Stormy Weather

The savage beauty of the beach in stormy weather is more beguiling than those sunny and hot days we all crave. Just stand on the sand and feel the hoary wind sandblast your face and listen to the crashing surf. However, enough is enough! I think everyone is ready for this dismal weather in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic states to be over.

Perhaps today, the first calendar day of summer, it will clear and be magnificently crystalline with the sun sparkling off gentler waves.

The Passion of Christ: a Gay Subject?

Dichotomy reversal, to stand an idea on its head, is done so often today that we don’t notice it being performed. We all do it in the name of whatever cause we personally espouse. Gay Jesus is just such a flip, and it has angered many a heterosexist Christian. In fact, the Website Jesus in Love specifically addresses the reversal of the normally understood straight Jesus. While my personal Jesus is neither straight nor gay, he is simply the Son of God. And, though I see Jesus’ gender as totally unimportant, the exploration of gender and sexual assignation as these relate to the Son of God is inevitable in this time of conflict concerning the secondary position of LGBT people in our democratic society. So, the straight versus gay conceptualization of Jesus fascinates me as much as it rankles others, and I was titillated last week when I encountered a set of aesthetically masterful photographs that address the idea. They are the Passion of Christ by German photographer Robert Recker. The handsome young models in religious tableau elicit a plethora of responses including the erotic, and I found myself wondering if the handsome blond Jesus of heterosexual protestant religious art elicits such an ignominious response in straight women. And, worse, what of the images of Christ's torture and flagellation, for instance, William Bouguereau's The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
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I couldn’t help but answer my inquiry with a resounding, OF COURSE they do! I’m sure such a response is totally taboo in polite heterosexual religious conversation, and is never discussed. However, the taboo is handled obliquely in the Arts, as in “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

Additionally, I felt guilty that I had an erotic response to Becker’s images of Christ and his disciples. I couldn’t help myself, and I’m sure that Becker would be pleased with my response since the beautiful rendition of light and shadow in these images is testimony to the photographer’s pleasured glance. I’m also sure that if the images were shown to a random sample of people, including gay men and straight women sensitive instrumentation would record appropriate biological responses. Additionally, some of those persons, straight or gay, would also cover their response with fear and anger. Thus, by expanding and projecting my reaction to others I play with the idea that the subject is taboo in a completely circular flow of logic. In any event, Becker’s work created my erotic response and this brief discussion about it. And, yes - on a purely psychological level, I like the photographs tremendously.

* The image, William Bouguereau - The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1880) was obtained from Wikimedia Commons. It appears with the following notation. “Public domain. This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.”

Merry-Joseph Blondel

Merry-Joseph Blondel (1771-1853) was a successful French neoclassical painter in the tradition of David. He won the Prix de Rome in 1803 for his painting of Aeneas and Anchises. He also obtained a gold medal in the Salon of 1817 for his painting, The Death of Louis XII, which is in the Augustins Museum in Toulouse. As a mature artist he worked as a decorative painter and is responsible for walls and ceilings in the Galerie de Diane at Fontainebleau (1822-1828), the Palais de la Bourse and the vestibule to the Galerie d’Apollon, best known, The Fall of Icarus (1819).

The painting shown above, The Death of Hyacinthus, while homoerotic, was painted solely with the intent to illustrate the ancient Greek mythological tale in which Hyacinthus, the youthful lover of Apollo is accidentally killed by his mentor, as the two played quoits. As such, the painting illustrates a historical reality in which the subject of homosexuality was simply part of a classical oeuvre that artists of neoclassical persuasion in the mid 19th century explored in their fascination with antiquity. In fact, the word “homosexual” did not come into existence until after Blondel’s death. * In the 21st century, the subject is of course; politically incorrect at the least since the love for a youth by an older man (God or not) is pejoratively pederasty.

Above all, this painting is a work of art. Thus, if anyone happening upon this journal by accident or purposeful intent is offended whether by the visual impact and/or subject matter, please refrain from placing your own prejudice on my intent.

* Karl Maia Kertbenny (1869) intended his classification system of sexual types to replace in part the pejorative term “pederast.” These types were in part; homosexual, heterosexual, monosexualists, and pygists.

Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation

Back in 1996, as part of my exploration of the Art scene in New York City, I discovered the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. I discovered the art of Jack Balas, Tom Bianchi, Bill Costa, Wes Hempel, and Delmas Howe through Leslie/Lohman. I also discovered that the collection included work by many of my favorite gay male artists including Paul Cadmus, Peter Hujar, Marsden Hartley, Keith Haring, Richard Atilla Lukacs, Robert Mapplethorpe and Wilhelm Von Gloeden. These few names barely scratch the surface of the collection held by the foundation. While working on my doctorate in the 1990’s, I found the foundation to be very helpful, and it became a part of my monthly Art perambulations in the city. Specifically, I visited Leslio/Lohman during an exhibition of Dalmas Howe’s work and had a lengthy discussion with Sal Monetti about the Southwestern artist’s work, and Sal proved to be helpful with research for several NYU papers.

Additionally, the foundation Website is very extensive, and anyone who researches gay male art and / or artists should consult it and contact the organization personnel as I have always found them to be very helpful. I regret to say that though my will includes the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, I have only just become a member. I have been sadly remiss in this act of negligence.

Visit to Marianna, FL, Garage Sale, the Mary Yeti, and Home

We are back in Delaware. Hallelujah!

We just spent two weeks with my Partner’s Sister and her husband. They live way out in the country, the small town of Marianna in the panhandle of Florida, almost 500 miles from south Florida. In fact, it is so far out in the country that I must walk 20 yards into the backyard before my cell phone will work. While there we emptied two storage units of furniture and STUFF, moved STUFF and furniture to a smaller storage unit, cleaned and polished good antiques, and did a garage sale. In honor of our visit to Marianna, and since I have had no time to think about writing the past two weeks, I include here my journal entry from this past Christmas and New Year (2008-2009) because it was also about Marianna, specifically our encounter with the Marianna Sasquatch, Naughty Mary Yeti.

Mary's Footprints

During the Christmas and New Year Holidays I spent more than two weeks at my illegal in-laws in Marianna, Florida. They are not my legal in-laws because I am denied all marital privileges granted to married heterosexual couples by the new amendment to the Florida State constitution. Be that nasty - and I think illegal - amendment as it may, we all had a wonderful time, wrapping presents for two days, piling the red, green, white, gold, silver beribboned packages knee deep under the tree as well as on one side of the living room, and then spending one hour on Christmas day ripping them apart. Of course we did a great deal between Christmas and New Years. We played parlor games, went for walks in the local park, and up and down the hills through the Chipola College campus, watched umpteen bowl games in which I, as the stereotypical gay male, have no interest whatsoever, though my partner could watch college football till the cows come home or better still, until the gay players form their own “Lambda Football Association” (H-m-m-m-m!). We also ate gourmet meals prepared by my illegal brother-in-law, took naps, played cards, told jokes, and occasionally listened to Christmas music. I also meditated and did my prayers in spare moments.

If by some strange chance you regularly read my journal located in this remote corner of the Cyber-void, you know that I am a camera maniac, always toting the digital monster everywhere. * So, when my partner, his sister and I went to the local Jackson County Park to do some fast walking on New Year’s Day I had my trusty shooter with me. As we walked around the southwest corner of the mile-and-one-half pathway through open meadow and woods, we discovered strange footprints in the gravel road. We joked that they had to be made by the Marianna Sasquatch, better known as the Chipola River Swamp Critter, and A.K.A. as the Mary Yeti. “What would such a critter look like,” we asked, and invented all kinds of bizarre descriptions one of which sounds exactly like the photograph I took of the creature that posed for me at the next bend in the road.

Indeed, she was pleasant looking though she almost made me drop the camera as she plugged her ears with fingers, and let out an ear-piercing screech. I was so startled that I spun on my toes and ran, never to see Naughty Mary Yeti again.

I look forward to confirmation of the sighting by other residents of Jackson County, Florida.

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*”Remote corner of the cyber-void” – interesting concept – can there be a corner in a space that doesn’t exist, at least, not in the 3-D physical sense – rather a space made of bits and pieces, strings of electronic encoded seemingly random on-off, splattering, scattered among a bunch of memory banks tied together by satellite?

Jan Svankmajer Dimensions of Dialogue: Part 1 and Part 2: A Brief Critique

Jan Svankmajer, a Czech Surreal artist (September 4, 1934) creates humorous though worrisome animated stop-motion images mixed with live action scenes in more recent films. Inanimate objects, clay, and food become living assemblages and create fantastic but dreadful and dreamlike psychological narratives about human interaction and behavior. Some of Svankmajer’s creations remind me of Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimbaldo’s food portraits, and I’ve included Summer painted in 1573 below.

Once banned by Czech communist authorities (1972) -Svankmajer remained unknown in Western countries until the 1980’s – today he is considered one of the preeminent animators worldwide.
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I must admit to little knowledge in the field of animation, and I stumbled across Svankmajer while doing a totally unrelated Web search. However, I was immediately fascinated by the bizarre imagery and sound in his films. Specifically in Dialogue, Part 2, claymation allows the total assimilation of the subjects each by the other and so beautifully describes two persons becoming one through loving intercourse. At the same time Svankmajer cautions that the same two persons may completely destroy one another as he creates a shocking stop-motion sequence that demonstrates deconstructive processes working in human intercourse. Unfortunately, as I viewed more of his films I became aware that emotional destruction is too often the underlying theme of Svankmajer’s films. Thus, his oeuvre while deserving of its reputation left me depressed.

* Arcimbaldo, Giuseppi, Summer Non copyrighted image, found atRay’s Attic on line at http://asakaray.cafe24.com/tt/asakaray/644, 9:00 A.M., Thursday, May 14, 2009

Jack Balas

On "The Art of John Bittinger Klomp: Wes Hempel">February 27, 2009 I completed a journal entry about Wes Hempel, and at the time, I promised a future entry about Jack Balas, Hempel’s partner in crime. Dare I say crime? Do I risk being misunderstood?

“Of course you do, John!” My alter ego answers.

Never the less, there it is, the word, “Crime,” and I use the word to refer to Balas' probing beneath the surface of representation, to look at primary philosophical concerns. In his own words, “…reaching beyond the fleeting surface idealization associated with youth and hopefully going far in terms of metaphor, poking around such timeless ideas as: truth, beauty, faith, time, the infinite, what we learn and what we know. It may seem questionable indeed these days to even concern myself with such unanswerables, but in an era when political and spiritual leaders assert that they in fact have the answers for us all, I think that art has the capacity to imagine otherwise, to offer some transcendent spark to bridge the gap between intent and form, between idea and the evidence of our lives.” Balas’ thought resonates with mine, that all art forms can be (indeed should be) so much more than a record and/or interpretation of human history. Great art can be so many things, but one component must be to transcend (intended or not) the time and place in which it was created, and one way to do that is for the artist to create dense imagery, an attempt to describe his/her internalized universe and it’s relation to the actual and / or abstract universe of others and/or the universe as described by constructions within the general culture.

So much of Balas’ work revolves around the idealized male figure/form, a subset of my oeuvre because only the digital photomontages incorporate the male figure. Balas also uses text to obfuscate the surface rendering of the idealized male youth, while I hardly ever use text in my imagery. However, I find an affinity for his imagery that goes beyond my own, and I wish that I were as prolific in my production. I also wish that I had photographed more men for my work in the past. In fact, one of the things that most attracts me to Balas’ work is his use of the camera and models because so much of my own work involves the camera. An entire section of his Website is titled “Photo,” and he often works back and forth between painting and the photograph as well. Additionally, Balas plays with linguistics through color selection, thus punning, and playing with the arbitrary meaning of language (See illustration above).

To summarize, Balas works between text and the male image (painted, photographed, and drawn). The resulting artworks while about the idealized and eroticized youthful male figure are intended to muddle our usual cultural preoccupation with such matters because Balas wishes to create a subversive subtext about deeper philosophical concerns.