapless black gown with a plunging neckline was savaged by the critics as scandalous. To escape the scandal created by the Portrait of Madame X, in 1886 Sargent moved to London, where his paintings triumphed at the Royal Academy & where he established a brilliant career as a society & celebrity portraitist, doing more than 700 portrait paintings.

He had many friends who were homosexual, including Henry James & Robert Louis Stevenson, & associated with aesthetes & dandies such as Oscar Wilde & Robert de Montesquiou. Sargent was known as distant & reserved. As far as we know, he had no great romantic attachments, only flirtations with women & deep friendships with men.

Portrait of Nicola d'Inverno

Rumors circulated about his relationship with his long time model & assistant Nicola d'Inverno, but no physical relationship has been documented. At his death, his family destroyed all of his personal papers, so the evidence for Sargent's homosexuality resides largely in his work, especially his genre paintings & male nudes. The Husband I & chanced on an exhibit of pencil sketches by Sargent at a small gallery at NYU in the late 1990s. I turned to the Husband (who knows his art history) & asked- “...was Sargent gay? I mean look at the love that went into these male nudes?” I like to think that he was gay. I am going to claim him as one of our own. His work certainly speaks to me.

Born On This Day- Nevember 4th... Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe

The Husband said: “I have seen his work in the USA, but, to experience Robert Mapplethorpe in Venice was just too perfect. You should mention this in your post today”.

We arrived in Venice in October, 1991, & there were banners all over this amazing city for a retrospect of the American artist’s work.The exhibit was held at the Fortuney museum, fabulous in itself. How odd to consider this important gay American artist in another city, & another world, & really kind of perfect. Mapplethorpe’s work deserves a place with the great classic works of art. It was, at the time, the largest retrospect of his work at that time.

This summer I spent time with the very readable- Just Kids, a memoir of the artist/musician/ writer’s friendship, romance & time spent with the remarkable Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti Smith, along with her friend Mapplethorpe, lived a particular New York dream: the Chelsea Hotel, Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, superstardom, to the fullest. I have posted so many times on my love of 20th century photography, & this man’s work & life still hold my full attention.

Ranging from graphic depictions of gay sex to portraits of flowers, Robert Mapplethorpe was all over the artistic map. His work is magnificent in its scope, frequently shocking, & ultimately very beautiful. The more extreme photographs have a tenderness to them, & the seemingly harmless photos generate an edginess that's hard to shake. Simultaneously devoted to a strict sense of formalism & composition & to forging a new iconography of homosexuality, it's easy to see why Mapplethorpe provoked so much controversy in his time.


Robert Mapplethorpe has become the essential “gay photographer.” His homoerotic photographs still disturb, but he made no concessions to the closeted: his work is not sneaky or abashed. He spreads a seductive & provocative version of his style throughout the world & the fashion world bounced his message back to the mainstream. His death from AIDS, in 1989, at the age of 42, gives his short life a special symbolic aura. His iconic position strongly influences how we see his photographs: he is both overrated & underrated. I feel that Mapplethorpe needs to be noted in history as Mapplethorpe- the artist, not just a gay artist, & to be placed in the great tradition of classical art.


The art world, & public funding for the arts in America, is completely different because of his work. His work has been accused of being obscene. So what? Mapplethorpe made & porn the same thing. That is his greatest contribution to American artistry. For me, the most erotic material he produced was his photographs of the sex organs of flowers. That work is startling. You can now google the word "Mapplethorpe" & view of the photographs that caused conservative activists who knew nothing about art, but knew what was moral, to successfully end public funding for the arts. The controversy seems overblown now, but a good look at Mapplethorpe's pictures is enough to verify that he is still cutting edge & still original.

Born On This Day- September 23rd... American Artist Louise Nevelson

Nevelson by Avedon

I have a keen interest in American 20th century art, but I know more than even a dilettante like me should about Louise Nevelson. I had a good friend in the 1980s, who wrote a one woman show about Louise Nevelson, & I was present for most of her research & preparation.



Nevelson is known for her abstract expressionist “crates” grouped together to form a new creation. She used found objects or everyday discarded things in her assemblages, one of which was 3 stories high: "When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."




She was born Leah Berliawsky in Kiev in 1899, & was raised in Rockland, Maine From early childhood Nevelson wanted to be a sculptor, with wood as her medium. It took her more than 6+ decades to make her mark in the art world. Nevelson had one unhappy marriage when she was 18 years old. The union with business man-Charles Nevelson lasted for a decade, & produced one child, a son-Myron. Nevelson left her marriage in 1931 & devoted herself to her art. She would go an entire decade before her 1st exhibit, which was failure. Nevelson had a 2nd show in 1943 & sold nothing. She took the entire show back to her studio & destroyed every piece. After changing direction, & after years of creating small scale pieces, Nevelson's breakthrough large works in wood were critically hailed in the late 1950s. She infused abstract art with her personal story: the epic Jewish migration to the United States between the 1880s & the 1920s, her life as a woman artist, & her involvement in American modernism functioned as the source for her vast body of work.

Nevelson was the entrée for the USA at the Venice Biennale in 1963, but was still not able to make a living from the sale of her work Around this time she met the young artist-Diana MacKown. They soon moved in together. A new period of success & a more concentrated, engaged work followed. Most biographies & Nevelson’s NY Time obituary fail to mention their 26 year relationship. Nevelson’s son & heir had a metal door installed at the apartment the women shared above their studios. He had been estranged from his mother most of his life, but Nevelson had made no provisions for MacKown in her will. MacKown was supported by Jasper Johns, Edward Able, John Cage, & Merce Cunningham when she filed a lawsuit.


I met her once, at her opening of an exhibit at the Pace Gallery. She was there in her trademark scarf & gypsy garb. I was there with a contingency of friends of the actor- Michael Higgins with whom Nevelson was acquainted. She sat in the back room, & received selected visitors who came to pay her court. Tammy Grimes was next in line to pay her respects. Nevelson looked at her blankly. Grimes seemed to have blushed: “I’m Tammy Grimes, I am an actress.” Louise still looked puzzled, but she was polite. “How nice to see you” she answered regally.

“You see, I think that we have measurements in our bodies. Measurements in our eyes. Look, dear, we walk on 2 feet. So we're vertical. That doesn't mean the work has to be vertical, but it means there is a weight within ourselves, or this flight. All these things are within the being: weight, measure & color. If the work is good work, it is built on these laws & principles that we have within ourselves. So when you use a vertical line or a horizontal line, or a texture or the way the shadow falls or a thinner piece or a heavier piece, it all kind of satisfies something in the soul - or, I don't like the word soul, satisfies something within the deed.You add or subtract until you feel. . . the form, the principle, that something that makes the house stand, that makes you stand."