In an say "Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Dire," out om TASCHEN, Gopnik argu that Warhol had good reason to believe that darg gay imagery was where art ought to have been headg.
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ANDY WARHOL AS A GAY ARTIST NFLICT WH HIS CATHOLIC FAH
“In New York, he pletely threw himself to this creative queer muny, ” Moran even the New York gay and arts scen, Warhol — who as a public figure was famoly elive about his bgraphil tails and inty — was “almost but never que out, ” Gopnik wr his Warhol bgraphy. “Anyone wh half a bra realized that Warhol was gay, but he didn’t actually e out and say really until the 1970s and ’80s, and even then was only said a somewhat jokg way, ” Gopnik ’s artistic immersn gay culture New York is on view a selectn of his early le drawgs om the 1950s featured the Tate exhib. Together, they rell not only a “moment of gay life New York, ” as Gopnik not, but also Warhol’s role as both a wns to and a participant that the drawgs, like most of Warhol’s explic works throughout the 1950s, were not well received by the U.
Like the early le drawgs, “Sleep” implicly suggts Warhol’s dual rol both as an observer of gay life and a member of . “By makg so formally avant-gar, he saved himself om havg to worry about whether people would be up arms about s gay ntent, ” Gopnik ntrast, the ntent of Warhol’s “Ladi and Gentlemen” seri, which Marsha P.
“It was rare for women who weren’t naked to be the subject of art; was extremely rare for people of lor to be the subject of art by and for the mastream world; and my gus is ’s one of very few imag of transgenr people, and certaly the only signifint reprentatn of transgenr people of lor by a major whe artist, ” Gopnik Italian art aler Luciano Anselmo missned the seri om Warhol after the artist brought him to the Gild Grape, a bar Midtown Manhattan that attracted gay and transgenr people, along wh drag queens. But the exhibn’s foc on the artist’s fah touch on the nflict, and sometime the horror, of beg a gay man a tradn that eply disapproved, and adds dimensn to what we know about Warhol’s relatnship wh his mother. Yet aga, Warhol was offerg up gay imagery: pictur of boys “wh their tongu each others’ mouth, ” acrdg to Pearlste.