Fear and Loathing at MoMA: A Conversation on Wolfgang Tillmans and Meret Oppenheim
Art

Fear and Loathing at MoMA: A Conversation on Wolfgang Tillmans and Meret Oppenheim

To look without fear. That’s the title of Wolfgang Tillmans’s current dizzying retrospective at MoMA. But this begs questions, namely, who is supposed to be looking without fear? Tillmans? The audience? If it’s the viewers, what are we bravely confronting? Berlin clubs? Photographs of Frank Ocean, Kate Moss, and Chloë Sevigny? A whole lot of images … Continue reading

Dance This Mess Around: MoMA’s “Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art In the East Village, 1978-1983”
Art / Party Out Of Bounds

Dance This Mess Around: MoMA’s “Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art In the East Village, 1978-1983”

I’m not used to suffering from invasive flashbacks inside a major museum. But, pulling back the heavy curtain, leading into Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Closet, a cozy yet mind-altering intergalactic Day-Glo-painted trash utopia, I was immediately sent through a time warp to June 2011, boogying to The B-52s “Planet Claire” and Martha and the Vandellas “Jimmy … Continue reading

No Family Is Safe When I Sashay: Sexuality In Robert Gober’s ‘The Heart Is Not A Metaphor’
Art

No Family Is Safe When I Sashay: Sexuality In Robert Gober’s ‘The Heart Is Not A Metaphor’

In Pefume Genius’ song “Queen” off of their recently released album Too Bright, Mike Hadreas, the musician behind Perfume Genius, presents a defiant embrace of the homophobic stereotypes and fears surrounding gay effeminacy, namely the assumptions that effeminate gay men are diseased, threats to “The Family” and abject bottoms. Likewise, Robert Gober’s retrospective The Heart Is Not A Metaphor at the Museum of Modern Art resonates with a similar frank presentation of queer sexuality and homophobic notions surrounding it. Continue reading

Good Night, Sweet Campy Prince: A Belated (Mostly) Video Tribute To Taylor Mead
Trashy Tributes

Good Night, Sweet Campy Prince: A Belated (Mostly) Video Tribute To Taylor Mead

Sitting in the MoMA sculpture garden on Monday watching poet, actor and Warhol superstar Taylor Mead jiggle his ass in Warhol’s aptly titled film Taylor Mead’s Ass, which was shown in conjunction with Dirty Looks: On Location and Dirty Looks at MoMA: Mining The Collection, I realized that I will really miss Mead who passed away in May. Continue reading