GQ:George Quaintance: Gentlemen's Queertopia

I’m pretty new to the George Quaintance camp compared to a lot of erotic art fans. In 2012 I saw the Quaintance retrospective book which Taschen released. What I saw in this lavishly packaged book looked a lot like romantic pulp fiction covers, i.e. sexy senoritas, seductive belly dancers, etc. The only difference is that George Quaintance’s paintings had not one woman in them, but perfectly sculpted men with hairless bodies and beautifully colored skin.

If "Brokeback Mountain" was a picture book, this would be it. George Quaintance creates a veritable gay cowboy paradise where every man has the perfect looks and body, rodeos are for tyin' and wranglin' boys, the sun always shines, and every mesa is the Garden of (sw)Eden. The book is pretty pricey so I settled for the 2012 calendar, which was better because the images were large and in charge.

The Taschen Gallery just opened an exhibition of Quaintance’s amazing paintings in a show called “The Flamboyant Life and Forbidden Art of George Quaintance”. This was a herculean task in itself because he only produced less than sixty paintings in his lifetime, and many were simply traded or sold to private collectors. More than a few paintings had a NOT FOR SALE caption written beneath them.

Many of the paintings shown depicted men of in cowboy settings bathing, swimming or horseback riding. They’re mostly depicted in various stages of undress. These western settings suggest a virtual queer Utopia where men are perpetually young and fit and don’t require female company.

The best bathing paintings were Rainbow Falls, Sunset, Havasu Creek, and Morning In The Desert. In these paintings the boys either seem to be taking a shower or frolicking in a waterfall stream.

There are also many paintings of men bonding with their horses, as seen in the paintings Stallion, Manolo, and Dashing. It’s fascinating that Quaintance created these works during the late Forties-early Fifties when western films were at their peak and the image of the cowboy was the All-American image of masculinity at the time.

According to the gallery’s biography on George Quaintance, he was at one point or another a “vaudeville dancer, coiffeur designer, window dresser, magazine cover artist, photographer and portraitist”.

The biography also points out that Quaintance only lived to be 55 years old and ironically produced only 55 paintings in all. The exhibition also featured a well-researched timeline on Quaintance’s life and work, which took up and entire wall at the gallery. It was pretty awe-inspiring.

Compared to Tom of Finland, I'd say Quaintance's subjects are feminine in comparison, almost feline in their sleekness. The macho aggressiveness in Tom's images are replaced by an angelic idyll. There's also a more romantic and less carnal theme running through these images. The most overtly sexual image in these pieces are two men lying down together, a far cry from Tom's elephantine erections. This is the romance of homosexuality up on canvas.

If I were asked why I responded immediately to George Quaintance and his art I would say that his use of color and light is some of the most impressive I’ve seen. I also think his depiction of homoeroticism has a surrealistic flavor more mysterious than most erotic art ever made. You want to meet these people and understand how they live. This is part and parcel of what makes for great art, and George Quaintance is deserving of your attention.

The Flamboyant Life and Forbidden Art of George Quaintance is on exhibit at the Taschen Gallery, 8070 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, through August 31, 2015.

Tom of Finland Does WeHo, Again

I can't think of a more fitting location for a Tom of Finland art exhibit than the Museum of Contemporary Arts (MOCA) in West Hollywood. West Hollywood, known around town as the abbreviated WeHo, is the Christopher Street of Los Angeles where gays, lesbians and like-minded folk can co-exist freely without societal constraints and pressure. Being a big Tom of Finland fan, I attended the newly opened show that he shared with beefcake king Bob Mizer.

For those not familiar with Tom of Finland, my best description of him would be to call him the gay Bill Ward. His erotic illustrations of sexually virile men is comparable to Ward's depiction of his sexually aroused vixens: both are depicted as enormously attractive individuals with grotesquely enormous genitalia sending them in a constant state of sexual ardor.

A Tom of Finland male proudly and even defiantly wears only the most fetishistic clothes: Navy uniforms, cowboy clothes, motorcycle leathers, police uniforms and denim trousers so tight they almost seem painted on. Bulging, nay, practically fighting its way out of every pair of trousers are biologically impossible swollen pair of testes and endlessly long penises in the history of art. Interestingly enough, the comparison to Ward continues in the way Tom shades his figures in the same style as Ward.

Tom's depiction of sexual situations always maintain a bizarrely cheerful air about them, even when men are being tied up or gang-banged. There's never a display of brutality or even aggression a la John Willie in his erotica. It's as if Tom of Finland's pictures are having a party and it's freaking everybody out!

Tom's artwork graced the covers of a digest-sized magazine for men called "Physique Pictorial" which also employed the brilliant paintings of George Quaintance, another artist who depicted homosexuality as an erotic happyland Utopia, as well. Another regular to the gay digest was popular beefcake photographer Bob Mizer, co-billed with Tom at MOCA.

How can I describe Bob Mizer? If the straights had Bunny Yeager then the gays had Bob Mizer. It is estimated that Mizer shot over a million beefcake shots in his legendary career. Mizer's photography is as meat and potatoes man love as it gets, with a few twists along the way: one naked model is dressed like an Aztec god, another in Superman drag, and of course the mandatory cowboys, sailors and motorcycle boys. Guaranteed crowd pleasers, of course.

To see more of Mizer's work, check out the massive collection "Bob's World", available from Taschen Books. I liked his fantasy photography more than his more static shots, but then again he knew his audience and they wanted, well, you know. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the show, which opened on November 2, 2013 and will run until January 26, 2014.

Bill & Peggy & Rudi & Camille & Track Lighting

One of the most infamous mixed media ménage-a-trois collaborations of the past fifty years was the brilliant work by jazz photographer William Claxton, his wife/model Peggy Moffitt, and genius designer Rudi Gernreich. Their work together has been documented well through the decades, notably in “The Rudi Gernreich Book”, edited by Claxton and Moffitt and also in Claxton’s short film “Basic Black”. So it was absolutely thrilling to attend the mixed media presentation of their work titled “The Total Look” at West Hollywood’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) at the Pacific Design Center.

The show had something for everyone: fashion, photography and dance: Moffitt started out as a dancer, and struck many modern dance poses in her modeling. It was the ultimate mixed media presentation; the ground floor had “Basic Black” playing on one screen with a slide show playing Claxton photos of Moffitt decked out in Rudi’s stunning designs on the other. On the upper floor were original and replicas of Gernreich designs dressed up in mannequins around the room. Seeing his mod fashions in the flesh complimented the great Claxton fashion photography that framed the walls around the room.

All three worked in perfect synthesis with each other, with Claxton’s photography capturing Moffitt’s expressiveness lending elasticity and shape to even the most abstract outfits designed by Gernreich. While Gernreich’s designs were amazing and dynamic enough to be modeled by any top model of their day, Peggy Moffitt added an extra dimension to his more geometric designs by ramping up the angularity in her dance poses.

Genreich’s designs have an almost architectural quality to them: cone shaped helmets, the infamous topless bathing suit, mask-like hats that cover half the face; some of them can be viewed in the modeling scene in “Blow Up”, along with Ms. Moffitt herself. He was the ultimate designer, endlessly inventive with shapes, patterns, and printed fabrics. The ingenuity of his designs displayed in the upper showroom were rich in color, composition and shape, a true inspiration for anyone even remotely interested in fashion design. I will definitely return to “The Total Look” before it closes in late May.

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Camille Rose Garcia had an exhibition at the Michael Kohn Gallery to mark the release of her remarkable interpretation of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale, “Snow White” (out now via Harper Design Books). The acrylic paintings were strikingly colorful and rendered in her inimitable style, vertical cascades of color running down the pieces like unholy stalactites in a Technicolor cave.

Her rendition of the legendary characters was priceless: The Seven Dwarfs looked like a cross between E.C. Segar’s Jeep and a pack of hairless possums. Even Snow White looked kind of out of it in these pieces; the exhibit had a nightmarish, otherworldly quality. The Prince who saves Snow White is rendered by Garcia as some kind of bizarre-looking gigolo. I liked the part where she’s poisoned in her bed with her name written on it like some kind of coffin.

I haven’t seen her book on Alice In Wonderland, but all the same I highly recommend “Snow White”. As long as she’s doing Disney remixes, maybe Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty will be next.

BTW, Michael Kohn Gallery, you might want to check what year you're living in before you print up posters. I mean really.

Tramping The Galleries

Saying that the Autumn 2011 season on the gallery scene is the hottest in years would be an outrageous understatement. There’s something for everybody: “Pacific Standard Time”, the most sprawling retrospective of Modern Art In Los Angeles, dozens of photography shows featuring the most outrageous American shutterbugs, and even some wild lowbrow favorites. If it wasn’t happening at the movies or in the nightclubs it was definitely popping in the galleries!

Late October set the stage for the opening of the Ellen Von Unwerth show at the Fahey/Klein Gallery on trendy La Brea Avenue. Her new show coincided with the release of her new Taschen book, “Fraulein” ($500 – cheap?). The pieces featured were black and white - no color shots this time, and looked like some kind of Louise Brooks porn shoot complete with “Story of O” masks, making the models look like off-duty steampunk superheroines getting into sexual mischief. In the smaller room was the incredibly awesome fashion surrealism of Melvin Skolsky, showcasing his “Paris 1963” work. Skolsky is the photog who shot those insane “Model In A Bubble” in the streets of Paris series. The limited edition book was on sale there, also. One of the best Fahey/Klein shows I’ve been to.

Mid-November got even crazier starting with Travis Louie’s “Curious Pets” show at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery. The pieces were black and gray acrylic portraits with static white backgrounds fabricating the illusion of old turn of the century engraved photographs, but naturally with a wicked twist. Pieces included “Martin and His Bat”, a young man with a vampire bat sitting on top of his head. Then there’s “Agatha and Her Beetle”, a frail, anemic lass with a big, gnarly beetle resting in her wiry hair. Each piece was accompanied with a short fable telling a tale of these folks and their strange pets.

Pictured above is "Uncle Six Eyes", a great resin bust created in two versions: a white version and a black version. It's a great parody of the Ludwig Van Beethoven bust that was de rigeur in every home during the 1950s and 1960s. Overall the style of the pieces in the show was like an ungodly union between Mark Ryden and Basil Wolverton. By the way, a quick scan of the upcoming show schedule at Karnowsky’s gallery shows every indication that she will be the mid-city lowbrow capitol of Los Angeles.

Getting back to photography I saw the Hedi Slimane show, “California Song” at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) at the Pacific Design Center. Slimane’s right up there with Von Unwerth, Richardson and LaChapelle in the new breed of crazy fashion shooters that’s burning up the editorial fashion magazines internationally. The show appealed to my deadpan sense of humor: on the ground floor his photographs (all black & white) were on display, all unlabelled and mounted on drab wooden crates, as one-dimensional as you can possibly get.

Upstairs was another matter entirely: slides of the very same shots and more were projected on a three-sided wall over 10 feet tall, creating a much more satisfying and, dare I say it, moving experience. It sort of makes you question the whole gallery system in one fell swoop. There were enough showbiz photos to keep you happy (John Lydon smoking, a rotting Brian Wilson, and LOTS of Michael Pitt, maybe too much), but the best shots of all, ironically, were his surfing photos.

That’s ultimately a true testament to the brilliance of Slimane’s artistic eye. Taking exciting surfing pictures makes you a good photographer, but shooting awesome ones in BLACK & WHITE makes you a GENIUS.

Neon Park: Grandaddy of Lowbrow

If anyone painted lowbrow art before there was a name for it then it was the late, great Neon Park aka Martin Muller, a former poster artist for The Family Dog. As early as 1970 he was producing some of the most memorable images in rock music. Here's just a small sampling of his great work, indelibly scarred into my subconscious:

Yeah, I hate Little Feat, too, but who can forget that awesome album cover. Constance Bennett with an accordion? Insane! The great thing about his work is that it's right at home with the current lowbrow art scene even though the majority of these great works were produced in the 1970's. Check out this rare film festival postcard:

The image that sent him over the top, of course, was the brilliant cover of The Mothers of Invention album, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh", which Frank Zappa allegedly fought Warner Brothers Records to put out. So much for Warners and their artistic freedom they're always crowing about. Huh!

Neon Park recalls a day when Southern California artists didn't get much attention in the art scene but produced all sorts of radical work, guys like Robert Blue, who inspired the movie "Heartbreakers". Yeah, L.A. used to be a really weird art town, weirder than you can imagine.

Somehow the superkitsch schmaltz that passes for art at places like Gallery 1988 don't get it, art should be new, really new, as in original, shocking, and not so eager to tickle people's bungholes. Just look to guys like Neon Park and Robert Blue for inspiration.

Dr. Seuss: Fingerhut Gallery, Sausalito, CA

One of my favorite Dr. Seuss books is the amazing collection of "secret" (read: more mature) art, which employ his cute whimsy art depicting nude females and cats, lots of evil-looking cats, meaner looking than The Grinch. There are also some amazing sculptures of weird critters by him in the book. So, so, so, imagine the news when I came up north that he had a show at The Fingerhut Gallery in Sausalito (which sounds like Solla Sollew, whoa).

One of the bizarre facts to be gleaned from the show was that when Seuss was a Lil' Sneetch his Dad, who worked at a zoo, would bring home beaks, claws, and other disembodied animal parts for him to use to make sculptures. Kinda gives "Green Eggs and Ham" a whole new context.

The show did not disappoint, the animal sculptures were in proud display, looking just as great in person as they did in the book The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss. Also present were preliminary rough sketches for The Cat In The Hat, a bronze sculpture of Yertle The Turtle, The Lorax, and a bunch of Horton stuff. And lots of naked chicks! Some riding a fish, some bathing in the sun, some cooking a dish, and some having big fun.

The Clayton Brothers Get Fruity

You couldn’t swing a dead man’s dick without hitting a hot girl at The Clayton Brothers’ “Jumbo Fruit” opening at Patrick Painter Gallery on Saturday, July 18. I don’t know what brought so many of them out in droves; perhaps it was the inclusion of “fruit” in the title. Next time I put on a show I must add buzz words like “fruit” or “candy” in my title.

The paintings were portraits of people eating or resembling various kinds of fruit, and while the content of the work was nothing special the technique was pretty dang offbeat.

The artwork was mostly oil on canvas even though the media didn’t appear that way. The smooth textures of the brush strokes gave an airbrushed appearance to parts of the work. Other parts of the painting had crude strokes that ran in counterpoint with the smooth lines. The result was a work that was stylistically unpredictable.

I liked the smaller portraits suspended over wooden slats of varying colors, that was a real attention getter. Patrick Painter is spread out over two spaces in Bergamot Station, and considering that it was the only gallery open after 6 pm it kept the event from feeling too claustrophobic. While artists retain the right to ask for any price for their work I thought The Clayton Brothers went way over the top. A quick look at their price list and there wasn't one painting under $40,000. That's right, there wasn't a typo or too many zeros on the list, every piece was $40,000 and up. I don't think anything sold.

I saw two curators from other galleries at the opening. One didn’t bother to say hi but he never says hi to anyone anyway. He looked like a member of The Mothers of Invention circa 1969, nice keeping up with the times. The other curator kept standing next to me but also wouldn’t say hi. It’s ironic because I bought two paintings from him and you would’ve thought that would rate a hello, but this is the art world. There’s more integrity in politics.

"Guest of Cindy Sherman" (2008)

In the Nineties there was a cable access show in New York called "Gallery Beat" hosted by two nutty guys, Walter Robinson and Paul H-O who would sit around and criticize art show openings the way Siskel and Ebert reviewed movies. The reviewing of gallery openings is genius if you ask me because they're usually more thrilling than the crap art exhibited. In between reviews they would roll video of Paul H-O "interviewing" humorless stuffed shirt artists like Julian Schnabel and the interviews took on a sort of Howard Stern-show style dimension/dementia. The results were often very funny, never anticipating the surprising turn they would take.

Never at a loss for words or guts, H-O approached highly reclusive artist Cindy Sherman at an opening and asked her if she would like to be interviewed for "Gallery Beat". Without skipping a beat, she smiled and said, "Sure!" People's jaws dropped; Sherman had denied interviews with The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Art Forum but agreed to do "Gallery Beat". Paul H-O then interviewed her several times in her studio and got the scoop the art press had never been able to get. Perhaps Sherman agreed to do the interviews because of the show's lack of reverence towards the clay idols of the Manhattan art world, perhaps she had a crush on Mr. H-O (Hasegawa-Overacker), flirting and giggling all through the interview like a high school cheerleader.

Paul H-O is dorky but likable and has no airs about himself and comes off as a very funny guy, but his eventually becoming Cindy Sherman's boyfriend shocked their friends. Nobody saw it coming but it culminated in him moving in with her and their having a relationship for the next few years. The film "Guest of Cindy Sherman" touches on several topics at once: 1) a documentary on Cindy Sherman, 2) the "boys club" of artists in the Eighties and what a tough circuit it was for women to participate in, and most importantly: 3) the pain of being a less than somebody dating a big time celebrity.

For all the intensity and darkness that Sherman’s art presents she comes off as a highly charming woman with a refreshing modesty about her work. We see brilliant examples of her art where she plays battered wives, plastic surgery casualties, prim spinsters, and other disturbing images of tortured women. As her romance with H-O develops she becomes increasingly rich and famous, buying a house in the Hamptons, getting free credit from Prada and partying with movie stars. No big sin, of course, artists have to eat, too, but her art work became increasingly less acidic. An example presented is her Circus Series where she’s done up like clowns, the art fairly benign and looking compromised.

H-O eventually got bored with his TV show folding and having nothing to do so he took up surfing as a regular activity to the point of neglecting poor Cindy. The couple sought therapy from the same analyst with H-O complaining that the shrink preferred analyzing Cindy more than him. Who wouldn’t? Imagine those weird sessions.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, according to H-O was when he was at a high hat celebrity party and Cindy was seated at the front table and he was seated thirty tables back with his place card inscribed “Guest of Cindy Sherman”. They broke up shortly after. Elton John’s life partner relates a similar tale happening to him, but Elton actually got up and did something about it.

When “Guest of Cindy Sherman” was being made Sherman supported the film but at some point changed her mind and now refuses to talk about it. It’s too bad because the film actually made me understand and appreciate her artwork for the first time, and I can’t imagine people hating her after this film was made. Maybe she’s bitter about her failed relationship with H-O, but I don’t know if I blame her. He’s been working this film like crazy all over the festival film circuit with no DVD release in sight. So if you see this movie listed on the Sundance Channel catch it while you can. I think it’s pretty brilliant stuff!