Happy 2016!

Another New Year celebration has passed. A year ago our annual New Year's message celebrated not only the welcome of 2015 but our 500th post. This year, it was quite a laid-back celebration. AA and I rang in the new year with our feet up on the coffee table participating in the countdown...and then going to bed. Yes, it was a quiet couple's night for us. Today, however, New Year's Day, we were in SoHo and the East Village for a while walking around. Our 72-degree temperatures of Christmas Eve are long gone...the high today was 43, and it's going to get colder over the next few days, so it was chilly, but good to get out.

We went to see the new movie Carol with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, who play respectively an older, married mother and a younger aspiring photographer who fall in love during Christmas/New Year's of 1951-52. The movie may seem a little slow, but it is beautifully filmed, and the writing and acting is superb, so the tempo of the storyline is intentional and more realistic as a result. Cate looks stunning in this move, incredibly elegant in her expensive, chic 1950s couture, and Rooney is adorable in her plaids and youthful sweaters. Their characters practically transform into icons from the past. Rooney becomes a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn, and Cate finds herself somewhere between Deborah Kerr and Grace Kelly. A true love story, it has its crescendo and its heartache. The film delicately handles their sexuality and the controversy of their love, not as normalized, for it would never have been perceived that way in the 1950s, but certainly more as being more consciously in the cultural awareness of the greater NYC area than one might typically assume of lesbianism in the 1950s. Sarah Paulson (best known from her amazing characters on American Horror Story) is excellent as well in her supporting role as Cate's friend and former lover. Overall, this is a movie worth seeing indeed, and will receive a number of nominations if not awards.

Last year I did not change the look or design of bklynbiblio, but I've made some background and color changes this time around. I may update it a few times seasonally, when I have the time. If you read these posts via email or an RSS reader, you can always go directly to http://bklynbiblio.blogspot.com to see the new look and read all of the posts from the past. And so we welcome the year 2016...HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Winter Exhibitions 2012

I've been M.I.A. for the past few weeks dealing with everything from a stomach virus to real estate drama, work stress, and writing projects I've needed to catch up on. But it hasn't all been bad. I've had a few opportunities to see a exhibitions since Winter began (we had a bit of snow today, but not enough to warrant a first snowstorm post). Last weekend it was all about Brooklyn Museum. I had gone to see Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties with DC soon after it opened, and I thought it was an excellent show, so I was delighted to return with a few other friends and see it again. Encompassing 140 works, the show introduces you to new artists and works you've never seen before, then pairs them old standards that take on new life seen from this 1920s-only perspective. When I first wrote about going to see this show, I used the Luigi Lucioni portrait of Paul Cadmus as my image, but this time around I thought I'd show from the exhibition this beautiful photograph of the actress Gloria Swanson by Nickolas Murray (image: George Eastman House, Rochester). According to the curators, positioning her arms in this way became a 1920s trope of feminine beauty: "A beautiful woman’s depth was to represent her holding her face, masklike, in her hands, as if to signal the simultaneous acts of self-invention and containment." In addition to mixing paintings, sculptures, and photographs, I love that the show focuses on portraiture and the body, although there is an entire room devoted to abstraction and the urban environment. Even the section on still lifes is fascinating. Who knew that grouping paintings of calla lilies by artists as diverse as George O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others, and then mirroring them with a Grant Wood portrait of an old woman holding a cactus, could provide to be such a fascinating cross-section of art from one decade? The show closes this weekend and travels, but I'm determined to buy the exhibition catalogue, the show was that good.

We also saw HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the gay/lesbian art exhibition, which I had first seen in Washington, D.C. with RL back in December 2010. Now, I know I should be supportive of this exhibition. After all, it is the very first show to focus on gay/lesbian art by a major museum (National Portrait Gallery and now Brooklyn Museum). And of course I do support it from a social-historical perspective. It is important and it is ground-breaking, even if there had not been any controversy over the inclusion of David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly. There are a number of works in the show that are interesting and worth seeing, like the earliest work you see here, a photograph of the poet Walt Whitman by the painter Thomas Eakins (image: NPG). Whitman became a champion of male-male love with his poems in Leaves of Grass (1855) and was known to have a longtime lover named Peter Doyle. And yet, as I went through the exhibition (again), I found myself often questioning why other works were even in the show. For instance, why include George O'Keeffe? The wall text talks about the sexual imagery inherent in her flower paintings, but then notes that she often denied it. What does this have to do with gay/lesbian art? O'Keeffe was not a lesbian, so presumably the implication is that this is about sexual identities, not gay/lesbian identities? But it doesn't say that. And the concept of "portraiture" is really stretched here, which typically isn't a problem, but it's not defined up-front for audiences, so I feel like people don't necessarily understand this is more about gay/lesbian identities then specifically pictures of gay/lesbian artists or sitters. My lesbian couple friends told me they didn't think there were even any women artists in the show because all the promotional material seemed to focus so much on men. That was surprising to hear, but definitely a noteworthy point. There are women artists and subjects in the show, but they are minimal. What was interesting is that Youth and Beauty actually seemed to have a greater celebration of the gay/lesbian subcultures of the 1920s than HIDE/SEEK did. So the exhibition is worth seeing for certain, but it may leave you with more questions than answers.


Over at The Met, I've finally been able to get to see some of the current exhibitions. Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine will leave you chuckling aloud, showing that we've always had a sense of humor for hundreds of years now. The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini is an impressive grouping of paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the 15th to early 16th centuries. The room dedicated to the de' Medici family is excellent, and the busts by Mino da Fiesole are absolutely brilliant. The new galleries for paintings and sculpture in the American Wing also just opened, and they really are beautiful. The New York Times published a press preview by Carol Vogel and a great review by Holland Cotter, who with his usual flair describes them as "sensational." The highlight of the galleries is Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, an enormous picture that has been restored and newly framed, but let's face it, we're most excited to see John Singer Sargent's Madame X, 1883-84, is back and hanging proud (image: Met).


I still have to get over to see the Met's Victorian electrotype sculpture show, which I hear is very interesting. At the end of February, their spring blockbuster The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and Parisian Avant-Garde opens. Supposedly it will include at least one recreation of Gertrude Stein's home in Paris, which should be great to see. Tomorrow, I'm making a point to head to the Guggenheim to see Maurizio Cattelan: All before that show closes, although I'm sure I'll have to fight through the crowds to get in, it has been so popular. I missed the Museum of Modern Art's show on Willem de Kooning, which I hear was great, but I'm really excited to see their upcoming retrospective on photographer Cindy Sherman, which also opens in February. Considering how cold it is these days, it's always pleasant to think there's good art show to look at and keep you warm.

Top 10 Read Novels: 2005-2009

Whenever I write about my annual "books read" during a calendar year (e.g. the 2010 list), I take this from a Word document in which I record every book I’ve read. They go on this list in the order in which I finish them, not begin them, as I’ve been known to read multiple books at once (currently actively reading 2 books: The Elegance of the Hedgehog and, on my Why-Pad, Rogues’ Gallery). I also rate each book with up to 5 stars, in part because it helps me remember years later how I felt about a particular book, although the 5-star books remain in my mind for the obvious reason (and, oddly enough, so do the 1-star books). I started keeping this list back in 2005, when I was moving from South Florida to NYC and thus needed to weed my library. I realize all this may make me seem a bit anal and crazy, but I learned a long time ago I’m a listmaker, and without my lists (shopping lists, "to do" lists, deadlines lists, etc.), I’d go...well, even more crazy!

In recently looking through my past annual lists, I was pleased to discover that I had conveniently come up with 10 novels from 2005 to 2009 to each of which I had assigned 5 stars. I've now sorted them into a "top 10" list of my favorite novels read during that 5-year period. Keep in mind that the books were not necessarily published between these years, but when I read them. Also, missing below are a number of my other favorite novels, like The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I read long before I kept a list. So here’s my top 10 list, counting down from 10 to 1 (original date of publication is in parentheses; book cover images link to Amazon).

10. Affinity by Sarah Waters (2000). I am a big fan of Waters, and her name appears twice on this list. With its plot involving a Victorian women’s prison, psychic powers, and a burgeoning lesbian love interest, it’s definitely worth reading, although admittedly not as riveting as Fingersmith (see below). Her novel The Little Stranger appeared on my Books of 2009 post.
9. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997). SVH gave me her copy of this book. She loved it, others recommended it too, and I agreed entirely. The visual descriptions are exquisitely written, and the plot details beautifully the difficult life of a young geisha during a changing period of Japanese history.
8. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848). This is a classic British novel, with a number of witty (and tragic) scenes. The protagonist Becky Sharp is one of the most memorable little vixens in literature you will ever encounter. It’s worth reading all 800+ pages (took me 6 months).
7. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant (2003). If you want to experience Renaissance Florence, as it moved from a flourishing artistic center under the de’ Medici family to a strict religious state under the grip of the radical Fra Savonarola, read this novel about Alessandra Cecchi, who wants nothing more than to be a painter, but is forced to adapt to becoming a woman before her time. Dunant’s descriptions are so lush, you can literally taste 1490s Florence.
6. A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine (1986). Ruth Rendell is one of my favorite mystery writers, and her books under her Vine pseudonym are even better. They pull you into complex family dramas that make you realize yours isn’t nearly so bad. Here, a woman is hanged for murdering her sister, and their niece now tries to understand what exactly happened and uncovers more family secrets than she ever wanted to know.
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (2007). Yes, I’m a Potter fan. When I first started reading the books, I wasn’t into them too much, but they just got better and better. I read this days the weekend it was released and could not put it down. The last novel in the series deserves a place on this list for sure. Rowling successfully brought it all together in one fantastic climax of a novel.
4. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925). Another classic in British literature, Woolf beautifully created a stream-of-consciousness plot that takes you for a ride through the mind of Clarissa Dalloway as she plans a party, but she jumps into the minds of numerous characters she meets along the way, making for a fascinating journey through post-WWI bourgeois London. The opening chapter has two of my favorite lines in literature: "What a lark! What a plunge!" and "I prefer men to cauliflowers."
3. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905). This American novel will forever haunt a piece of my mind, especially living in NYC, and occasionally finding myself desiring yet another $4.50 cappuccino from Dean & DeLuca. Here’s my review.
2. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002). I have to say this book, my second Waters novel on this list, is truly one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve ever read. It takes place in 1861 and involves the growing loving relationship between two very different Victorian women: a servant girl raised among thieves in London, and a delicate flower of a lady with white gloves raised in a dark mansion with a mysterious uncle. Just when you think you know what’s going on, everything changes...and not just once. A must-read for mystery and neo-Victorian buffs, this book is an absolute page-turner. (See book cover above.)
1. Possession by A.S. Byatt (1990). This was the second time I had read this book, and I was pleased to discover that my ranking of it as my all-time favorite novel had not changed. This is the story of two scholars, Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey, who discover the love letters of the Victorian writers Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, and try to piece together their unknown love story. Byatt’s talent lies not only in the plot itself, but in her believable characters (past and present) and how she is able to write so convincingly as a Victorian and modern author. Byatt won the Man Booker Prize for this novel. Here is my post about meeting Byatt.

2010 and 2011 already has proven to have a number of 5-star novels too, including Howard’s End, The Children’s Book, and The Lovely Bones, but we’ll save those for a future post.

Gay Pride (and Marriage) 2011

Readers of bklynbiblio may recall my past posts on Gay Pride in 2009 and 2010. I wish I could tell you great things about my adventures this year, but I’ve been sick for 2 weeks with sinus & upper respiratory infections. (We’re talking fever, doctor visits, antibiotics, and burst blood vessels from some violent coughing...not pretty.) So, alas, even though a group of my friends were all celebrating Gay Pride this weekend with parties and dancing, I only felt well enough to join them today for an early dinner in Chelsea. From what I hear, the parade was loads of fun, certainly better than last year’s. Everyone was jubilant, clearly celebrating the passage of the Same-Sex Marriage Act, which the State Senate approved 33 to 29, and which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law at 11:55pm on Friday, June 24, 2011. NY is now the 6th and largest state in which gays and lesbians will be able to marry starting next month. The picture above (photo: Michael Kamber, The New York Times) shows our political leaders and supporters at the parade: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (who undoubtedly will be one of the first to marry her partner next month), and Gov. Cuomo standing with his barely-visible partner Sandra Lee (of Semi-Homemade Cooking fame), who apparently was the major drive behind Cuomo spear-heading the passage of gay marriage into law. This is truly a momentous occasion, because it demonstrates that NY is a state that grants civil rights to all of its citizens. For gays and lesbians, of course, it’s a major milestone when you consider that the gay rights movement began 42 years ago after a raid on The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. After the law was signed by Cuomo, over 1000 people flocked to The Stonewall Inn to celebrate.

In looking back on my 2009 post, I discovered I had written some interesting words that in retrospect now seem prescient. Here’s what I said: “Things take time. Gay marriage and the dismissal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ won’t happen over night, or possibly even in 2009. They are simply too controversial for some people. But they will happen, in due time. You cannot change people’s minds by snapping your fingers, especially when religion is the foundation of their beliefs. And rather than be angered by these attitudes, I believe we should reflect on them and work to bring people around through education.” I cannot help but think that in the past 2 years, a great deal of educating and soul searching has taken place, and a majority of NY politicians realized that passing the gay marriage law into effect was essential.

Readers may be surprised to discover that I actually haven’t been a full supporter of "gay marriage" per se. My issue was never whether gays and lesbians could marry, that was an obvious no brainer. My issue was with "marriage." Its very outdated concept needs to change. Organized religion has monopolized marriage to the point that most people believe marriage is first a spiritual blessing and then a legally binding contract. In fact, just the opposite is true. As far as the state is concerned, people are "married" by the laws of the state in which they reside, not by the laws of God. Think about it. You legally can marry in a courthouse without the spiritual blessing of a religious leader. But you legally cannot marry in a religious ceremony without a license pre-approved by the state.

So, in short, what I’ve argued in the past is that the state needed to take back ownership of "marriage." To me, the best way of doing this was to change the name to a "civil partnership" for everyone, and thus to deny religious leaders their assumed ability to use a religious sanctification as a substitute for the actual civil partnership that would need to take place in a government office. In other words, couples legally should have a civil partnership first, and if they wanted also to have a religious one too, they could do that on their own. Their religious leader should have no legal authority to marry them. My point is that when you remove organized religion from this redefinition of marriage as a civil partnership, there is no legal reason why a state could deny that right to all of its citizens, regardless if the couple was different or same-sex partnered. But let’s face it. To argue all this at the state government level would have been nearly impossible. Coming up with a gay marriage law was just an easier, "straighter" path to take. So of course I have supported it and I am thrilled to live in a state that has passed it into law.

In the long run though, my reasoning more or less falls in line with why the Same-Sex Marriage Act did pass in the State Senate, and why 4 Republicans who previously had voted against this bill now were in favor of it. In the end, these individuals recognized that by denying same-sex partners the right to marry, they were denying NY citizens basic civil rights. Not only is that unconstitutional, it is immoral. The fact that religion was an underlying factor for the 28 Republicans who did not vote for it may seem obvious, but it is clearly demonstrated best not in their votes, but in the fact that only 1 Democrat, Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, did not vote in favor of the law either. His reason: “God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago.” Poor misguided Díaz. It’s sad really, because this reasoning demonstrates exactly how the closed-mindedness of organized religion can blind some people so badly that they lose sight of their own civic responsibility, to uphold basic human rights for all citizens in their constituency, not just the ones who pray the same way they do. Clearly, they have forgotten that we live in a country that celebrates religious freedom and is based on the division of church and state. One can only hope that they may discover the error of their ways and seek forgiveness from those they have offended. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Random Musings 7

Following up on the blockbuster auction surprise of last fall's $35m Victorian painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the 19th-century Dutch-born British artist stunned people once again at Sotheby's New York's May 5th sale of 19th-Century European art. The picture you see here, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra (1880-83) was estimated to go for $3-$5m, and wound up selling for $25,000,000 ($29.3m with buyer's premium). Victorian pictures get criticized for their sentimentality, but it's clear that some people are willing to pay money for these narrative scenes that emphasize drama (or melodrama) over the formal elements of painting as painting. Cleopatra always has been a favorite subject among artists dating to the Renaissance through now, and one cannot help but think of the potential influence of a picture like this directly influencing movie makers of films like Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor. The Art Newspaper noted the following interesting information about the picture's provenance and past sale history: "Well-received at its Grosvenor Gallery debut in 1882 and subsequently owned then forgotten by the distinguished old master collector Sir Joseph Robinson, Cleopatra resurfaced in a 1958 Royal Academy show of the Robinson collection, only to be disposed by Robinson’s daughter Princess Labia at Sotheby’s London in 1962 for the then not inconsiderable sum of £2,000. Steadily rising in price throughout the ensuing decades, the picture last appeared at auction at Christies in 1993, selling for £879,500 (estimated £280,000-£320,000; $1.3m)." In other arts-related news...

A recent study by neurobiologists at the University College London has shown that looking at art has the ability to trigger dopamine, generating feelings similar to those that make you feel like you're in love. Among the artists whose works were shown to people in the study were Botticelli, Monet, Ingres, and Constable. Upon hearing this, I wasn't exactly surprised. Of course beautiful works of art are going to trigger an emotional response! That is actually the point to art, to evoke a response. Much of 20th-century art has forcibly lost this aesthetic basis in favor of other ideas about art (Rothko being perhaps among the few exceptions). Advertisers realized this a long time ago when pictures started making an appearance in ads. Obviously though not every painting or work of art can trigger the same reaction. Some people like landscapes over people, flowers over animals, etc. Similarly, not every person you encounter makes you feel some sort of emotional response either. So I would argue that much of this has to do with one's own particular idea of beauty, preconditioned or socialized, that one brings to the program. Regardless, it is rather fun to think that art can make you feel like you're in love.

This past weekend my friend KB came to visit from California, and we went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Sam Taylor-Wood Wuthering Heights-themed photographs of the Yorkshire moors (unfortunately, more interesting in principle than in reality), and Lorna Simpson's thought-provoking exploration of African-American identities. I especially liked her collage-like piece Please remind me of who I am, 2009, appropriates discarded photo booth pictures of Blacks from the past, arranging them interspersed with small blank boxes that I believe represent identities we've already forgotten and are now lost for good. KB also stopped by the Met and saw the Alexander McQueen fashion exhibition, which she said was amazing. I absolutely have to agree. I finally saw it last week, and it is incredible, installed both like a runway event and performance art. Over 12,000 people saw the show in one day, and currently people are waiting up to 30 minutes to get in. They've already run out of the first print run of the catalogue (the holographic cover of which is pictured here).

In my last Random Musing, I had reported on some census stats regarding my Brooklyn neighborhood. Imagine my surprise to discover that the neighborhood along Columbia Street ranks as the NYC neighborhood with the most same-sex couples. Who knew!? That's the area just outside my door and across the BQE (Broolyn Queens Expressway...which I fondly call the BQE River because of its constant churning of traffic). I cross the BQE River every once and a while to venture into that area, but I never stay very long because it's pretty much a dead zone. In fact, there is nothing there that would lead you to believe it was filled with gay couples. Although, come to think of it, the B61 bus runs through there and that is the bus that takes you not just to Park Slope but also Ikea. It's also one of the cheapeast neighborhoods in NYC and still close to Manhattan.

Finally, my latest music obsession these days isn't Lady Gaga, but I do seem to be going gaga over Adele. Admittedly, so is everyone else, but you can tell why. She really does have an incredible voice, full of soul and a certain sort of anguish that strains you when you listen her croon out a ballad or pop tune. And to top it off, she's beautiful, in the very natural, unexpected way that isn't a cardboard cutout or a model. Here's the video for "Rolling in the Deep."

Random Musings 5

The image you see here is William Holman Hunt's 1853 painting The Awakening Conscience, part of the collection at Tate Britain. The picture is modestly sized, about 30 x 22 in. (762 x 559 mm). The linear clarity and attention to detail in the work is extraordinary. That is one of the great charms of Pre-Raphaelite painting. Holman Hunt is probably the only one in the group who maintained all the principles of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood when they formed in 1848. Among these were the ideas of truth to nature and subjects of modern life. Dante Gabriel Rossetti eventually moved into lusch Venetian-style fantasy portraits of women, and John Everett Millais went more academic in painting Victorian genre scenes and portraits (note that their work in these styles is equally admirable). Here, Holman Hunt's picture shows a kept woman in her dressing gown. She has been at play with her lover, when suddenly she has looked out the window and sees the light, here taking on its metaphorical message of morality. She has seen the error of her ways and the epiphany on her face suggests that she will now live a more righteous life. One of my favorite parts of this picture is the way Holman Hunt used a mirror to show the open window, thus showing us what she sees. By doing this, the viewer interacts with the woman, not only seeing her epiphany but experiencing it as well by looking at the light too, pointing out the viewer's potential moral failings, showing there is still hope to change.

I've started with this picture in this latest Random Musing because the Tate recently announced that there will be a new Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 2012. The last major British retrospective in all media of this group was in 1984, and although that was a landmark show, it was highly criticized at the time for excluding women artists and not engaging with new theoretical ideas in art history at the time. This new show promises to change all that, and the planned title--Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde--tells you the intended modernist trajectory the curators will be suggesting. In some ways I had been thinking I would avoid London in much of 2012 because of the Olympics (e.g. overpriced hotel rooms and overcrowded streets), but that exhibition is making me rethink my plans. It opens September 2012.

Also on exhibit in 2012 (closing just before that show opens) at Tate Modern will be a major retrospective of the career of contemporary bad boy artist Damien Hirst. This is the shark-in-formaldehyde guy, as well as the diamond-encrusted-skull guy. He is one of the most successful British artists in history (if you measure success in monetary value and pop cultural references). I'm not a big fan of his work (the animal rights part of me gets riled up at times), but I cannot argue with the fact that his work has revolutionized sculpture by abstracting the figurative, altering our expectations of what we think we will see and, naturally, by shocking us at times with his experiments in form. It's no surprise also that the painting which earned the most money at auction last May ($106.5 million), Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, has gone on long-term loan to the Tate Modern, since they're going to launch a Picasso and Britain show in 2012 as well. (Note to reader: museums have figured out that if they want to draw large audiences, they should do an exhibition on either Picasso or Van Gogh or anything Impressionist.)

In other art news, Leo Steinberg has died at the age of 90. This art historian's writing was always interesting to read. He made you look back at works of art not just once but over and over, seeing new things each time. You have to love anyone who had the balls to write a book entitled The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion (who knew there were so many images of Christ showing pronounced bulges!). His obituary by Ken Johnson in The New York Times is quite fascinating and definitely worth reading, giving you insights into how life experiences make an art historian.

In Queens, NY, there's a movement both to sell off and to save a public monument called The Triumph of Civic Virtue by the American sculptor Frederic MacMonnies. The non-art people find it offensive because the nude male is crushing two women. The art people recognize it as a major NYC public commission that in allegorical terms represents civic virtue crushing vice and corruption. Maybe the problem is that politicians don't like being reminded of their civic responsibility to oppose the evils of society...or they're offended by the nudity.

The polemical gay-themed art exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is apparently going to travel, including making a stop at the Brooklyn Museum later in 2011. I saw this exhibition in DC with RL just over 3 months ago, and it led to some great conversations between him and me about "gay" art and its social implications for the gay/lesbian community, not to mention basic principles in exhibition design. The Brooklyn Museum doesn't have information on its site yet about the exhibition, but the news was reported here in the NYT blog.

I'm writing this post from a hotel room in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida. I'm getting the Padre's house ready to go on the market next week. Work, work, work...but what can you do? At least there's art to think about and appease one's mind.

BQH Conference Recap

The image you see here is a portion of a surviving manuscript from 1516 in which one Christopher Hewitson of Over Poppleton, England (near York) was accused of the “detestable sodomitical sin against human nature” with a number of men over a 14-year period. The manuscript is held by the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York. You can read more here about Hewitson, the people called to testify against him with regard to the sexual acts performed, and his penance, walking in procession around church during services wearing a sheet over his head. Hewitson’s case was discussed in detail and analyzed in the context of social history and sexual practices at the time by Derek Neal (Nipissing University) at the recent British Queer History Conference I attended at McGill University the weekend of October 14th. Aside from my ambivalence about Montreal itself, the conference did have some interesting presentations, the Hewitson case being one of the most informative.

The conference began with keynote speaker Jeffrey Weeks’s presentation “Queer(y)ing the ‘Modern Homosexual,’” which was a historiography of the evolution of gay and lesbian history and queer theory, with a particular emphasis on what he has labeled Queer 1 (pre-Stonewall), Queer 2 (queer theory), and Queer 3 (present-day conflated sexual identities). Weeks is a pioneer in the field of gay and lesbian history, and his book Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (1977) was an excellent introduction when I read it more than a decade ago. What startled me, however, was that there were nearly 300 people in the room to hear his talk, and it made me realize how relevant and important this area of study still is for people.

Derek Neal’s talk I’ve already noted, but what was interesting to me was how a panel session on medieval Britain could turn out to be one of the most interesting. Nancy Partner (McGill) discussed the reception of John Boswell’s groundbreaking book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (1980), noting how the development of queer theory as a form of literary analysis actually relates to Boswell’s work, despite the criticism by social constructionists of his work as essentialist, because of his focus on textual analysis, and how this revised understanding of his work can help medieval scholars work on queer topics today. The third (provocative and hilarious) paper by Karma Lochrie (Indiana) dealt with pilgrimage badges from ca.1400 that showed sexual genitalia in anthropomorphic form, such as penises carrying a vaginal figure on a dais. She considered them as objects with both spiritual and satirical elements, comparing them to religious icons and rituals from this time.

Matt Cook (Birkbeck) spoke about the late Victorian Aesthetic couple Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts, and Morris B. Kaplan (SUNY Purchase) discussed Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse’s queer adventures in the Far East. Amy Tooth Murphy (Glasgow) gave a fascinating presentation on her work conducting oral histories of lesbians after World War II, playing some of the recordings of the women’s experiences during her talk. Will Fisher (Lehman) talked about the popularity of what he calls “thigh-sex” in 17th-century English literature. Katie Hindmarch-Watson (Johns Hopkins) spoke about the homosexual prostitution underworld of London telegraph boys in the 1870s. Finally, David Minto (Yale) discussed the global impact of the Wolfenden Report, which led to the nationwide decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK in 1967. There were plenty of other talks; you can see the whole program here.

As for the panel session I had organized, Carolyn Conroy unfortunately could not make the conference, so I read her paper for her on Simeon Solomon’s 1873 arrest for attempted sodomy. My own paper on John Gibson, the Duke of Devonshire, and queer art patronage seemed to be received well, although it seemed to be an area (art) in which many of those present were less familiar. Jongwoo Kim’s (Louisville) paper on Henry Scott Tuke and social realism, however, was very well received, I believe because of the modern implications of his work and the interest of the historians and sociologists in the room. All in all the conference was interesting and I am glad I went, but being there made me realize more than ever before that, while I have an interest in gay cultural history, I am nowhere near as committed to the debates surrounding the social construction of queer identities as these people are. They can argue those issues all they want. I prefer to focus on art.

Review: Lesbians, Sorcerers, and Toys, Oh My!

Going to see a movie in NYC now runs you $12.50, assuming you're not a child or senior, and you're going to the now rather comfortable megaplex-like theater. Needless to say, I don't go to the movies as much anymore, not unless it's to see something I'm very interested in. This month was an exception, as I went to see 3 movies: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Toy Story 3, and The Kids Are All Right.

Of the three, Sorcerer's Apprentice was the disappointment. It had the potential for being a great fantasy action film, and while the special effects were fine and it had a few intense moments, it became more like a Disney Channel special than an action film. We could have done without the sappy love story, in other words. Drawing on the historical legacy of Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice in the animated short first seen in Fantasia (1940), this live-action version tells the story of Dave (Jay Baruchel), a nerdy science geek and NYU student, who becomes an apprentice to the sorcerer Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), himself a former apprentice of Merlin. New Yorkers will be exasperated by the manipulation of the City's urban landscape: the West 4th subway stop, for instance, is not an above-ground station, and there is no way anyone would follow another person on foot from NYU's campus in the Village all the way to the Chrysler Building on 42nd & Lexington and not have caught up to them along the way. If you see the movie, make sure you get there for the opening though, because the backstory in the first five minutes is a bit complex. As for me, I think I'll go back and enjoy the Mickey Mouse version, or Paul Dukas's 1897 symphonic poem, or Goethe's 1797 poem.

I went to see Toy Story 3 on the 4th of July. This is easily a must-see film of the year, even if you've never seen the previous two films. Although targeted to children and followers of Disney's cowboy Woody and spaceman Buzz Lightyear franchise, the movie appeals to everyone (although I'm not sure children under the age of 7 should see it). It taps into every human emotion about growing up, memories of our past, and the ongoing legacy we leave behind for others. If you don't get teary-eyed by the end of the movie, there's something wrong with you. Aside from that, however, it is simply hilarious, with the appropriate amount of double-entendre humor that appeals to adults on a different level. Case in point: metrosexual Ken Doll steals every scene he's in. But like all good fairy tales, there has to be frightening moments and a villain too, and this movie has its share, demonstrating how as lovable and cuddly as some toys are, there are others that are just freaky. The recent craze for 3D movies is getting ridiculous, but in this instance it works because the cinematic experience surrounds you and it doesn't insult you by having things flying into your face. Go see this movie. You'll love it.

Finally, for some witty realistic bantering, superb acting, and a broadening of one's understanding about what defines sexual orientations like straight and gay, go see The Kids Are All Right (image, above, from the movie's official website). This film is about a lesbian couple, Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) who have two children from the same sperm donor. In California, the identity of the sperm donor can be revealed if all parties involved are willing. Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) decide they want to meet their biological father. Enter Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a seemingly leftover hippie, who meets his children and gradually becomes closer to the entire family. Well, almost everyone in the family. The movie has warm humor, thanks to director/writer Lisa Cholodenko and co-writer Stuart Blumberg. These are real people facing real-life relationship issues, and the awkwardness and sexual tension that prevails throughout the movie just makes it all the more true to life. It's rare for American actresses to be willing to reveal all of themselves, without cosmetics, in all their glory, and it's so refreshing to see Moore take this risk throughout the film. It makes her even more beautiful than she already is. Ruffalo repulsed me early on, but as the movie progressed his charm seriously started to turn me on. Bening, however, is superb. It's almost impossible to describe the subtle energy she brings to this role, but it is through Bening's character that the movie takes its very serious turn of events and comes full circle in a way that makes you realize how real these characters are. This movie isn't for everyone (homophobes, closed-minded intolerables, fundamentalist Christian freaks), but for the rest of us who are open to the sheer experience of living, don't miss this film.

Gay Pride 2010

This past weekend was Gay Pride 2010, the 40th anniversary of the first parade in the City. One of my friends, NV, came up from Miami Beach for his first NYC Gay Pride, which turned out to be a fun-filled weekend with the boys. On Friday night, we ate dinner with AR & JM at a new Thai restaurant in Chelsea. NV & I then headed to Splash, where we met up with more friends for a few hours of high-tech dancing and “acrobatically inclined” go-go boys (don’t ask, you had to be there). I had the dance remix version of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” playing in my head for most of the next day (see below).

On Saturday, NV & I headed to the Brooklyn Museum for two queer-themed exhibits, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade and American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection. (We also wound up going to The Metropolitan Museum of Art today with MP & CF to see the other half of the same fashion exhibition, American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity; both exhibitions are beautiful, but the Met’s installation is a stunning visual feast for the eyes.) Following the Brooklyn Museum visit, we did some obligatory clothes shopping at Brooklyn Industries. After a mandatory disco nap, we headed out for the night to another friend’s place where 10 of us met up and had cocktails (vodka & cranberry seems to be the gay drink these days) along with pizza and salad for dinner. Afterwards we all went to Eastern Bloc in the East Village for some classic 80s music, where we met up with yet more friends. I was under some ridiculous notion that this bar would have a dance floor, but that was not the case, so we basically squished ourselves into a long stretch of people, sweat our asses off, ordered more drinks, and created our own dancing zone, including on boxes overlooking the crowd.

Sunday was the official Gay Pride Parade. My friends and I were a little disappointed in it this year. It may have been because the theme was more about social action such as the legalization of gay marriage, and as a result the parade was less the over-the-top, sexy, flamboyant craziness as it had been in the past. As bklynbiblio readers know (including from my more detailed explanatory post on last year’s parade), I purposely avoid politics on this blog. I do of course have great respect for the long history of activists who have helped make a difference in civil rights (including, for instance, the lesbian activist Storme DeLarverie, one of the original Stonewall protesters, who according to this recent article in The New York Times sadly now has dementia and lives in a nursing home in Brooklyn). However, when it comes to the parade, people really just want to be entertained. Yes, we admit it, we want more floats with hot go-go boys dancing on them. We got a few, but not enough. (One of the lesbian clubs had a float with sexy dancing girls on it!) It was also surprising that no one threw out beads (a la Mardi Gras) as they always have in the past. I’m not sure if that’s a product of the suffering economy or a desire to keep the City cleaner. All that said, don’t be completely misled by our disappointment, because there were some festive floats with outlandish figures (Latinos know how to party). You can see a great photo stream of pictures by Tom Giebel on his Flickr group. The picture above is by him as well, and it shows just one of the gay groups marching. Who knew there was a group that brought together queer bloggers in NYC?! After the parade, we went to Barracuda for drinks, Rafaella’s for dinner, and then home to crash. Needless to say, I slept well last night.

In the spirit of Gay Pride, here’s Lady Gaga’s provocatively queer video for “Alejandro.” I feel so privileged that my own name gets vocal prominence after those of Alejandro and Fernando.

GLBTQ Birthdays

Writing this post on a Sunday night, it occurs to me that I have been 40 years old for over 27 hours now. Yes, readers, April 10th was a milestone birthday, and I had a wonderful celebration with 20 good friends all packed into my Brooklyn brownstone apartment. It was definitely a successful party: it took until 2:30 this afternoon for me to get rid of my hangover. As I mentally prepared myself the past two weeks or so for this occasion, I began to think about other people whose birthdays are taking place these first few weeks of April. This actually all started because I was pleasantly surprised to discover recently that my fantasy boyfriend Ewan McGregor (image: Best of Ewan website) celebrates his birthday on March 31. The Scot just celebrated his 39th birthday! Okay, so admittedly he's not gay, but with more than one "gay/bisexual" role on his resume (from The Pillow Book and Velvet Goldmine to the recent I Love You Phillip Morris, which for ridiculously homophobic reasons still has not been able to get a distributor in the US), Ewan is arguably the most open-minded queer actor out there, with varied major roles from Trainspotting to Moulin Rouge. He was fantastic also in the current film The Ghost Writer which I saw last week with RK.

But moving on from my Ewan obsession, this post actually is about birthdays. We all like to know that we were born on the same day as someone famous. It somehow makes us feel special. My cousin DG, for instance, shares her birthday with Queen Victoria (about which we ARE quite amused!). Comparatively speaking, when I was growing up I was always depressed to know that the two people who shared my birthday were the actor Harry Morgan and the football player Don Meredith. But now, thanks to the GLBTQ Encyclopedia, a free resource that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the gay world, I'm pleased to discover I also share my birthday with famous queers like the English playwright and poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (b. 1647), and the landscape architect and philanthropist James Ogilvy, Earl of Findlater (b. 1750). Now, admittedly, Rochester was a bit of a rake, a free-spirited sex addict who didn't discriminate in his partners too much, but Findlater was probably more of a self-identifying homosexual, living in Europe with his partner Johann Georg Fischer.

Some other gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer birthdays for this month include:
April 2: Danish fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen (b. 1805), who was probably bisexual, and lesbian social commentator and literary critic Camille Paglia (b. 1947);
April 3: gay actor David Hyde Pierce (b. 1959);
April 5: Victorian English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (b. 1837, dying on April 10, 1909), who was probably more auto-erotic than gay or bisexual;
April 9: lesbian actress Cynthia Nixon (b. 1966);
April 14: gay actor Sir John Gielgud (b. 1904);
April 15: gay Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452), gay-but-never-out Anglo-American writer Henry James (b. 1843), and lesbian blues singer Bessie Smith (b. 1894).
And of course let's not forget bisexual playwright and poet William Shakespeare, who will celebrate his 446th birthday on April 23rd. Happy Birthday, fellow queers!

Random Musings 1

Rather than post individually about a series of recent things and events I have found of interest, I thought I would start the first in a series called Random Musings.

This week's ASPCA e-newsletter for the NYC area has a reminder to go orange in April for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month. According to the article, "Starting four years ago as a small adoption event in New York City, the ASPCA’s April celebrations have mushroomed into a nationwide observance of the human-animal bond and our victories on behalf of animals." The Empire State Building, the Woolworth Building, and other NYC landmarks will be lit up in orange on April 17th in honor of this event. You may recall from my post last year that April 10th is the official anniversary of the founding of the ASPCA. This year they will be 144 years strong!

Speaking of animals, The New York Times has an article out titled "Can Animals Be Gay?" by Jon Mooallem that, unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read yet. It's accompanied by cheeky pictures of Easter-like animal pairs photographed by American neo-pop artist Jeff Koons. I'm not sure why Koons was hired to do this. Presumably it was meant to help make the storyline stronger or appeal to a wider audience ("Aw, look at the cute gay bunnies! They remind me of Uncles Joe and Mike. I guess homosexuals aren't that bad."), but knowing that Koons's work both celebrates and parodies popular culture, I'm concerned it may actually have the opposite effect.

Also in the NYT on March 13th, Carol Vogel had an article on the new generation of museum curators under the age of 40 ("The New Guard of Curators Steps Up") whom she predicts are among those to keep an eye on for the future. While I can appreciate the idea behind this article, I have to confess I was horrified to discover that of the 9 curators profiled, only 2 of them actually held PhD degrees in art history or a related field. Another 2 are working toward that degree. That means the remaining 5 have not done advanced graduate work in their related area beyond an MA (some don't even have that!). As a PhD student studying art history, I am very discouraged by this. It suggests the possibility that either museums are less concerned about higher education than we were led to believe, or that curatorial positions are being seen more as managerial positions than art object-related professions. Vogel should consider writing an article about that topic.

New York Magazine regularly publishes short pieces about new items available in their "Best Bet" section. Last week, it was about these clay rice bowls on sale for $15 each from Restoration Hardware (photo: Hannah Whitaker). Each is unique in its patina and design, and only 1000 were for sale in NYC. While they may not seem like much to look at, it's their history that captured my attention. They were crafted in China in the mid-1800s and sunk with a ship to the bottom of the South China Sea. They were excavated in 2008. Needless to say, I had to buy one. Some people may think it's a bit ridiculous, but I bought it because of the history of the piece. I feel like I now own a piece of archaeological booty! Besides, it goes with my eclectic Asian decor. I just can't eat out of it: the store issues with each bowl a label that warns you it has lead in it.

And finally, I only just heard about this a week ago, but last year Cornell University released the results of an interesting study where they had analyzed Flickr's content and came up with a list of the most photographed cities in the world. The top 5 cities are: (1) New York City, (2) London, (3) San Francisco, (4) Paris, and (5) Los Angeles. I'm surprised Paris wasn't more popular, but I imagine a lot of Americans are still anti-French. That said, they also analyzed the most photographed landmarks and things switch around. The Eiffel Tower is #1 and Notre Dame in Paris is #5 (that's my photo of the apse of the cathedral when I was there in November 2006). The Empire State Building comes in at #7. It's a fascinating assessment of travel photography, but of course it really is just a sample based on who uses digital photography, who uploads images to Flickr, and who tags their images appropriately for searching (note, for instance, that I never contributed this photo to Flickr). Oddly enough one of the other most photographed NYC landmarks was the Apple store on 5th Avenue. I wonder if people are photographing it today with the ridiculously long lines of people waiting to buy the newly released iPad.

Gay Pride 2009

This past weekend was Gay Pride. Here in NYC, it’s always the last Sunday in June to commemorate the Stonewall riots that jettisoned the gay rights movement in 1969. What makes this year special is that it was the 40th anniversary of the riots. The picture you see here (courtesy of the New York Blade) shows Governor David Paterson, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (our first lesbian council member) all marching at the head of the parade on Sunday. I must admit, it’s a great thing to live in a city where we have leadership in support of gay and lesbian rights. It gives you a sense of comfort that you cannot find in other parts of the country or world.

That said, I’m not very political, as readers of bklynbiblio know by now. I’ve never marched in a gay rights rally and I doubt I ever will. It’s just not my thing. I prefer education, not politics, as a way to make a difference. And while it would be great to see anti-gay discrimination and homophobia disappear immediately, sometimes I feel like my apolitical, education-based perspective allows me to have more patience about these issues. Things take time. Gay marriage and the dismissal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” won’t happen over night, or possibly even in 2009. They are simply too controversial for some people. But they will happen, in due time. You cannot change people’s minds by snapping your fingers, especially when religion is the foundation of their beliefs. And rather than be angered by these attitudes, I believe we should reflect on them and work to bring people around through education. Let’s face it, if it were so easy to change people’s minds, every gay man and lesbian would have been made straight by their parents ages ago. Instead, for hopefully many of us, our parents now accept and understand us, but it took them time as well. Don’t misunderstand me. I abhor intolerance. I’m also very disturbed by the ever-increasing number of gay hate crimes that have been happening all over the place. There was at least one gay bashing in Chelsea after the parade, and reports come in all the time on various gay news agencies and blogs about more beatings (note that rarely do these ever appear on mainstream news sites). But I believe we have to work through education to make people realize that we all deserve equal rights and true acceptance beyond tolerance. It will happen, with time.

For me Gay Pride is about hanging out with my friends, just relaxing and having fun. This year, friends visited from Texas and a group of us hung out all weekend. We did dinner and drinks on Saturday night, and we watched the parade march down Fifth Avenue (with thousands of other people) for over 3 hours on Sunday afternoon (fortunately from a lovely shady and elevated spot). There was all the expected at the parade: civil rights activists, drag queens, muscle boys, dykes on bikes, and everything in-between, with floats proclaiming political messages or just pulsating dance music. All in all, it was a fun afternoon.

For more on the parade and festivities, check out the following sites: a great list of many sites regarding Pride on Andy Towleroad's blog; a few more pictures from the New York Blade; Jeremy W. Peters's New York Times article "Gay Marriage Lost in Shuffle of Divided Senate" accompanied by a few more pictures deals with NY politics; and even Google was in on it, with a blog post and pictures of their employees marching and participating in gay pride events around the world.

The Passing of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

On Sunday, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick died after a long battle with cancer. Few people outside of the academic world may know about her, but her influence on the development of gender and queer studies has been profound. She had been a Distinguished Professor in the English Department at the CUNY Graduate Center, which she joined in 1998 after a career as a professor at Duke University. As of today, the English Department still has her listed on their faculty webpage, where she had listed the following as being her academic areas of interest: "The Victorian novel; queer studies; performativity and performance; experimental critical writing; material culture, especially textiles and texture; early modernism and Proust; Romantic fiction; artists' books; non-Lacanian psychoanalysis; Buddhism in the West." She also was a poet and artist in her own right. However, her legacy always will be her work in gender and queer studies.

Her book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985) broke ground with the neologistic concept of "male homosocial desire," a phrase that has since become so ubiquitous in academia it risks losing its groundbreaking importance. Sedgwick did not take credit for the word homosocial itself, but she did create an oxymoronic construct in the phrase "male homosocial desire." Directly linked to the idea of homosexuality, i.e. male-male sexual attraction, the phrase simultaneously implied its polemic opposite, the fear and hatred of homosexuality based on the deterministic non-erotic impulse of male heterosexual bonding. In other words, Sedgwick was exploring how aspects of male bonding in literature (and, by implication, art) have at their core a sexual dimension that may be either explored or rejected by the men involved. I am grossly simplifying her ideas and barely scratching the surface of her intent, but what is significant is that "homosocial desire" has since become a common trope in the discussion of gender relations. Those interested in women's studies in particular found her idea a solid platform to explore new areas, for in these all-male homosocial environments, women were often excluded or objectified. The use of a detail from Edouard Manet's scandalous 1863 painting Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) on the cover of this book (see above) is a telling example of this, for despite the obvious female nude sitting in a park having a picnic, the relationship between the two dressed male figures philosophizing with one another is in fact the true focus of the painting.

Sedgwick's other great text was Epistemology of the Closet (1990). Here is the opening paragraph of the book:

Epistemology of the Closet proposes that many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western culture as a whole are structured--indeed, fractured--by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition, indicatively male, dating from the end of the nineteenth century. The book will argue that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition; and it will assume that the appropriate place for that critical analysis to begin is from the relatively decentered perspective of modern gay and antihomophobic theory. (p.1)

Now, admittedly, if you're baffled by this introduction, you're not alone. Sedgwick's theoretical writing was, to be blunt, abstruse to many (and I include myself wholeheartedly in this group of the dazed and confused...theory has never been and never will be my game). Still, the premise of her work has to do with the origin and nature of the "closet," an idea directly associated with how homosexuals have lived in a closeted world, and that much in the way of gender relations has to do with where one is situated with regard to the closet. Sedgwick is less interested in the historic, biological construct of homosexuality. Rather, she's interested in exploring how with the taxonomic identification of the "homosexual" as a type in late nineteenth-century Europe (the word homosexuality first appeared publicly in print in a German pamphlet written anonymously by the sexologist Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869) led to the opposition of the homosexual as an "other" distinguishable from the heterosexual. As she writes, "What was new from the turn of the century was the world-mapping by which every given person, just as he or she was necessarily assignable to a male or a female gender, was now considered necessarily assignable as well to a homo- or a hetero-sexuality, a binarized identity that was full of implications, however confusing, for even the ostensibly least sexual aspects of personal existence." (p.2) Epistemology then addresses how the consciousness of the closet became a transparent force, heretofore ignored by scholars, that can be read in works of literature and art.

Last year, Jason Edwards, Senior Lecturer in art history and Director of the British Art research school at the University of York, England, published a book about Sedgwick's theories as part of the Routledge Critical Thinkers series. He points to Sedgwick's theories about the first-person experience in writing and reading to be critical to an understanding of her work. In his introduction Edwards writes, "Sedgwick's perhaps most important, deceptively simple idea [is] that people are different from one another, and her notion that the first person is a potentially powerful heuristic. That is to say, by addressing you directly and describing my history, I have been covertly introducing you to Sedgwick's belief that paying attention to your own experience in the present tense, and then reflecting back upon it rigorously, might be one of the best, if least valued strategies for problem-solving. This idea is at the heart of Sedgwick's oeuvre, which quietly insists on the irreducible particularlity and potential pedagogical value of every reader, writer, thinker, activist and viewer." (p.4)

The LGBT@NYPL blog (from The New York Public Library) noted that Sedgwick's contributions changed lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies in the humanities: "She taught us to read in a whole new way—not to read homosexuality as much as the productive power of its invisibility." Finally, in The Nation, Richard Kim has another interesting and personal take on Sedgwick's contributions in defining degrees of homosexuality. The comments to his article are worth browsing, but be prepared. It's startling that as far as we've evolved in our society with regard to human rights, there are still people who believe it's acceptable to quote Revelations and use phrases like "Sick!" in evaluating high-quality academic work on queer studies.

UPDATE (4/18/09): William Grimes in The New York Times has an obituary for Sedgwick, published a few days ago: "Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a Pioneer of Gay Studies and a Literary Theorist, Dies at 58." It's a straight-forward (no pun intended) obituary, although Grimes does summarize the point of two of her more controversial essays that are worth citing, since they give you an idea of some of her theories in practice: "In a 1983 essay on Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend, she drew attention to the homoerotic element in the obsessive relationship between Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley Headstone, rivals for the love of Lizzie Hexam but emotionally most fully engaged when facing off against each other. Several of her essays became lightning rods for critics of poststructuralism, multiculturalism and gay studies—most notoriously 'Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,' a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in 1989. In it, Ms. Sedgwick argued that Austen’s descriptions of the restless Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility should be understood in relation to contemporary thought on the evils of 'self-abuse.'"

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop

It is a sad day in history for gay & lesbian New York. The Oscar Wilde Bookshop on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village is closing after being in business for 41 years. It is the oldest gay & lesbian bookstore in the United States. For those of you who are not gay, the tragedy of this may not seem like such a big deal, but bookstores such as Oscar Wilde, Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia (here's my post about their 35th birthday), and Gay's the Word in London, for decades have helped gay men and lesbians find an outlet in which they could share their intellectual and leisure reading pursuits. Before libraries actively collected gay & lesbian literature, these bookstores were the only places where one could find solace in knowing there were other people who were not only like you, but shared similar interests as you, and would not judge you, alienate you, or even kill you, just because you were attracted to people of the same gender. The Oscar Wilde Bookshop has been an icon of gay New York culture as well, with active participation in the gay scene, frequently hosting book signing events for authors. The picture above is the store entrance decorated for Pride Fest 2008, which just demonstrates their involvement with the community at large for more than 4 decades. The closing of this store is a tragedy not only in terms of the gay & lesbian world, but also because another small bookshop in America is closing. Part of the reason for their closing is the struggling economy, but part of it also is because they've been overrun by big business and the Internet: the Barnes & Noble and Amazon industry. The worst part is that I cannot help but feel like "we" are in part to blame. I've been to Oscar Wilde a few times. Should I have shopped there more? I signed copies of my book and they stocked and sold it. Should I have done more to help them out? I feel guilty that I never did enough to help them. But in reality it isn't all "my" or "our" fault. Is it time we realize that gay & lesbian culture is forever changing? As more and more out gay men and lesbians enter the public sphere in politics, education, entertainment, and other industries, do we still need environments like gay bookstores to serve what was once a minority population? Have we outgrown these settings? Or is this more about the publishing industry? The more we succumb to the temptations of discounts at Amazon, have we lost any sense of needing to browse books in a bookstore? I'm troubled by all these questions, because my innate sense is that we DO still need these gay & lesbian environments, and we do need local bookstores. And yet, is there anything we can do about it? Perhaps this is one of those things in life that we have to learn to let go of, accept reality for what it is, and move on. If that's the case, I'm troubled by it. But what choice do we have? If there are answers out there, I'd really love to know what they are. And so it is with sadness that I post here an excerpt from The Oscar Wilde Bookshop in an email they sent out to their customers and posted on their website: "It is with a sorrowful heart that after 41 years in business the Oscar Wilde Bookshop will close its doors for the final time on March 29, 2009. We want to thank all of our customers for their love and loyalty to the store over the years. You have helped make this store a world wide destination and all of us at the store have enjoyed welcoming our neighbors whether they are next door or half way around the world."

Saslow on 70's Fever

One of my professors, James M. Saslow (whom I mentioned below in connection with Donatello's David), will be interviewed during a documentary entitled 70's Fever, premiering on the History Channel on Sunday night. Saslow will be talking about the gay rights movement in the 1970s. Issues such as this are important to learn about, considering the recent success of the new movie Milk about Harvey Milk from San Francisco, the first openly gay politician who was later assassinated, and the passing of Proposition 8 in California which has now made gay marriages illegal there. Saslow is a noted expert on gay and lesbian history, as well as an important art historian of Renaissance and Baroque art, theater history, and gay and lesbian art history. The image here is the cover of his 1999 book Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts, which is an excellent introduction to the topic, although certainly not the only book he's written.

CLAGS Award

I've received some exciting news. I'm the recipient of the Fall 2008 Graduate Student Travel Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS). The award is in recognition of the paper I will be giving later next week at a conference, and is to be used to assist with my travel expenses. My paper is entitled "Channeling (Ant)Eros: John Gibson's Queer Sculpture," but I'll talk more about the paper later. For now I thought I would blog about CLAGS, because they really are doing some fantastic work for 17 years now. As they say on their own website: "The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) was founded in 1991 as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of vital concern to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and communities." The founder and first director was Martin Duberman, a renown scholar of gay history. Back in the mid-'90s when I was first pursuing research in the field, I contacted Prof. Duberman to ask for his advice (by letter no less; this was before email was the norm). Imagine my excitement when I got home and there was a voicemail from him and a verbal invitation to phone him to talk more. We did speak, and I still to this day appreciate his encouragement of pursuing my interest in gay issues in the fields of art history and cultural studies. Sometimes people think we're in a "post-gay" world, but with the organized threat of new laws going into effect after Tuesday's election--laws that would outright take away the equal rights of gays and lesbians in places like California--groups like CLAGS are needed more now than ever. For more about CLAGS, check out their website at http://www.clags.org/.

Virginia Woolf Speaks

Over the summer, I finally got around to reading the novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and I absolutely loved it. The stream-of-consciousness that flows from Clarissa Dalloway to different people she encounters along the way makes it a masterpiece of early 20th-century fiction. There are some wonderful quotes as well ("What a lark! What a plunge!" and "I prefer men to cauliflowers" are now two of my favorite sayings--and those are just on page 1). If your only exposure to Woolf is from the movie The Hours, you should know that Woolf was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. She has become an icon for feminists and lesbians for her writing and lifestyle. A part of the talented and polyamorous Bloomsbury Group, she was friends with other great writers like E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey and artists like Duncan Grant. Her sister Vanessa Bell was a Bloomsbury artist as well. But the reason for this post is that the BBC has an article ("Great writers find their voice") about the release of a multi-CD set from The British Library with recordings by various writers. On the article site, you can listen to the audio file that is the only known recording of Virginia Woolf's voice. As always, her quips are fantastic: "Words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind." It's fascinating not only to hear what she has to say, but to actually listen to the intonation of her voice. People don't realize how much the way people speak English (American and British) has changed over the past century. Regional accents have diminished more and more as the global media shrinks our planet. Woolf's voice and words reveal not only her talent as a writer, but as a modern woman as well.

Review: Holzer & Opie

My friend JM and I went to the Guggenheim on Friday night to see the Jenny Holzer installation and the Catherine Opie exhibition. JM is a big fan of Holzer's work, and we were both looking forward to these shows. The installation is a projection of phrases by Holzer onto the facade of the newly refurbished spiral building by Frank Lloyd Wright. You should definitely take a look at their website for the installation, as it has a video that beautifully demonstrates what the projection is like. The museum is only showing the installation on Friday nights for their "pay what you wish" entry. The image here was taken by me using my mobile phone (which surprisingly took a good picture). If you can't make out the words, the message says: "RESPECT THEIR RIGHT TO WHISPER, LAUGH, AND LAPSE INTO HAPPY SILENCE." Holzer (b. 1950) is an American Conceptual artist. Her work since the 1970s has been based on truisms, phrases or ideas so self-evident that they almost don't bear repeating. But she does repeat them, over and over, and has them appear on everything from cement benches to building walls. What is interesting about truisms is that the more they are repeated, the more they call into question what they declare to be true, so her phrases make you pause and contemplate the truth behind the message. The medium in which she works is important as well, because it changes how one perceives the message. A large-scale digital projection such as this one conjures up a cinematic experience, a Star Wars-like effect, whereby enormous words hovering over you force you into accepting their message. In contrast, the same words on a cement bench make the message more meditative. The installation was fun to gaze at for a while as her phrases rotated the whole time. Here's another one of the projected messages: "I DON'T REQUIRE CHANGES FROM THE SURF, NOW DILIGENT, NOW SLUGGISH, OBEYING NOT ME." The installation runs until December 31st. To visit links to other works by Holzer, go to Artcyclopedia's Jenny Holzer page.

Catherine Opie (b. 1961) is an American photographer who made a name for herself in the mid-1990s with her transgressive series Portraits (1993-1997). These works, on display here as part of this mid-career retrospective, are a series of head-and-shoulder or full-length-body portraits of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, and straight people, all of whom are part of the Goth scene, the leather & bondage scene, the S&M scene, and so on: they are the über-alternative in alternative lifestyles. According to curator Jennifer Blessing on the wall text for the show, these studio portraits were shot "with the dignity historically accorded to members of a royal court." I can see where she's going with this. All of the works are arranged like a gallery of traditional paintings, and all of the works are shot vividly with intense background colors that showcase their subjects. But I think that type of assessment is a politically correct way of making the subject matter palatable to mainstream audiences. For me, the figures are arranged like a freak show, images you would see from some early circus, such as the bearded lady and the fire-eating man. Instead, here you have a drag king named Bo with a fake mustache and butch flannel shirt, and Vaginal Davis wearing green curly-haired clown wigs strategically placed on her nude body. But it's important to recognize that this freak show is what makes the portraits so beautiful. Their transgression is their beauty. They are a type of royal court, but one very different from what mainstream America usually knows or sees. Their individuality is their beauty.

There are other works in the show worth mentioning, namely Opie's Self-Portrait/Pervert (1994), which has her sitting before a luxurious black-and-gold tapestry and wearing a leather mask, pins in her arms, bare-breasted, the word Pervert bleeding, carved in cursive penmanship, onto her chest. This contrasts with Self-Portrait/Nursing (2004), which has her bare-breasted, now staring down at the innocent face of the baby that suckles at her breast, the word Pervert now a scar on her chest, the red-and-gold tapestry behind her echoing Madonna and Child imagery from Renaissance paintings. I love figurative art, so I find these works to be some of her most riveting. However, she has done other types of work that are also on exhibit here, such as a series of images of freeways and storefronts. Her series Icehouses and Surfers border on abstraction and made me think of the atmospheric photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto and an inverted version of zip-style painting akin to Barnett Newman or Jo Baer. Definitely take a look at the Guggenheim's website for the exhibition, which has a short video with Opie talking about some of her work. The exhibition runs until January 7th. More links to images of her work are available on Artcyclopedia's Catherine Opie page.

My friend KB told me afterwards that much of Opie's work, in whatever representation, is about communities, which does make a lot of sense. But as my friend JM said to me, what strikes him about so many photographers since the late 1980s is how they got caught up in the battle over censorship and funding by government bodies. Classic examples are Andres Serrano, Sally Mann, and of course Robert Mapplethorpe. These shocking works became their token oeuvre, and everything afterwards tends to lack the same heightened level of aesthetic experience. I can see what he means by this. Opie's figurative work is powerful and speaks to the mid-1990s alternative lifestyle experience in Clinton America. The rest of it, alas, doesn't seem to speak to me in the same way. Ultimately, I believe it is the portraiture for which Opie will be best remembered in art history, but only time will tell.