I love art. I know what I like and what I don’t like. I have a well developed eye for art, for sculpture and for painting and for photography. I have spent countless hours in museums and in galleries, learning about various paintings and sculptures and photographs, about various artists and their techniques. I read a lot about art and the artists who create these masterpieces. I don’t own as much art as I would like. I just don’t have the money to spend on it. I do own one painting that my brother bought for me, an oil painting. I love it. I own prints. That’s about all my budget will allow.

But to address the prompt. Do I feel that I have to agree with an artist’s lifestyle or politics to appreciate their art? To spend money on it? Absolutely not. What an artist believes politically makes no difference to me at all. Unless he or she reflects that political view in his or her work, I don’t care what his or her political view is. I care about the art he or she creates. Politics or lifestyle enters into the picture only if the artist incorporates it into his or her artwork. And if I see artistic value in it, I too value it. But if the artist does not include it in their artwork, it makes no difference to me. There is such a thing as pure art. I would still buy prints, or if I had the money, spend the money to buy their art. I would certainly go to their exhibitions.

Some artists are very political or their lifestyles are controversial. Robert Maplethorpe is one that I can think of. But his work is also very artistic. Some of it is very good. Some of it is very controversial and disturbing. I would not reject all of his work just because he was controversial.

This is true of any artist. Woody Allen is another such artist. He was roundly criticized for marrying Mia Farrow’s young daughter. But he makes amazing films. Should we reject his films because of his controversial marriage to a much younger woman whom he once considered a daughter? It’s a decision people have to make. I choose to still see his films because I think he is a great director.

So I think we should take art as art, in and of itself. It may have a political or lifestyle component and we judge art with the component. But when that component is only tangential to the art, we can leave it out of our judgment of the art and the artist. At least I can. I can love art for art’s sake.

Books Read:

• Kaddish For A Child Not Born by Imre Kertész
• Manhood for Amateurs: the pleasures and regrets of a husband, father, and son by Michael Chabon
• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: a road trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky

 As I mentioned at last month’s close, Kaddish For a Child Not Born has all the graceless neurosis of a Jewish Thomas Bernhard coming down from a cocaine-fueled night of contumely and self-reproach. More a scribble than a fugue, and at times more a smudge than a scribble, the book’s monologuist concentrically circles around himself as a man adverse to walking does a mall looking for a parking spot close to the doors. Eventually the details of his marriage are revealed, his experience with the Holocaust, his loveless childhood, and ultimately his crippled rejection of humanity. When his wife expresses her desire to have a child, that rejection is epitomized in his repeated No! A No! which becomes the narrator’s petulant response to anything living, his verdict on all things human, and – spoiler alert! – the end of his marriage. He lives the life of an intellectual creator – a writer and translator – but is unwilling or unable to grow. this is similar to a monologue I often have with myself and comprises what has turned out to be this month’s reading theme: how to be a creative person in this world, maybe make a career of it, maybe even have it withstand a marriage (and have a marriage withstand it), and just maybe do all this and still have the time, energy, and inclination to be a parent.

Michael Chabon manages all these things , and writes about it. I had seen his Manhood for Amateurs at a thrift store but refrained from buying it in some misguided attempt at self-restraint. I regretted it instantly and over the next month thought about it, just sitting there on the shelf, probably bought by some jerk solely to round out his buy 4 & get 1 free. But when i returned to the thrift store a month later I was surprised to find it still there. Maybe the cover photo turned people off. As i began reading Manhood i was reminded how much I enjoy reading essays. Chabon has a sturdy, unambiguous writing style which has been likened to Fitzgerald. I certainly don’t fault it, but would be more inclined to liken it to a stainless steel slide at a neighborhood park.

In an early essay entitled William and I, Chabon recounts how a woman approached him in a supermarket line and said “You are such a good dad. I can tell.” He goes on to talk about how easy such positive appraisals of fatherhood are because the standard is so low, and how a mother on the other hand would have to accomplish heroic feats only to possibly garner such a declaration. In the essay The Hand On My Shoulder, about his relationship with his father-in-law which he coveted (being fatherless himself), Chabon says:

“The meaning of divorce will elude us as long as we are blind to the meaning of marriage, as I think at the start we all must be.”

The first sentiment seems true enough, and the implications of the second made me think how the older one gets, the more idiosyncratic, the harder it becomes to get involved with someone; one needs youth’s lack of wisdom to vow lifelong devotion and set about raising a family. I began looking forward to more such minor insights but unfortunately, while remaining entertaining and judiciously short, the essays’ subject matter began to meander through some of Chabon’s usual preoccupations – comic books, baseball, pop music, Dr. Who – and the collection started to feel a little like the pieces were being written simply to fill up the book. In an essay near the end of the collection, Like, Cosmic, Chabon notes what happens when you drop the s from cosmic while stating that the 1970s is the most ridiculed decade of the Twentieth Century –

“…without anyone giving sufficient notice to the fact that it was the seventies themselves that originated the teasing (Annie Hall, Nashville, the Me Decade, “You’re So Vain”)… We can except the invitation extended by those years to laugh at them, but in doing so, we are only getting in on the joke.”

The fact a decade is diverse and arbitrary aside, it’s somewhat specious to argue an era that laughs at itself is above being laughable. In the end, Chabon just makes too many of these shallow observations to be only occaisionally any more than an mildly entertaining and good natured read.

Patti Smith is also someone who had both a family life and a career as an artist. I didn’t know much about her outside of her 1975 debut album Horses. Before her lifelong friend and fellow artist Robert Maplethorpe died of AIDs in 1989, she promised him she would write the story of their friendship. Just Kids is that promise kept. At the age of 20, Smith arrives in New York, having just given up a child for adoption, and goes to the address of the only person she knows in the city. They have moved and Maplethorpe is the new tenant. Later, when on a date with an older man who has just asked her up to his apartment, Maplethorpe happens to walk past. She tells the older man Maplethorpe is her boyfriend, extremely jealous, and leaves with him. From this moment on they become almost inseperable.

Together they lived a very bohemian existence, Smith working on her poetry and Maplethorpe on making collages. She urged him to take photographs, he urged her to sing. After a time, Maplethorpe discovers his homosexuality, but he and Smith remain close. They share a room at the Chelsea Hotel and the name-dropping begins – William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Carrol.

 While Smith’s writing style comes across as earnest, it suffers from being monotonal and matter of fact:

“Robert and I rose early. We had put money aside for our second anniversary. I had prepared our clothing the night before, washing our things in the sink.”

or of her and Maplethorpe’s work:

“it was solid, and it was good, and I knew we were on the right path.”

 When on vacation in Paris, Smith visits the grave of Jim Morrison where a woman admonishes her: “Why do you Americans not respect your artists?” While America on the one hand disrespects and distrusts art and on the other corrupts with its entertainment and fame, Smith’s respect for an array of artists from Dylan to Blake verges on the sycophantic. At its worst she comes across as a pretentious groupie. What’s best about the book is its core – the bond between Smith and Maplethorpe, and their devotion to each other and each other’s art.

  I felt like reading something quick next, and I’d just found a copy of Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: a road trip with David Foster Wallace. The book’s essentially a transcription of taped conversations by then Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky and Wallace at the end of his tour for Infinite Jest. Unfortunately Lipsky is shallow and callow and his observational interjections are downright annoying. Worst of all is he spends a good third of the book badgering Wallace about his ambivalence to fame and attempting to cast doubt on his distrust of its use or sincerity. And why? – Because Lipsky in a vainglorious approbation-seeking twit. Wallace’s voice is more or less the same one encountered in his essays  – self-conscious, complex, excessive and succinct. He articulates a displeasure with who he was as a young writer, and calls his first novel (Broom of the System, written while he was still attending the University of Arizona) too intellectual, an exercise in showing-off, and ultimately unsuccessful. And I’d have to agree. When Lipsky asks if Wallace worries people will view his sporting of bandanas as an attempt to look cool to the young set, Wallace explains he wears them when he fears his head is going to explode – crazy as it is, it gives him a sense of security. Other juicy revelations include Wallace’s fervor for Alanis Morissette and Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

Okay, so the Lipsky/Wallace book didn’t really have anything to do with being an artist and having a family life… and the Patti Smith book didn’t exactly either… and the Michael Chabon looked like it was gonna and then only did if at all discursively, circumlocutorily… and the Kertész was dead-set against having a family at all! Serves me right for bothering with a unifying thread. Next month, all going well, I promise to be themeless.

]]> http://altphotoprocess.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/x-y-z/ Sun, 24 Mar 2013 14:49:22 +0000 ameliamaslen http://altphotoprocess.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/x-y-z/ This week we listened to the Modern Art Notes Podcast on Robert Maplethorpe.

This podcast studies his work X,Y, and Z  Portfolios.  They study sadomasochistic imagery, floral still life, and nudes.  Combining these three ideas into essentially one body of work with three parts.  This instantly reminded me of some of Walt Whitman’s poetry specifically studying the relationship between nature and human body and sexuality.

The installation of the square format photographs lend themselves to a grid like set up, but the curator did not set them in a perfect grid, they are in X-Y-Z rows, but the rows are slightly off center.  In another studio we discussed the possibility in portrait photography of “pose and let go” where you pose the model and then as you are getting ready to make the photo, they let go a little.  This slightly off grid is very much like that.

I thought it was interesting that he did not print his photographs himself, he had a few people he worked with that did his printing. All the images, throughout the three portfolios were printed the same, high contrast but not loosing too much tonal value, in a sense just enhancing the tones.  Keeping the printing the same allows the viewers to focus on the subject matter, it becomes a constant.

The studio lighting was a key element of control for Maplethorpe.  The lighting is very precise.  In his “Daniel” photo in the Z Portfolio, Maplethorpe uses the light to sculpt the body.  In many of his photographs the light becomes the subject rather than the physical being in the photograph.  One starts to notice a rhythm between the images on the wall, the jumps and explorations through seemingly student exercise related images.  Maplethorpe was interested in simplification, which these exercises and studies lends themselves to that simplification.  He used a shallow depth of field to focus on closeness.

I think what people should take away from this is the fact that he was so productive and had such great work ethic, even though he had a night life and went out with friends and such, he still made alot of work.

The podcast gently touches on the self portraits he included in the work and how that speaks to participation as the self, not acting or posing, trying to be someone else.  It is as if he is saying this is my culture and life.

The final point in the podcast was how art introduces challenges and as viewers we respect the right of the artist to introduce these challenges.

In 2010 Patti Smith spoke at Cooper Union and Vanishing New York covered it.  She is quoted as saying, “New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie… New York City has been taken away from you… So my advice is: Find a new city.” And I’m pretty sure we should have listened.  In less than two years gone is the Mars Bar, Duffs when it was by the River and awesome, the original Coney Island Arcade, Shoot the Freak, Cha-cha’s, and Chelsea Hotel like CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, Coney Island High, etc. before them.

But ain’t that New York?  A town of wildly rich people towering above starving peasants across the moat in Brooklyn.  They take more and more land away for their ten dollar sandwich shops that fortify the walls of their castles in the sky.

I was lucky enough to spend a less than classy evening in the Hotel before it closed in 2011 with three of my girlfriends.  It ends as to be expected.

R.I.P.

Annie Sprinkle, Gloria Leonard, Veronica Vera, Veronica Hart, Candida Royalle. Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

by Rich Moreland, June 2012

In mid-June Amtrak took me north to New York City for day trip. I haven’t visited the Big Apple since its transition to the “gentrified” New York. My last remembrance of the city was walking to Times Square with a couple of my buddies, looking for smut shops while avoiding the winos, druggies, and other assorted street people. That was a few decades ago.

This excursion to Manhattan was not a whim; it was book related and by invitation. I was accompanied by a friend and colleague in academia who doubles as my photographer. If nothing else, I’m assured of good pics  if my writing fails to capture the scene.

In 2008, I discovered the apparent contradiction that feminism and adult film are bedfellows (or bed sisters) in an industry that is patriarchal to the core. Deciding to chronicle this odd combination, I first wanted to know what other historians, journalists, and commentators had to say on the subject. At every turn in my research, the name “Club 90” came up. Scholarly paths pointed back to this circle of five women, actresses in adult film when acting was valued and expected.

On a cool and rainy June evening in mid-town Manhattan, the Museum of Sex on 27^th Street paid homage to this venerated “club.” The museum is a storefront with a basement bar and an upper floor gallery. On this night the upstairs contained a long table and folding chairs neatly arranged into a relatively cramped space. Everything was ready for a panel discussion featuring these “Golden Girls of Porn,” as the event was labeled.

Josh and I made an effort to arrive early. I had communicated with all of the ladies individually, but up to this moment I had met only two in person, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Hart. Gloria Leonard and Candida Royalle were telephone voices to me and Veronica Vera was an email correspondence and a postal address.

The women were “stars” in the “porno chic” days of the 1970’s when 35 mm film reigned and the big screen was where sex came alive. Adult movies demanded dialogue and plot to compliment the cinematography. Making a good picture required location and days of shooting. Nowadays porn films are cranked out quickly and, with some exceptions, very little style. Needless to say, there is rarely an aspiring actress in sight. But the seasoned Club 90 performers were blessed, if that can be said in pornography. They worked for some of adult film’s noted early directors like Radley Metzger, Gerard Damiano, and Joe Sarno, true artists who considered movie-making to be a craft. A sense of panache and acting ability was requisite.

As the “porno chic” days wound down, the five were transitioning away from being on camera. There were reasons: the HIV menace was one, while marriage and family became another. In short, they were getting on with their lives.  They organized a mutual support group to ease through the changes and named it after the address of Annie’s Manhattan apartment where their initial get together took place. Over the years, their collective friendship has endured.

By sheer happenstance I broke into their group. I attended one of Annie’s university speaking engagements and later sent an inquiry to Feminists for Free Expression which resulted in a surprise email from Candida. That began three years of correspondence with the group that formed the linchpin of my research.

Stealing Moments Before the Show

I got a big hug from Gloria Leonard before the gala began. She is classy (an overused word, I know) and a butt-kicker through her devotion to the political principles she holds dear. She also is the group’s grand dame. Gloria entered the adult business in her late thirties, much like the Club’s dear friend and another of porn’s venerable ladies, Georgina Spelvin. Working in adult paid better than nine to five, Gloria later told the audience, a bonus because she had a daughter to support.

A Hug From Gloria
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

Gloria has her views and the personality to back them. She and I have a mutual acquaintance in the adult biz, Bill Margold, who has his own set of notions about the history of adult film. Bill has told me much about Gloria. He adores her and I can see why. She has a political conscience in an industry that often lacks ethical behavior, and she cares about performer health and welfare. Her position on safer sex in the infamous 1998 HIV scare is a testimony to her concern for the industry. As President of the Free Speech Coalition, the political wing of the business, Gloria got funding for the start-up of Adult Industry Medical (AIM) so that talent could be more secure health wise on the job.

Reminding the audience that defending free speech is important to everyone, Gloria believes in the principle that “no one should tell you what to watch or hear.” Her words raised a bright round of applause.

I also stole a moment to impose on Candida Royalle to say “hello” face-to-face. Phone conversations and emails are not foreign to us and her support for my work is appreciated more than she will know. Like Gloria, Candida brought an air of the extraordinary to the room. Both women were elegantly and conservatively dressed as if they planned to attend a charity bizarre . . . at the country club, of course . . . sponsored by the ladies auxiliary. But the country club set could never imagine the elegance that comes from Candida. She is an industry luminary of the first order and has no parallel. She runs her own production company, FEMME, out of New York and specializes in woman-friendly erotica and couples porn. To suggest that Candida is a ground breaker in adult film erotica is a mammoth understatement. She not only turned the soil, she constructed the edifice that is feminist pornography, though I know she shudders with my use of that word; erotica is her preference. In the initial Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto years ago, Candida was the first honored. That’s what it means to be a living legend.

Chatting with Candida before showtime!
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

Candida told the audience that during her acting days she felt “ambivalence about being in adult movies” and was “conflicted” about what the impact might be in her life. Seeking therapy, she learned the value of self-analysis and decided that there was nothing wrong with performing in adult film. A woman’s voice was what the adult product lacked. Candida vowed to correct that perception and make pictures for women. It was fortuitous timing. The arrival of home video provided a safe place for women to view porn, she said, and a market was birthed.

Annie Sprinkle was her usual loving self when I renewed acquaintances with her. Annie’s career as a sex worker and lover of men, women, and transpersons is too vast and complex to even attempt to summarize here. I was honored to interview Annie in her home (we sat in the kitchen and enjoyed some iced tea) on a visit to San Francisco a couple of years ago.

No Tragic Endings Here

Annie was the lead-off hitter in the panel line-up. When everyone was finally seated, she mentioned that many people have the widely accepted belief that porn stars have “tragic endings.” “They don’t know us!” she said with her typical high spirits. During her brief remarks, people continued to trickle in; the shortage of chairs turned the event into SRO. I don’t know how many the museum planned for but attendance must have exceeded expectations. And, not every face in the crowd was an old friend or admirer. There were a number of young people who perhaps were looking to understand the past through a vision of the present.

Annie after the show.
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

In the opening moments of the discussion, Annie put the almost thirty years of Club 90 in perspective when she declared her time in porn has been an “amazing journey” and her goal is to keep it rolling. “I want to get to fifty years in sex!” she said with the innocence and playfulness of a flower child whose years have been spent pleasing and being pleased.

Annie carries the mien of San Francisco’s hippie past. Her leopard print floor length gown reminded me that Annie’s performance art, and that of her club sister Veronica Vera, is studied in academia.

Veronica Vera had expedited my research by sending valuable documents my way. She, like Gloria, was intensely political in her younger days. When we briefly spoke, I imagined what it must have been like for her to testify before the 1984 Senate Committee investigating adult film. The Reagan administration was going after porn as harm to women and the industry was under siege. Veronica recalled the now famous bondage photo she showed Senator Arlen Specter on that October day. The picture is a historical precursor of modern day BDSM performance art that has captured the imagination of a sexually marginalized community.

Veronica got into the adult business through famed photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. She told the audience she had worked on Wall Street then “decided to take an honest job” and went into adult entertainment.

Her wedding was the catalyst for this reunion, the group’s first in seventeen years.

As the event was breaking up, I finally got a chance to embrace Veronica Hart. Her 1983 baby shower brought the ladies together for the first time. I visited with Veronica in Las Vegas a few months ago and know her on a more personal level than the others. She is the youngster of the group and is considered one of the great beauties ever to grace adult film.

Veronica showing her big HeART!
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

Except for a retired Gloria Leonard who now lives in Hawai`i, the women remain active in the adult world. Veronica Hart works in her hometown at Vegas’ Erotic Heritage Museum. She still directs in L.A. and keeps close tabs on the adult business. Candida Royalle continues with FEMME and has branched out into an adult product line, distributing through Adam and Eve, a Phil Harvey enterprise in North Carolina.

Annie Sprinkle and her partner, Beth Stephens, are expanding their venture into ecosex,  “a subject matter or identity,” Annie explains, that moves beyond a performance art. “We are . . . excosexual aritsts,” she says, exploring “a new area of research” that delves into “places where sexology and ecology intersect in art, theory, practice, and activism.”

If that sounds intellectual, it is. Beth, who moderated the event, is finishing her Ph.D. which will make two in the family as Annie already has hers.  Incidentally,  she is the first porn star gain such status. Sharon Mitchell, an old friend of Club 90 and long time director of AIM, is the second.

The fifth member, Veronica Vera, runs her own school for cross dressers, “Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls” located in New York. The studio where many of her events take place is on 54^th Street. Veronica’s program is for males and transpeople who want to challenge gender barriers and get in touch with their feminine side. Working with transpersons is a value shared with Annie. (I recommend Shannon Bell’s Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body [1994] for an account of Club 90’s Franklin Furnace stage show in 1984 and Annie and Veronica’s performance art.)

With the evening winding down and attendees milling about, I allowed my imagination to have some fun. Among the audience were acquaintances of Club 90 who had been involved in adult film industry. Observing some of them reunite with the five in conversation, I mentally turned the clock back 30 years, erasing the nasty joke that time plays on all of us: age, something the young firmly believe will never happen to them. I fancied everyone in just such a room, setting up for a porn shoot: director, P.A.s, grips, and cameramen, hustling around with perhaps a make-up artist adding some final touches to faces destined to be hardened in a tough business.

In those early days of the modern adult film era, the business was east coast oriented. New York was home for Club 90. This Manhattan evening wrapped itself around them and their friendships with memories treasured. In the midst of skyscrapers and traffic punctuated with the ubiquitous New York cabbies, the affair had a small town feel and I was honored to have been invited.

When Josh and I headed back to the train station, the rain pelted ever hectic New Yorkers scurrying under umbrellas to get from here to there. The scene itself was a stage, a piece of living history, illuminated by lights embedded in mist and shrouded in the past.

———————

If you visit the Museum of Sex on the corner of 27^th and 5^th Avenue, consider in a quick snack across the street at Naturally Tasty. Ask for Magdalena. She’s service with a smile.

I’m not gay, but I do enjoy collecting homerotic photography. Robert Maplethorpe’s work in the 80′s really opened my eyes to the artistic potential of sexually explicit photography, but I did not start collecting homerotic photography myself, until last year. While auditioning photos for this blog I occasionally come across really inspiring homerotic images which I simply must have.

While you won’t find any Maplethorpes in my collection, or any of my own work, for that matter, the collection reflects my taste and artistic sensibility, so I’m proud of it, nonetheless. I haven’t shared my collection of homerotic photography here at this blog because this is a family blog.  I realize that that many people find sexually explicit, homerotic imagery offensive, but I like to share.

I’ve created a new blog specifically for my prized collection of homerotic photographs, called The Journal of Homerotic Photography at www.journalofhomeroticphotography.wordpress.com I encourage every adult, and no one under 18, to visit my collection and see for yourself.

Warning!!!! site contains sexually explicit photographs, duh!

“…the hands of he and the promise that she is blessed among women.” – Dancing Barefoot

I have been a fan of Patti Smith for some time, but when I saw her in the street in New York it reminded me how much I had wanted to read her book. Well I’ve just finished it and I was so impressed. She is such an amazing woman, and the way she describes her realtionshop with Robert was so tender and beautiful. I would recommend it to anyone. And I can’t wait to see her play live this September at the Troxy.

The book made me happy because it showed me that sometimes you just have to do what it is you want to do without worrying about things like money. I’m always under the impression that without money it is much harder to make your dreams come true. But this book made me realise that not making your dreams come true because you’re worried about money is just plain ol’ stupid. Patti Smith moved to New York without any money and for the first few years she barely had any, but that didn’t stop her from making her dreams come true. So that’s why this book made me happy today and also because on the back of the book is a commendation from Johnny Depp. Which I thought was pretty random. But hey, when Johnny Depp says it is a good book, it has to be a good book.

Glenn Fry’s Vitruvian Gallery exhibit traces the early evolution of gay porn, before video and the Internet

When is porn art? When is an art gallery a back room?

The answer to both questions is now – at least as conceived by the Vitruvian Gallery. That’s especially true this weekend, when the Capitol Hill gallery hosts a reception primed for Mid-Atlantic Leather patrons.

”Instead of leaving the as nice as it usually is, with drapes and oriental rugs and what have you,” explains Vitruvian co-owner Jack Cox, ”we’re re-creating it to look almost industrial, warehouse, back room.” The effect should evoke a seedy red-light district parlor. And all for a show that silk-screen artist Glenn Fry says is meant to be ”an homage to vintage gay porn magazines.” Though the pieces in Fry’s ”unrestrained urges” are tame by today’s porn standards – largely suggestive rather than explicitly sexual – half a century and another era ago, they were considered pornographic.

”We’ve been joking with people that it’s going to be the hottest show since Robert Mapplethorpe shut down the Corcoran,” Cox says, referring to outrage 21 years ago over a planned show featuring homoerotic and sadomasochistic art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. ”In truth, I saw Mapplethorpe’s work, and this is far more edgy and graphic.”

”This is a very different type of show than what most people have seen in D.C.,” adds Fry. Still, while the show does feature full-frontal male nudity, and men frolicking and even gearing up to have sex, Fry notes there isn’t out-and-out sex on display.

Fry’s art was mostly created from photo shoots with live models re-creating vintage images. The installation traces the early evolution of gay porn, before video and the Internet made it easier to come by. Fifty years ago, notes Fry, who is 45, gay men often lived underground, and the porn magazines reflected that. They were distributed in ragtag fashion, ”often just copied or mimeographed onto plain white paper and then stapled together and folded and handed out. Very primitive.” Fry finds it fascinating how the images became more explicit with each passing decade, starting in the 1950s with muscular men in shorts or G-strings striking bodybuilder poses alone, followed by the beefcake imagery of muscular guys standing or working out together, and eventually men photographed naked and engaging in foreplay.

The artwork will be brought to life at the Vitruvian Gallery, which Cox opened with Larry Hall last fall to be solely devoted to male figurative art. At least some of the models Fry worked with to create the artworks are expected to attend the opening reception this Saturday, Jan. 14. And other models who regularly pose nude for art classes held at Vitruvian have signed up to be greeters and bartenders. They will be wearing the same type of clothing as depicted in the images – which means either not much or fetish wear. Fry suggests a bartender might wear mirrored sunglasses, jockstrap and shoes – and that’s it. Those at the door may be in leather.

Chances are, patrons will dress the part as well. It was Fry’s idea to open the show Leather Weekend. ”The whole leather movement really has a lot to do with the evolution of the whole vintage era,” he says. ”It’s very homoerotic, and a lot of people are coming into town for that type of experience.”

The installation is a bit of a departure from Fry’s usual work, which has included commissions for multinational corporations as well as a family featured on The Real Housewives of DC. A former bartender around town, Fry got his start in advertising. And perhaps it’s that earlier line of work that has given him insight into the importance and influence of imagery on society and its subcultures. For example, Fry notes that the gay porn of mid-20th century America reflects the larger culture of its era, when Leave It to Beaver set the tone. ”It was just a very pretend type of world,” Fry says. ”I think that even spilled over into the gay magazines, trying to fit that innocence.” And also that era’s pretense, when straight men justified buying Playboy for the articles. For gay or gay-curious men, says Fry, it was, ”Oh, I’m buying a magazine about bodybuilding. I want to be big like this guy, so I put this up as motivation.”

Ultimately, ”unrestrained urges” is, says Fry, ”a cool little way to pay some homage to what our predecessors had to go through, and just the imagery that they had.”

The opening reception for ”unrestrained urges” is Saturday, Jan. 14, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. On display to Feb. 18 at the Vitruvian Gallery, 734 7th St. SE, 2nd Floor. For more information, visit vitruviangallery.com.

Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe at Coney Island in 1969 – the cover of her autobiographical book “Just Kids”

I was 20 years old when Patti Smith’s album “Horses” came out. If you walked into a hip record store back then and heard that album playing, you knew that the world had made a seismic shift.

Just Kids is the kind of book that is nice to have around. More than a page-turner, it’s the kind of book that’s nice to pick up again, to be once again inspired by. You want to savor it, not try and soak it all up in one go. Patti is detailed about her influences, for example – a nice quality in any biography. Her story is thus imbued with layers of meaning, showing intention.

Yet there is space within it in which to imagine one’s own interpretations. It works very simply – it is good storytelling.

She tells of the close personal, creative and spiritual collaboration she shared with Robert Maplethorpe; of their ongoing dialogue. It was/is timeless. No one can speak of Maplethorpe’s work with more authority – their story seems essentially and inextricably linked.

It is at times a very plain, simple story of poverty and struggling to get by. Humble, waif-like beginnings, humility; and deep within the core of that, an essential understanding, confidence and belief in one’s self.

Simple, aesthetic pleasures – aren’t they the best kind? Choices had to be made about money: food or art materials?

Holding struggle sacred, as a part of artistic process; or alternatively, simply stating the reality of the way that it was. She makes that kind of commitment to art seem attractive and noble.

The value of having a muse, of collaboration. One is struck by the belief that they had in themselves, and in each other; how their combined vision gave them strength and maturity.

Contrasted with this was their unique position within the eye of a dizzyingly glamorous, historic cultural  and artistic milieu – New York in a time of incredible ferment. The Chelsea Hotel, Max’s Kansas City, the Andy Warhol scene; CBGB’s, punk rock, new wave, rock ‘n roll, poetry, art – they were there at the center of it all, participants. There was a change occurring in human consciousness…

She doesn’t candy coat or glamorize anything. She doesn’t need to – she was there. I liked her everyman/common man sensibility.

I like her perception and insight into Robert Maplethorpe’s early work – how it portrayed male gay sexuality in an entirely new aesthetic – with a simple, factual plain dignity.

Her narrative voice – her eye for detail, the movement of time and discernment of what’s important – makes herstory engaging.  She shares her artistic process and struggles. One gets a sense of integrity, spirituality and honor. It’s nice to learn the many sources of her inspiration and vision.

As autobiographies go – indeed, biographies – this one is a gem. It is good that she’s been able to share this story with us. It’s not something that’s easy to do. It takes a big heart – love, understanding and wisdom.

//

My own personal PJ Harvey. That’s what I’d used to call singer/songwriter Cattski Espina, back when I’d immersed myself in the local music radar as part of my duties as editor-in-chief of the now-defunct alternative culture e-zine Neoground.com (where I’d worked with Sonic Boom Philippines founder Alex “Phat Boy” Lim, Urbandub’s Gabby Alipe, and former NU107 anchorwomen Hazel Montederamos and Krissi Banzon, among others). And she remembered this—the woman has an astonishing recall of detail, testament that she is a compelling storyteller. No doubt she remembered, too, that I’d been an avid follower of her live appearances in shows like Intimate Acoustics (a series of sitting room only unplugged shows held at the then happening Padi’s Point, which ran popular throughout ’99) and its subsequent all-girls spin-off Siren Souls, the latter her eponymous band had top-billed along with the Kate Torralba-fronted Hard Candy, and the then female-fronted Cueshé (yes, Dhee Evangelista, now of Pandora). At the time, of course, the comparison between her and the divine Ms. Harvey had sprouted from—and ended at—the impassioned singing, the deeply sonorous vocals, the gender-bending songwriting. Certainly I had not meant for it to be a prediction of sorts. So you could imagine my surprise upon finding out firsthand that her musical career had somewhat ended up treading the same path as Ms. Harvey’s—i.e., her group had disbanded, and she was now on her own (the only difference was that the PJ Harvey trio had dissolved after two albums, while Cattski the band had managed to make it to three albums before breaking up).

Balmy early evening in late August, and I was having coffee—well, frappé, really—with Cattski. “The Cat Lady” (as I fondly call her these days, borrowing from the name of her weekly column from back when she was resident rock critic at the local daily SunStar) had just finished titling and tracklisting her forthcoming album, and with only four or five tracks left to fine-tune, it was now time to get down and dirty for the album cover. “Other [musicians] opt for artwork,” she would later declare, “but in my case, I like having my face in the CD sleeve. I mean, you gotta put a face to the name and to the music at some point, right?” Choosing a photographer to bring her vision into life had not been a daunting task—even prior to beginning work on this album, already she’d had Malou “Mai” Pages-Solomon of Shutterfairy Photography on top of her list (she’d worked with Mai before, for a couple of promotional material, and she’d liked the outcome so much that she’d decided no other photographer would do for this new recording). Which was what had brought me here—having just jumpstarted my apprenticeship at Shutterfairy a couple of weeks back, I had been commissioned by Mai to style Cattski for this one very important shoot. And what a way to be reunited, right? I had not seen this woman in seven or so years! But breaking the ice didn’t prove to be tricky. All she had to do was tell me about how Cattski the band was no more, and that this upcoming album, although technically her fourth (fifth, if you count her tenth anniversary compilation, released early last year), was really the first from Cattski the solo artist. Of course, the news came to me as a shocker, not so much because I’d come here expecting to style a quartet, but because I’d become so used to thinking of Cattski as a group. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine Cattski as a non-group without losing a bit of composure. I mean, sure, this woman right here had always been that band’s focal point, but all I could think of was that amazing, formidable chemistry that the group had had, you know? But, oh well, as Cattski now put it, “Life happened” (exactly the reason she and I had lost touch for seven years in the first place). Guitarist Anne Muntuerto had had to leave for Washington, DC, to pursue a Master’s Degree in Nurse Anesthesia—definitely a relief to hear it had had nothing to do with “creative differences” or anything like that, and that the two of them remained really good friends, and that Anne was now turning out to be not only Cattski’s but Cebu music’s biggest ambassador/promoter overseas, sharing our goods with whatever musical circuit she was able to penetrate (including the big leagues such as singer/producer Brian Larsen, for whom she became touring guitarist). As for the rest of the band members, well, I decided it was no longer my business to ask about them. Especially when Cattski began to make it clear that there was nothing else she wanted to do at this point but to move forward.

Or move further back, as the case would be. “[The reason] why I’ve decided to call [this new album] Zero,” she revealed, “[is] because it’s like I’ve gone back to zero!” As of the time we spoke she was still undecided on whether to label it Zero, spelled out like that, or 0:00:00, like “how your [digital] music player [timer] looks like right before you [hit the] play [button].” But whatever she ends up going with, the premise remains the same: starting from nothing. I know it sounds frightening, but turns out it’s not so bad after all. When you come from nothing, “you have this kind of independence, this freedom to do whatever you feel like doing, and it becomes a [prolific] exploration,” she explained. “Back when I was still in a group, I had all this music in me, just waiting to explode, but then I would put it forward for the rest [of the band members] to hear—because that’s what being in a band is all about, you have to get the others’ opinion—but then they’d be, like, ‘That’s too Barbie’s Cradle!’ or ‘That’s not hardcore enough.’” She went on about how, in the eight or nine years of being in a group, there had always been this unspoken rule that “you have to stick with a formula when trying to come up with new material, and so you always have to [reference] all the things you’ve already done.” But now she no longer needed to do that. “Now I can start with nothing—with silence—and then go with whatever hits me from out of the blue!”

Silence being the operative word. She proceeded to tell the story of how, one day at twilight, couple of weeks before beginning work on new material, she’d found herself standing on the vast balcony of a local hotel perched atop the hills, and she’d just stood there, stunned by how the city sprawled before her had changed its face as dusk had settled—and by the silence and stillness that had come with it. A silence so piercing that it had laid itself out like a stark blank canvas, awakening the music and words from deep inside her that she’d thought she’d long forgotten, and causing them to detonate like firecrackers. Just like that, what could possibly be her peak artistic period had gotten a jumpstart. Out of nothing, Zero had been born.

Said differently: By taking a step back, she had moved on.

In no other picture was this logic clearer to me than in “Monsters,” one of the 11 new tracks to be included in Zero, and a strong contender for carrier single. In her deeply soulful contralto, Cattski croons: “I feel I’m braver now to face my demons/ I’ve finally learned to use my angels, too/ I think I’m finally ready to live my truth/ ‘Cause right now that I’m without you there’s just nothing to lose.” Odds and ends of emotions in her words and in her voice, kind of like that closet where you’d kept your skeletons for so long, and now that the bones had been cleaned out you were seeing for the very first time all the other stuff that had been there with them all along (I won’t take credit for that simile; that’s an extended version of an imagery that she uses in the song’s refrain). But one emotion you weren’t gonna find no matter how hard you tried was bitterness. It hadn’t been disguised—it just simply wasn’t there to begin with. Definitely a feat—well, to me, at least—because very few storytellers succeed in looking past the pain, in just walking away from it. This was a huge change for Cattski, who, when she’d broken into the scene a little over a decade back, had embraced the exquisite anguish of hanging on to an offhandedly ambivalent partner (“High and Low,” 2001), and who, some five years ago, had made a big deal about holding on to someone who clearly was no longer there (“Your Ghost,” 2006). And who, only a year ago, had been “too emotionally unstable—disturbed would be an accurate description,” for whatever reason. In fact, change was starting to look like a recurring theme in Zero. In “New,” another solid candidate for first single, she spits out, in brisk cadences: “This is not you/ I guess I like the old you/ But then you like the new.” At first my brows raised, ‘cause it sounded to me like she was contradicting herself here by lamenting a friend’s resolve to change. If I hadn’t known better, though, I would have stuck to that first impression; but after rereading the lyrics more than a dozen times I was now confident enough to declare that that one line was really a sort of reverse message for her fans—like, “I know you liked the old me, but I promise you you’re gonna like the new me even more.” I could say that I made that up. But it would be very remiss of me not to insinuate that Cattski here was clever like that.

And so here she was with her brand new take on life. And, as they say, a new outlook required a new, well, look, and that was exactly what I was here for. Always I’d been cautious about styling musicians (as public figures, you see, they are ultimately responsible for the way they are seen, and so they have to be the custodian of their own image), saying yes only to those who’d asked for a helping hand (like to Urbandub bassist Lalay Lim, for example, who’d asked for my help some four years back before stepping in front of photographer Charles Buencosejo’s camera for the CD jacket of and promotional posters for their fourth album Under Southern Lights). Cattski here had not exactly asked for help, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t open to others’ ideas. So many things that needed to be done in the studio, so she wasn’t exactly in a position to turn down anyone offering to relieve her of non-studio work. Just like that, I got to work.

Taking a cue from her stories of how the Zero creative process had begun—i.e., “from nothing”—I proceeded to assemble a mood board that was pared down and very basic. No convoluted palettes, for one: I was quick to throw in some black, just ‘cause the RGB triplet for black was (0, 0, 0), just two zeroes shy of her 0:00:00 idea. I had to make room for one more color, and was tempted to go for a primary like a red or a blue, but in the end I decided to go with white. Black and white. Or, as Cattski liked to put it, ebony and ivory, like the keys of a piano. That was it. You couldn’t get any more pared down than that. It was perfect ‘cause I’d just finished reading excerpts from Just Kids, punk rocker Patti Smith’s tender and captivating memoir of her charmed friendship with the black-and-white photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and for weeks I’d been looking for ways to translate some of that enigmatic Smith/Mapplethorpe chemistry into my own work. I wasted no time mentally updating my board with the cover photograph of Smith’s debut album Horses—the singer in a white men’s dress shirt, tight jeans, black suspenders, with a black men’s blazer nonchalantly flung over her left shoulder, and scruffy hair—which Mapplethorpe had taken using natural afternoon light “in a penthouse in Greenwich Village.” Like how I liked my burgers, though, with one patty never being enough, one reference to Patti wasn’t sufficient, so I went ahead and slapped another photo of hers against the board: An older Patti this time, circa 2010, no longer punk’s princess but very much its doyenne, shot by the fashion photographer Ruven Afanador for the February 2010 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine—reclining against a wooden table, in a black smoking jacket and a white dress shirt so supersized they allude Martin Margiela’s all-oversize collection from A/W 2000/2001, and what looked like sweatpants tucked into buckle-strapped biker boots. Cattski liked these references, just like I’d thought. It was a look that was meant for her—with her newfound air of insouciance, she could well be on her way to becoming my own personal Patti Smith (yes, no more PJ Harvey).

We brainstormed for a couple of more looks, and she proposed that, since we were doing black and white, she wanted to use this, well, black-and-white star-print sweater she’d bought from a recent trip to the Lion City, to which I said why the hell not. If we had to go with patterns, stars were the right way to go—huge for Fall (as evidenced in Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2011 Ready-to-Wear), and had kind of a grunge subtext, to people like me who remembered the teeny weeny asterisk in Billy Corgan’s infamous ZERO shirts of yore. (I swear, the uncanny correlations just kept on coming: Here I was styling an artist for her album called Zero, and Corgan’s ZERO shirt just had to come to mind.) That being said, we decided to make room for just a little bit more of neo-grunge, and that’s how actress Zoë Kravitz got into the picture, more specifically her character in the TV series Californication, a reckless Venice Beach teen and frontwoman of an all-girl band who called themselves Queens of Dogtown, whose badass (albeit scripted) Whisky a Go Go performance of Alice in Chains’s “Would” (for the fifth episode of the fourth season) and whose penchant for boy’s tanks and exposed brassieres had gotten me falling head over heels—or, wool beanie over combat boots, if you will.

Speaking of combats, Cattski forgot to bring hers on the day of the shoot, so my own Bed Stü “Artillery Boots” had to make a special guest appearance in one of the sets (I swear to God, wherever my boots go they manage to steal the show). That wasn’t the only thing I was happy about. I was also glad that the black smoking jacket I got from local menswear genius Protacio didn’t turn out to be too oversize on her (and so the silhouette came out more Demeulemeester than Margiela), and that the star-spangled sweater didn’t come out too fancy (originally we’d intended to have her wear black leggings with the said sweater, but we ditched it so we could show off the tattoo in her leg). Androgyny was a very good look on this woman, I must say. Although I was happy that she wasn’t afraid to get in touch with her girly side, too, putting on every single chain and chandelier necklace I flung her way—even agreeing, after only a moment’s hesitation, to “lose the dress shirt and just stand there in your brassiere!” (Such a trouper, I know—never even complained about the lack of a dressing room, and that she had to undress and dress in front of all of us!) Ecstatic, too, that my friend Nikki Paden had agreed to assist me with the styling, because a helping hand was always a treat, and no one knew the black and white palette better than that girl. What I was most happy about, though, was the hair and makeup. I’d never met, much less worked, with the hairstylist and makeup artist (and erstwhile model) Justine Gloria before, and had not even had the chance to talk to her before this shoot, but then she got to work and it was like magic. At the outset, you see, I’d wanted, say, Cattski’s eye makeup to be a bit glam, and her hair in some pompadour à la Gwen Stefani—but Justine had envisioned something else, and it came out perfect. It was a look that was mature yet not at all contrived, edgy but not sinister, and had that elusive quality of being at turns disheveled and flawless (think circa mid-‘90s Chrissie Hynde and you’ll begin to come close). And it went really well with the clothes! I was in awe: Cattski like I’d never seen her before.

But more important than the new outlook, and infinitely more important than the new look, was the new sound. In front of the cameras now I asked her to move around, pretend like she was performing onstage, in front of hundreds (the mic stand had been my idea, after she’d refused to be photographed cradling a guitar ‘cause it had been done so many times over the last couple of years), and so she asked for music she could swing to, and luckily for me it was a demo version of the aforementioned new song “New” that her assistant chose to play. At first I couldn’t place the song as hers, thought it was a mid-‘90s Jill Sobule, what with its rhythmic uptempo, tragicomic wordplay, and sing-songy chorus, so imagine my surprise when her assistant told me this was actually the song “New” that Cattski had been telling me about! The intro starts with a faint kick drum beat that is very characteristic of house, and then slowly intermingles with some synth and mellow guitar plucking, before it crescendos into an a capella, and then a bang. (The transitions would follow this same pattern.) It’s the kind of song that’s hard to put in a box. She would admit later on that, yes, the underlying beat was a “generic house beat,” at 140 bpm, but then throw in all the other elements and it becomes something else altogether. A hundred different things, if you will, because, I swear, every time I am ready to dismiss it as pop rock, I hear a little bit of riot grrrl pop-punk here and there, and some elements of symphonic rock. “In the past, [whenever] people asked me what kind of music I made, without [skipping a beat] I would say, ‘Rock!’” she would later recount. “Now when I meet new people and they ask me the same question, I stammer and I can’t give a straight answer.” And there is no formula, too; no two songs are ever the same. The abovementioned “Monsters,” for example, is a languid, organic ballad set against an irresistible concoction of trip-hop, ambient, and dream pop—even a tinge of country pop! “Defying genres,” that’s how she calls the whole thing. So this is what happens when you “start from nothing” with every song (and when you micromanage every single step in the production process, if I may jokingly add—I don’t think I’ve ever met the brand of control freak that this woman has on!). Although this early on Cattski is in anticipation being critiqued by the pundits: “[They’re] most likely [going to] say…that [the album] has an identity crisis, for not having a consistent sound. But I’m no longer afraid of that. I trust myself enough [now]. My intuition [is] my ultimate guide. Everything will have to be on the premise of what sounds and feels right for me.” But I don’t think it’s ever going to get to that point—the pundits part, I mean. If anything, peers and fans alike are going to appreciate the bold step she’s taking, her kind of game-changing, and I predict this album is going to be her biggest contribution yet to Cebu music. Yes, by sidestepping a niche, Cattski has found her, well, niche—that is, as renaissance woman of Cebu music.

I am tempted to talk about all of the other songs, but that would be doing a great deal of disservice to the artist. My job is to build up excitement, not to do an album review, so I’m gonna have to stop right here. For right now, go ahead and take your time reveling at the woman that you see here—Cattski like you’ve never seen her before. Although I can’t exactly guarantee all this is ever going to prepare you for the Cattski you’ve never heard before.

* * * * * * * * *

Follow Cattski on Twitter (or the hashtag #00000cattskinewalbum, or even the Tumblr tag 00000cattskinewalbum if you are a Tumblr purist) for updates on the progress of her upcoming album Zero.

Cattski Espina | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Cebu City on September 3, 2011 | Main photographers: Malou “Mai” Pages-Solomon for Shutterfairy, Paul Armand Calo for Calography (click here to view Mai’s photos, and here for Paul’s) | Hair and makeup by Justine Gloria | Stylist’s assistant: Nikki Paden | Sittings assistants: Manna Alcaraz and Gwen Reyes | Special thanks to: The PR and Communications Department of Marco Polo Plaza Cebu | Black men’s smoking jacket, Protacio | White men’s dress shirt, Memo | Solid black men’s silk tie, Springfield UP by Springfield | Black women’s leather biker jacket, Bershka | Black women’s skinny suit jacket, Divided by H&M | Chandelier necklace, Forever 21 | Chain necklace, Mango | Crucifix necklace, Divided by H&M

In my mood board (see below, clockwise from left): Stills of Zoë Kravitz as her Californication character Pearl, with her band Queens of Dogtown, performing a cover of Alice in Chains’s “Would” onstage at West Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go (for the fifth episode of the show’s fourth season, originally aired February 6, 2011); still of a star-spangled sweater from Wildfox Couture, photographed by Pete Deevakul for TeenVogue.com; looks from Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2011 Ready-to-Wear, on models Isabeli Fontana and Anna Selezneva, photographed by Yannis Vlamos for GoRunway.com; Patti Smith, photographed by Ruven Afanador for the February 2010 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine; the album cover of Patti Smith’s debut record Horses, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, circa 1975.

Behind-the-Scenes Instagrams Top row, L-R: Makeup artist/hairstylist Justine Gloria giving quick touch-ups to Cattski between sets while Mai looks on; Cattski’s assistants Gwen and Manna were asked to document the shoot and keep her in check (“I could go crazy, you know,” Cattski rationalized); Cattski literally rolling on the floor laughing when she thought we were done, only to be snapped out of it when she remembered she’d asked for night shots. Middle row, L-R: Mai with Paul (of Calography) waiting for the shoot to commence; Cattski wouldn’t stop singing, even while being photographed; Cattski forgot to bring her boots, so she had to borrow my Bed Stü “Artillery Boots”(which meant I had to go barefoot half of the time); Mai fixing Cattski’s hair. Bottom row, L-R: My assistant for the day Nikki checking out my mood boards before getting to work (she loved the Robert Mapplethorpe shots of Patti Smith); Paul getting ready to take photos of Cattski with the grand piano (the singer sang a haunting rendition of The Cure’s 1989 hit “Lovesong” while Paul was setting up); no dressing room, so Cattski was forced to dress and undress in front of everyone (such a trouper!); Cattski getting ready for the evening set.

Maybe it happens to you like this: unexpected events and encounters often come in multiples. It’s as if random events are actually traveling through our lives in a wad. How many times has someone come to mind who I haven’t seen in years and then they suddenly appear at a party or on the street? Many.

That rhythm of random repetition showed up for me again this last week. I just finished reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a memoir about New York City in the 1970s as seen from the high velocity, celebrity-studded perspective of both Smith and her lover/friend, Robert Mapplethorpe. I lived in New York City at the same time and remember Smith’s extraordinary performances at CBGB that catapulted her into fame. The world she describes, centered around the Chelsea Hotel and Max’s Kansas City, was very far from my ragtag circle of friends living in unwieldy lofts on the Lower East Side. I wasn’t running into the likes of Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso on my rides on the F train or walks through Chinatown. But reading her words brought those days back to mind, back to a Manhattan and a me that are long gone. Woody Allen’s somewhat superficial but irresistably enjoyable film, Midnight in Paris, was a paean to our private variations of the moveable feast.

Manhattan in the 1970s was one of my moveable feasts, but so was the year I spent in France when I was 18 years old. And those halcyon days came flooding back when I recently visited my art teacher from that year I lived abroad. He is the reason I changed my life path and decided to spend it making art, and now he lives in the hills above Salt Lake City. His secluded Italianate villa is filled with artifacts ranging from Renaissance paintings to dinosaur bones. Stepping into his cloistered Miss Havisham world is already an invitation to leave life as we know it, but even more so when I discovered he had unearthed the photos from that long ago time in France—black and whites that capture a me and a France that, like Manhattan in the 70s, no longer exists.

Who I was back then is as elusive as a dream image, and it is just as hard to share it meaningfully with anyone else. But reconnecting with these two periods in my life, in close succession, has brought all sorts of forgotten energies to the surface. Asking those old selves to unveil their forgotten secrets is not as easy as a car that comes round for you at midnight on a Paris street, but I’ll take these trips back however they come.

I like Maplethorpe’s work because it is visually arresting, but think it shouldn’t be promoted to teens or supported by tax funds, and it obviously betrays some unhealthy fixations (unless one believes its shock value had a purely commercial intent).

Wagstaff’s friends provide a jaundiced view of the relationship.  The male friends say he only liked much younger men (Maplethorpe and Wagstaff met when Maplethorpe was 26 and Wagstaff 51); the female friends say Maplethorpe was a gold digger and Wagstaff a sugar daddy (Wagstaff was far wealthier and may have got Maplethorpe into photography, but Wagstaff inherited most of his money after they had been together for some time).  The narrator presents a view of Wagstaff as somewhat crippled by a restricted life lived in the 40s and 50s in the military and on Madison Avenue where he had to hide his sexuality.  One can conclude that Maplethorpe preyed on this weakness; or that he was part of Wagstaff’s actualization.  Or both.   (Though it was an actualization that involved following Maplethorpe into a world of leather, cocaine, and group sex.)  Punk rocker Patti Smith, who was in a relationship with Maplethorpe before and during his relationship with Wagstaff, provides a lot of color commentary, unfortunately with a distracting moustache and some stained teeth (hanging out with gay men should really ensure that you have stylists and aestheticians in your retinue).

Either way Wagstaff’s investment in both Maplethorpe’s photography and 19th century and early 20th century photographs seems to have been profitable.  He cornered the market before people found them valuable.  (He later did the same thing with American silver.)   Wagstaff eventually moved to a penthouse at One Fifth Avenue, the co-op featured in Candace Bushnell’s post Sex and the City  2008 novel named after the building.  He sold his photo collection at one point for over $1 million.  He died of AIDS in 1987 (a month before Andy Warhol).  He left almost $5 million to Robert Maplethorpe and $10,000 to his sister.  Less than two years later Maplethorpe sold Wagstaff’s silver collection and then died the same year (1989).  The foundation funded by the money is called the Maplethorpe Foundation not the Maplethorpe-Wagstaff Foundation.

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Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe (2007)

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Average Rating: 6.4/10
Reviews Counted: 17
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 3

Vital documentation of an unsung 70′s art patron and his famous photographer lover. A vivid and tragic story.

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Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 2

Vital documentation of an unsung 70′s art patron and his famous photographer lover. A vivid and tragic story.

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Movie Info

After serving in the Navy during World War II, Sam Wagstaff came home to New York City and pursued a career in advertising, and through his work in the ad game he developed a keen interest in photography. Reflecting his own personal evolution as he came to accept his homosexuality, Wagstaff became an enthusiastic collector of art photography and gained a reputation as a curator, organizing a number of important museum shows of new photographers and becoming a friend and confidante of artists

PG, 1 hr. 12 min.
Documentary, Musical & Performing Arts, Special Interest
Directed By: James Crump
Written By: James Crump

In Theaters: Oct 19, 2007 Wide
On DVD: Apr 8, 2008
Arthouse Films

Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe Trailer & Photos

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Cast

• 
  Joan Juliet Buck 
  Narrator
• 
  Sam Wagstaff 
  
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  Robert Mapplethorpe 
  
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  Patti Smith 
  
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  Jeffrey Fraenkel 
  
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  Tukey Koffend 
  
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  Eugenia Parry 
  
• 
  Dominick Dunne 
  
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  John Richardson 
  
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  John Szarkowski 
  
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  Holly Solomon 
  
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  Ingrid Sischy 
  
• 
  Clark Worswick 
  
• 
  Raymond Foye 
  
• 
  Pierre Apraxine 
  
• 
  Philippe Garner 
  
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  Paul Walter 
  
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  Timothy Greenfield-Sander… 
  
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  John Giorno 
  
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  Ralph Gibson 
  
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  Dick Cavett 
  
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  Truman Capote 
  
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  Richart Tuttle 
  
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  Jean-Jacques Naudet 
  
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  Agnes Martin 
  
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  Henry Geldahler 
  
• 
  Tony Smith 
  

Critic Reviews for Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe

All Critics (17) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (15) | Rotten (3) | DVD (1)

The movie makes its main point. Wagstaff was an important, complex, fascinating figure, well worth remembering.

February 14, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

Sid Smith

Chicago Tribune

Top Critic

Wagstaff’s character accounts for some of the frustration the film induces. Crumb’s documentary style accounts for the rest.

February 1, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

Kenneth Baker

San Francisco Chronicle

Top Critic

Wagstaff was a fascinating figure and deserves the detailed tribute provided here.

October 19, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Jack Mathews

New York Daily News

Top Critic

A potent exercise in art-world mythography.

October 19, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Stephen Holden

New York Times

Top Critic

Black White & Gray raises provocative questions but can’t answer them, or even frame them with total clarity.

October 18, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Andrew O’Hehir

Salon.com

Top Critic

A modest chronicle of an audacious life.

October 16, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Nathan Lee

Village Voice

Top Critic

Crump’s film is a vitally important document in this respect, bringing out Wagstaff’s personality and vividly capturing the stories of the people who knew him.

August 15, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

Rich Cline

Shadows on the Wall

This is a terrific documentary by James Crump about the unsung collector, Wagstaff, and his lopsided relationship with his hungry young lover, Mapplethorpe.

August 15, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

James Christopher

Times [UK]

A well made portrait of an intriguing man, presented with a tragic but resounding weight.

August 15, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

Sam Jordison

Film4 

Crump’s film colourfully depicts Wagstaff’s complex inner mindset and rarefied eye for imagery by allowing the stunning prints to linger on the screen.

August 15, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

David Jenkins

Time Out 

Let’s hope this is the springboard for a biopic on the art world’s dynamic gay duo – maybe by the time it gets made we’ll even have some openly gay actors to play the parts.

May 22, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

Richard Knight

Windy City Times

This film stands as a nice beginning to a necessary Wagstaff reexamination. Yet as with most tastes of something savory, we want another serving.

April 17, 2008 Full Review  | Comment

Bill Gibron

DVDTalk.com

This ham-handed interpolation of irrelevant footage is the chief demerit of his movie.

October 22, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

David Noh

Film Journal International

The more famous Mapplethorpe is moved aside to give Sam Wagstaff the spotlight. But the best photography in the world steals the show.

October 19, 2007 Comment

Ron Wilkinson

Monsters and Critics

The film itself is staid in comparison to the descriptions of the ’70s high life.

October 18, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Kent Turner

Film-Forward.com

Fine, but a little dry.

October 18, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Noel Murray

AV Club

Draws out the unseen riches that exist within what may otherwise appear typical or commonplace.

October 18, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

Relatively tame retrospective about the relationship of a gay patron of the arts and his famous photographer lover best remembered for graphic, homoerotic snapshots featuring shocking sights like that of a bullwhip in a tight place.

October 16, 2007 Full Review  | Comment

Kam Williams

NewsBlaze

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Audience Reviews for Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe

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Loved it. Glad I wasn’t gay in 1980′s NY. I wouldn’t be here.
October 25, 2010

Dan B

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The photos chosen by the band, who have used Mapplethorpe’s imagery on their record covers in the past, cover his flower photography as well as his wonderful nudes, still-lifes and shots of leathermen and bondage. Mapplethorpe was a genius at capturing the human form, and his still-lifes and flower portraits are shot and lit with the same aesthetic appeal. If you are already a Mapplethorpe fan you will enjoy this exhibition immensely, and the works by other artists such as Matthew Barney and Scott Treleaven show how his work continues to inspire. If you are new to Mapplethorpe’s work (why has it taken you so long?), you can revel in its beauty, sensuality and kinkiness.

Though a relatively small exhibition, it is a fantastic reminder of a great artist. The works by the artists influenced by him have been cleverly chosen, keeping a sense of continuity running throughout the show. So, for lovers of great photography, (homo)erotica, stunning imagery and general kinkiness, get yourself to the exhibition and treat yourself to the great man’s work.

Robert Mapplethorpe, 'Skull and Crossbones' 1983



Robert Mapplethorpe, ‘Skull and Crossbones’ 1983











Of all her talents—art, punk rock, poetry—I’d say Smith is best at writing, which she demonstrates in this beautifully crafted memoir that’s hard to put down. I’m always fascinated with how writers, particularly memoirists, pick and choose the details they include in their stories.  Smith offers less a photographic view than an impressionistic view of their lives, weaving together some (mercifully not all) of the seemy side (she seems surprisingly unfazed at the possibility of contracting gonorrhea from Maplethorpe) with fascinating encounters with the artists of the day including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg.

The book offers not only a fascinating and tender look at their relationship but also a tour of the Manhattan in the last period of 20th-century artistic ferment. Many hot spots such as Max’s Kansas City are long gone, and gentrification has pushed the art scene into the Meatpacking District, Brooklyn and beyond. Yet, there are still places that carry on the bohemian tradition, though like most of the parts of the city, they’re cleaner, nicer and more expensive than in the 60s. The biggest change has been in the Times Square area, which now fills with crowds of tourists and Disney characters instead of hustlers, addicts and panhandlers.

Ditto for the iconic Washington Square Park, which was refurbished over the last couple

Washington Square Park has been refurbished....

...but still has its share of crazy people.

of years. Not to worry, there’s still enough questionable activity there to make it seem bohemian.  Smith tells the story of a couple of tourists who saw her and Maplethorpe hanging out there.  One asked the other if they were artists and hence people they should photograph. The other said no, they’re “just kids.”

You can still go to Coney Island as the pair did when they could only afford one hot dog at Nathan’s. And, if you’re particularly dedicated to experiencing the life at the Hotel Chelsea  www.hotelchelsea.com where Smith and Maplethorpe lived for many years, you, too, can stay there.  The rates are exponentially higher than in the early 70’s, but from what I can see from TripAdvisor reviews, you can have an authentic Chelsea Hotel experience—complete with the bugs, stains and loud music and with the same furniture and carpeting from Smith and Maplethorpe’s day.  Better, perhaps, to fork out $40 for the occasional tour the Chelsea offers and actually sleep in another hotel.

The St. Mark’s Poetry Project where Smith performed is still going strong. To get another taste of the poetry scene, head to the Bowery Poetry Club and Café, especially on Tuesday nights for the Urbana Poetry Slam. If you get a chance, eat dinner at DBGB, across the street (by contrast, new and very trendy).

Looking for more of the history of Greenwich Village? Take a Big Onion Walking Tour, which travels into the tiniest and most charming streets of Manhattan, so unlike the concrete jungle beyond the Village borders.  These are the haunts of William Faulker, Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac and his Beats buddies. Some of the buildings, which date back to colonial times, served as slave quarters and servants’ houses but are now the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city.

Top off your walking tour with a latte and a giant cookie at the cozy Grey Dog Coffee Shop on Carmine Street.   I love that they serve my latte with the froth in the form of a dog’s paw print. Clearly, I don’t have what it takes to be a starving artist.

New York City Vacations

Of all her talents—art, punk rock, poetry—I’d say Smith is best at writing, which she demonstrates in this beautifully crafted memoir that’s hard to put down. I’m always fascinated with how writers, particularly memoirists, pick and choose the details they include in their stories.  Smith offers less a photographic view than an impressionistic view of their lives, weaving together some (mercifully not all) of the seemy side (she seems surprisingly unfazed at the possibility of contracting gonorrhea from Maplethorpe) with fascinating encounters with the artists of the day including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg.

The book offers not only a fascinating and tender look at their relationship but also a tour of the Manhattan in the last period of 20th-century artistic ferment. Many hot spots such as Max’s Kansas City are long gone, and gentrification has pushed the art scene into the Meatpacking District, Brooklyn and beyond. Yet, there are still places that carry on the bohemian tradition, though like most of the parts of the city, they’re cleaner, nicer and more expensive than in the 60s. The biggest change has been in the Times Square area, which now fills with crowds of tourists and Disney characters instead of hustlers, addicts and panhandlers.

Ditto for the iconic Washington Square Park, which was refurbished over the last couple

Washington Square Park has been refurbished....

...but still has its share of crazy people.

of years. Not to worry, there’s still enough questionable activity there to make it seem bohemian.  Smith tells the story of a couple of tourists who saw her and Maplethorpe hanging out there.  One asked the other if they were artists and hence people they should photograph. The other said no, they’re “just kids.”

You can still go to Coney Island as the pair did when they could only afford one hot dog at Nathan’s. And, if you’re particularly dedicated to experiencing the life at the Hotel Chelsea  www.hotelchelsea.com where Smith and Maplethorpe lived for many years, you, too, can stay there.  The rates are exponentially higher than in the early 70’s, but from what I can see from TripAdvisor reviews, you can have an authentic Chelsea Hotel experience—complete with the bugs, stains and loud music and with the same furniture and carpeting from Smith and Maplethorpe’s day.  Better, perhaps, to fork out $40 for the occasional tour the Chelsea offers and actually sleep in another hotel.

The St. Mark’s Poetry Project where Smith performed is still going strong. To get another taste of the poetry scene, head to the Bowery Poetry Club and Café, especially on Tuesday nights for the Urbana Poetry Slam. If you get a chance, eat dinner at DBGB, across the street (by contrast, new and very trendy).

Looking for more of the history of Greenwich Village? Take a Big Onion Walking Tour, which travels into the tiniest and most charming streets of Manhattan, so unlike the concrete jungle beyond the Village borders.  These are the haunts of William Faulker, Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac and his Beats buddies. Some of the buildings, which date back to colonial times, served as slave quarters and servants’ houses but are now the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city.

Top off your walking tour with a latte and a giant cookie at the cozy Grey Dog Coffee Shop on Carmine Street.   I love that they serve my latte with the froth in the form of a dog’s paw print. Clearly, I don’t have what it takes to be a starving artist.

New York City Vacations

Walker Evans

Robert Maplethorpe

Richard Avedon

Edward Weston

Dorthea Lange

Diane Arbus

Ansel Adams

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