on going IDENTITY

a trade of sins between men... don't ask.don't tell

Whose curiosity wouldn’t be piqued by the opportunity to see a clutch of high school cadets re-enact Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” as a modern-day gay tragedy? Even the playwright himself would spring for a ticket to Alan Brown’s “Private Romeo,” an earnest experiment in don’t-ask-don’t-tell drama as indebted to shirtlessness as to iambic pentameter.

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Mattachine Society

The primary goals of the society were to
- Unify homosexuals isolated from their own kind;
- Educate homosexuals and heterosexuals toward an ethical homosexual culture paralleling the cultures of the Negro, Mexican and Jewish peoples;
- Lead the more socially conscious homosexual to provide leadership to the whole mass of social deviates; and
- Assist gays who are victimized daily as a result of oppression.

(Four, yesterday at Julius Bar in NYC) Three years ago, (John Cameron) Mitchell and fellow DJs PJ DeBoy and Paul Dawson (both stars of Shortbus) and multifaceted cabaret performer Amber Martin started the party, which is named for the Mattachine Society, a pre-Stonewall gay-rights group that famously challenged New York’s “no service for homos” rule at Julius in 1966. A hit with gay celebs like Justin Bond and Alan Cumming, and New York hipsters of all persuasions, the Mattachine party stands in opposition to “the metronomic, inorganic kind of thump, thump, thump traditional gay folk music. The fascist body culture. The age phobia. The conformist, sheep-like quality of mainstream gay culture today,” says Mitchell.

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Luke Gilford & Perfume Genius

First writing music after leaving New York to return to his mother’s place in Washington State, Hadreas garnered a cult internet following and critical acclaim through his freshman effort, Learning. His second album, Put Your Back N 2 It, released next Monday, sees the singer-songwriter resurface with newfound confidence and poise shining through his hauntingly emotional piano-led ballads. "Some writer described him as a Hollywood starlet trapped in a twink's body," offers Gilford. "Usually on shoots I'm trying to reel myself in from getting too weird but Mike actually embraces that weirdness and totally runs with it, wanting to push things even further. More strange, more funny, more fucked up. It's surprising but kind of delightful." As well as making the album art for both records, Hadreas creates his own homemade videos by repurposing fetish films and vintage Russian cartoons, and recently hit the news after a 16-second advert for the new album––featuring him topless and embracing porn actor Arpad Miklos––was controversially banned from YouTube. Here the Seattle-based rising star opens up on bar life ennui, stepping up to the plate and dissecting asphyxiation films.

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for the love between men...

If only words would mean more than they do;
Two lovers kiss and between the silence of their lips
torrents of feelings flow on a highway
of unknown questions, driven by
Madness and the co-pilot of such a journey
falls asleep reasonableness, waking up
uncounsious of where it is and how did he get there.

For the love between men is unfolded,
wrapped in it self with no way out.
A kind of unknown rite that fits no other,
for no other has its roots in the unconditional form
of the promess between masculine lips,
flat chests, shaped jaws...
Bodies that interlace in untold shapes
of constorcionist abilities and always
with a fury that burns...

Daniel Pinheiro, NY 2012

untitled

Old Love Story

OLD LOVE STORY by Allen Ginsberg


Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, forlorn
Character corrupting, worthy mankind's scorn
Or eyes that weep and breasts that ache for lovely youth
Have no mouth to speak for mankind's general truth
Nor hands to work manhood's fullest delight
Nor hearts to make old women smile day and night
Nor arms to warm young girls to dream of love
Nor thighs to satisfy thighs, nor breath men can approve --

Yet think back to the time our epic world was new
When Gilgamesh followed the shade of his friend Enkidu
Into Limbo's dust to talk love man to man
So younger David enamored of young Jonathan
Wrote songs that women and men still chant for calm
Century after century under evergreen or palm
A love writ so sacred on our bible leaf
That heartfire warms cold milennial grief.

Same time Akilleos won the war at Troy
Grieving Patroklos' body, his dead warrior boy
(One nation won the world by reading Greek for this
And fell when Wilde was gaoled for his Bellboy's kiss)
Marvellous Zeus himself took lightning eagle shape
Down-cheeked Ganymede enjoyed God's thick-winged rape
And lived a youth forever, forever as can be,
Serving his nectar to the bearded deity
The whole world knew the story, the whole world laughed in awe
That such love could be the Thunder of immortal Law.

When Socrates climbed his ladder of love's degrees
He put his foot in silence on rough Alcibiades
Wise men still read Plato, whoever they are,
Plato whose love-lad Aster was his morning star
Plato whose love-lad was in death his star of Night
Which Shelly once witnessed as eternal light.

Catullus and tough Horace were slaves to glad young men
Loved them, cursed them, always fell in love again
Caesar conquered the world, top Emperor Power
Lay soft on the breast of his soldier of the hour
Even Jesus Christ loved his young John most
Later he showed him the whole Heavenly Host
Old Rome approved a beautiful bodied youth
Antinus Hadrian worshipped with Imperial Truth
Told in the calm gaze of his hundred stone
Statues standing fig-leafed in the Vatican.

Michelangelo lifted his young hand to smooth
The belly of his Bacchus, a sixteen-year youth
Whose prick stands up he's drunk, his eyes gaze side-

Ways to his right hand held up shoulder high
Waving a cup of grape, smart kid, his nose is sharp,
His lips are new, slightly opened as if parted to take a sip of purple nakedness,
Taste Michelangelo's mortal-bearded kiss,
Or if a hair-hooved horny Satyr happens to pass
Fall to the ground on his strong little marble ass.

Michelangelo loved him! What young stud
Stood without trousers or shirt, maybe even did
What the creator wanted him to in bed
Lay still with the sculptor's hand cupped on his head
Feeling up his muscles, feeling down his bones
Palm down his back and thighs, touching his soft stones --

What kind of men were the Slaves he tied to his bed?
And who stood still for David naked foot to head?
But men love the muscles of David's abdomen
And come with their women to see him again and again.

Enough, I've stayed up all night with these boys
And all my life enjoyed their handsome joys
I came with many companions to this Dawn
Now I am tired and must set my pen down
Reader, Hearer, this time Understand
How kind it is for man to love a man,
Old love and Present, future love the same
Hear and Read what love is without shame.

I want people to understand! They can! They can! They can!
So open your ears and hear the voice of the classical Band.

barely there: James Lee Byars

The American artist James Lee Byars would sometimes refer to himself ironically as the "World's Most Famous Unknown Artist", a fitting title for a man who made of his whole life a performance and a play, but who so often remained just out of reach, inaccessible, a fleeting presence. Byars never stopped wandering; he lived and worked at various times in Japan, the Alps, Berlin, Venice, Nova Scotia, Los Angeles and New York. He even traveled to his place of death, choosing to rest beneath the pyramids. His performances were brief, sometimes lasting only a few seconds. Then he might quickly disappear, a magician in his gold suit and top hat.

read more on Letters From The World's Most Famous Unkown Artist

Barely There (Part I)

HIDE / SEEK

David Wojnarowicz
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
1981. Gelatin silver print, 14 x 14" (35.6 x 35.6 cm). © 2012 Peter Hujar Archive

Tom Murphy (San Francisco)
Minor White (American, 1908–1976), Cypress Grove Trail, Point Lobos, California, 1951.

“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. The show, on view through February 12th, explores the role of sexual identity in modern art through a variety of media, including photography.

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“Oedipus (Elvis #1)”
Ray Johnson (American, 1927–1995)

Allen Ginsberg
‘Myself seen by William Burroughs…our apartment roof Lower East Side between Avenues B & C…Fall 1953′
1953; printed 1984-1997
William S. Burroughs (American, 1914–1997)

Altered Image / Andy in Drag
Christopher Makos (American, 1948 - in Lowell, Massachusetts)

Altered Image I, 1994.
Deborah Kass (American, 1952)

The controversial exhibition HIDE/SEEK was until today being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, and along with the millions of things that this city offers to do, sometimes Museums are just the place to go for a last call... at least most of them. Last call has started and it will still run for a few weeks, but today I got to see one of the most excellent things that this city has to offer that is to be in front of some of the great work that great artists made in this country. ...over 100 works by 67 artists were up in the walls showing how much of this hide and seek controversy that all the world had (and still has) to deal with regarding gender issues and all the in betweens. Just by the amazing Prospect Park in Brooklyn some of the art work that helped to shape part of the cultural and artistic identity of this city and this country, as it is said on the brochure "to explore how gender and sexual identity have shaped the creation of American portraiture...".

Above are some of the works that most impacted me, either for not knowing some of the artists and others because of the subject in them of different points of view on the same subject.

From paintings where the subject is hidden and talks about lust between men as a form of entertainment, going through the Beat Generation, AIDS, the transformation and allusion to myths as in James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971), 'hide and seek' becomes a game that has been forever played with gender issues and where art has most of the times the way to explore and bring catharsis to the theme that even in 2010 was under attack for being shown in Washington, DC.

But as Ma Rainey said...

Went out last night, had a great big fight
Everything seemed to go on wrong
I looked up, to my surprise
The gal I was with was gone.

Where she went, I don’t know
I mean to follow everywhere she goes;
Folks say I’m crooked. I didn’t know where she took it
I want the whole world to know.

They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me;
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men.

It’s true I wear a collar and a tie,
Makes the wind blow all the while
Don’t you say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
You sure got to prove it on me.

Say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me.

I went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
It must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men.
Wear my clothes just like a fan
Talk to the gals just like any old man

Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me.

RIP

Whitney Houston (Newark, New Jersey, August 9, 1963 – Beverly Hills, California, February 11, 2012)

we are young... for the valentine's mood!

How Happenings Happened

That October, Kaprow put these theories to the test. He staged a six-night-only production called “Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts” at the loft that housed the new Reuben Gallery, in a neighborhood that nobody had yet called “the East Village.” He hung plastic sheeting to divvy up the space into three rooms, and shifted audience members through at predetermined intervals. Artists were set up at stations to press oranges into juice, partake in games, give speeches, and (attempt to) play musical instruments. Other participants—including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns—were charged with painting circles and lines, over and over again, on both sides of a canvas stretched vertically in the middle of the main room. The vibe was gritty, if faintly ridiculous; the largely art-world crowd was game.

Allan Kaprow. Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts, 1959. Reuben Gallery. NYC

Ephemeral events don’t lend themselves to the retrospective treatment, but on February 9, the Pace Gallery will open “Happenings: 1958–1963” with a selection of never-before-seen photographs by Robert R. McElroy as well as related artworks by the movement’s key proponents, Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, Simone Forti, and Carolee Schneemann among them. And, of course, Samaras, who had been shuttling back and forth between art and theater and even enrolled in the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in 1959. As Oldenburg said, “Lucas was the perfect performer actually for these things. Whatever he did he did very slowly, obsessively, calculatedly … When I started doing these performances I wasn’t too clear about what I wanted them to be. Lucas sort of defined them for me.”

read full article here

NYC 2012

Daniel Pinheiro photographed by Walt Cessna NYC 12

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