Perfect Lovers

This is 'Perfect Lovers'

Created by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, it is not just one of my favorite pieces, it also happens to be one I consider to be pure 'genius'.

Even if your first inclination is to think the proverbial:

"I can do that!, literally take two Ikea-looking clocks and but them side to side."

It is a genius because you would be right, you can actually do that!!!

FGT was a very generous artist because anyone can have his work in their very own home and at times for free! 

Where Felix demonstrates his ingenuity is by injecting humanity into these otherwise inanimate objects by titling the piece 'Perfect Lovers'.

And in turn, he makes the clocks symbolic and gives it meaning.

The object, to begin with, is a marker of time and a signifier of time passing...

Time could be representative of that specific moment a couple met...

or even the time they'll spend together.

He expresses their "perfectness" by pairing identical clocks keeping identical time and starting off with the seconds hand in perfect unison, and as with any object, once you pair it with the same object, it becomes a couple, highlighting their sameness and giving a nod to a (his) same-sex relationship.

Each clock is thereby representative of him and of his lover, Ross, existing in perfect harmony by keeping synchronistic time.

But because it is battery-operated, one of the clocks will eventually slow down and eventually run out of power before the other one and both will eventually cease to mark time....

This in turn becomes an indicator of his and Ross's mortality and an end to their time together, making it a poignant and moving piece for two people who were battling AIDS.

But it doesn't just stop there, the two circular outlines of the clocks touch and in turn draw out a horizontal figure eight...which is associated with the infinity symbol.

A testament to love....everlasting....forever....

that love exists even after loss

and that even the art piece itself can last beyond its usefulness,

for even if both clocks stop marking time, their union remains infinite in itself...

GENIUS!

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres is perhaps the artist who most influences my work (or at least is in the back of my mind) and this image is the first of his I ever came across. 

One of his better known photographic images: a rumpled bed with two pillows. The image is relatively boring in a conventional sense especially for one you would expect to see on a billboard, but like most of Felix's work you need to know a little bit about it before you can truly assess it.

As part of his Billboard project, this image was displayed on several billboards across the city simultaneously (in this case NYC). This was done way back in the Middle Ages when there was no such thing as the internet (or at least it was in its infancy)...and it was also during a time when GLBT lifestyles were relatively invisible (especially to mainstream America).  Yet with this work he delicately touches upon two highly charged issues that will be part of a national discourse for the next twenty-plus years (and still is today).

The first being the distinction between the public vs. the private, something that will become increasingly blurred and obsolete with the ubiquity of the internet. By displaying an image of the bed he shared with his then recently-deceased partner, Ross, via a highly visible and commercial venue, it begins to question the boundaries between the public and the private... and more specifically to FG-T's intent, the role of government and society in our personal lives.

The second issue this work touches upon is the collective idea of a conjugal bed.

By displaying what is in all actuality an illicit scene (The U.S. Supreme Court had yet to strike down the laws that made same-sex sexual activity legal in the country and would not do so until 12 years later) the viewer is left to ponder the illegality and harm of such a serene site.

This image is not the graphic representation of a criminalized sexual act but a gentle reminder that an expression of love goes beyond the act of sex and unites us all in its commonality regardless of orientation.

You would be hard pressed to find someone that considers this image perverse and offensive regardless of political or religious leanings, yet this image is evidence of the most intimate and personal site of a relationship (in this case same-sex).

It is a tribute to love and loss while existing as a highly-charged political statement.

Brokeback Mountain

I wrote the following review in October 2007 for the movie Brokeback Mountain on Netflix as a response to reviews I was reading from viewers. I felt that some of those reviewers were missing the crux of the movie and some were bordering on homophobia. This was my response to them.

I found this movie to be a cinematic masterpiece and one whose style and content many reviewers in here (Netflix) may have missed the basis of. This movie goes beyond being a 'gay' movie into a movie that is collective in scope and leaves us with something to learn and take away from. In regards to the slow pace of the movie as some have complained, I think that it is was being purposefully used. The slow panning of the landscape not only depicts the sublime and expansive landscape but also helps to magnify the banality and mundaneness of small rural mid-western towns and Ennis' life in particular. The director Ang Lee, uses a similar tactic in the movie Ice Storm to create a palpable chill depicted through the weather and through the detachment of the characters' lives). Brokeback Mountain is not an 'agenda movie' trying to validate the deceit and actions of these men as some have suggested but rather to serve as evidence and reminder that living a double life is harmful not only to those you deceived but to those that do the deception as well. The women in this story are as much a victim of the rigid social conformity prevalent during that time as the men are. They are afflicted by the betrayal the men are consigned to create. 

This movie does not have a happy Hollywood ending nor can this story be sugar-coated. It instead leaves us with no consolation or resolution and makes us feel the regret and frustration of understanding oneself only when its too late. Unfortunately history is seen with 20/20 hindsight vision and in this post-Will and Grace society in which same-sex lifestyles are much more visible and tolerated than it ever has been, it is hard for us to situate ourselves at a time and place when gay men (and lesbians) had no role models nor narratives in which to live their lives by. This movie gives us an understanding of the actions of individuals during a time when their desire (homosexuality) was considered a pathological disease, their acceptance ('coming out') was a social death sentence, and their love (universal and whole) was riddled with guilt. These men and many like them were resigned into living their entire lives either denying their desires or fulfilling them in the dark shadows of shame.

Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007)

A touching and inspiring story of enduring love and same-sex relationship involving the writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner Don Bachardy. 

The strength of this movie comes from actual photos and extensive footage from home movies and not so much on staged re-enactments that usually pepper documentaries of this nature. These home movies serve as a testament to a strong and happy (and controversial) relationship displayed alongside some of Hollywood and literary greats of the time. Both men are talented in their own right but the movie's true inspiration comes from seeing their courageous 30-year plus relationship lived out in the open during closeted times, and it is Don's actions and motivation during Christopher's death that expresses the true depth of their spiritual and emotional bond. 

Don Bachardy painting a life portrait of his partner Christopher Isherwood

However, it is hard to overlook the circumstances that might have contributed to the success of their love (and to its controversy). Their May-December relationship is disturbing when one realizes just how young Don was when he started dating Christopher and the effect this might have had on Don's own sense of self-worth and identity. This not only comes to the surface when Don admits to emulating Chris's mannerisms and speech but also in his admission to his constant need of approval from Christopher in even deciding what to wear. The fact that Christopher (through his writing) professes to be attracted only to those outside (and beneath) his blue-blood social class taints this relationship with an air of manipulation. Which is unfortunate, because what could be seen as a successful and validating gay relationship during times of adversity at times becomes tarred by seeming as subjugated love. 

Review originally written on 4/2/10

Little Joe

Duane Michals -- Joe Dallesandro as Gargoyle

chance meeting -- duane michals

Here's a photographic sequence by Duane Michals.

One of the reasons I enjoy his work so much is not only for its uniqueness in execution (his use of hand-written text and sequential images sets him apart) but for the subject matter and narratives he explores.

When I first came across this image, I was immediately drawn to the suggestive undertones the 'chance' meeting holds. 
And a frustrated encounter to boot.

Duane Michals

This is the work of Duane Michals. He is the first ‘art photographer’ I was introduced to at a time when I thought photography was either a document or simply vernacular. I had no idea that it could be an expression of something or even tell a story. He was introduced to me in my second year of college by a professor whose name I can’t recall and at a time when I was working in ceramics, frustrated and looking for a means to creatively execute my thoughts and ideas. One of our assignments in this beginning photography class, was to emulate Michals, and I did so by using a slow shutter speed to capture motion and using multiple images to create a simple narrative. Of course, it was deemed successful at the time mostly due to the technique and good execution, however when I look back at them now, I see the naiveness of a student who is new to the medium. 

Even though I now know of many photographers I like and find inspiring, Duane Michals is still a photographer whose work I love and admire. His choice of male models at times are a little too-perfect for my taste (some look like adult cherubs), but the way he works and the fact that he uses hand-written text right on the print still feels different and distinguishable from the many photographers out there. Part of my attraction to his work I suppose has to do with our shared affinity in sexual orientation, but years later when I came across an interview with him, I realized we also shared a fascination with death. He, like me, have always been obsessed with the idea of death and mortality since an early age. However he, unlike me, recognized early on in his career that the themes of loss, desire and longing are always ripe for investigation.

One of my favorite possessions is this small out-of-print book I came across in the 80s. It has Michals’ photographic interpretations of the poems of Constantine Cavafy. Michals visual eroticism paired alongside Cavafy’s poems of nostalgic longing and unrequited love with The Smiths playing continually on my record player is what composed most (if not all) of the angst that was my twenties.

                                                                                    ---Duane Michals

Understanding

My younger days, my sensual life ---

how clearly I see their meaning now.

What needless, futile regret....

But I didn't see the meaning of it then.

In the loose living of my early years

the impulses of my poetry were shaped,

the boundaries of my art were plotted.

That's why the regretting was so fickle.

Any my resolutions to hold back, to change,

lasted two weeks at the most.

                                                                        ---Constantine Cavafy