Laguna Art Mm looks back on town's gay bar scene - Los Angel Tim

Contents:

• WHAT TOOK TO CREATE THE WORLD’S FIRST GAY ART MM
• GAY SECRETS AT THE ART MM
• LAGUNA ART MM LOOKS BACK ON TOWN’S GAY BAR SCENE

WHAT TOOK TO CREATE THE WORLD’S FIRST GAY ART MM

Our roots trace back to 1969, when Charl Llie and Frz Lohman held an exhib of gay artists for the first time their SoHo loft. Throughout the 1970s, they ntued to llect and exhib gay artists while supportg the SoHo art muny.

This led to the formatn of the Llie-Lohman Gay Art Foundatn 1987. The "Queer Threads" exhibn, which ran early 2014, examed the diversy of gay, lbian, bisexual, transgenr, and queer experienc.

Stanley Stellar / Llie-Lohman Mm of Gay and Lbian Art. From the stage of the Founrs’ Day celebratn of the Llie + Lohman Mm of Gay and Lbian Art, the octogenarian art llector addrsed the r crowd there to celebrate the upg expansn of the mm he tablished– a major tone that will double size the world’s first and only mm dited to gay art. But before discsg the future, Llie wanted to talk about the origs of his llectn of homoerotic work.

GAY SECRETS AT THE ART MM

The rt, ed, was history: thoands of years of lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr history, ignored and relegated to circumscribed footnot, if that. Or as the print of the mm’s board of directors, art historian Jonathan David Katz, puts , Llie “enpsulat the cultural tennci” of more than half a century of gay historic activism. As did for many men of the time, Europe troduced Llie to a more open visn of gay life.

Growg up a small town durg the Deprsn, Llie’s exposure to gayns as an inty was limed to what he uld glean om the encyclopedia. Aware of his own sexual sir om an early age, he left for Los Angel as soon as he uld, where he easily fell wh s sub rosa gay muny. But was Europe that ma him realize there was such a thg as “gay history” – and that much of that history was only prerved art.

“We ma the disvery early on that we'd both been discreet llectors of gay imagery, ” Llie says. His rourc, bed wh Llie’s nnectns to the theater and art worlds, enabled them to amass a trove of gay art.

LAGUNA ART MM LOOKS BACK ON TOWN’S GAY BAR SCENE

But what, exactly, mak art gay? “Charl [Llie] has always been fundamentally foced on the homoerotic, which he unrstands as the most dissint form of art makg, ” says Katz, “bee by fn has been historilly exclud. Do that leave “gay art” the same nebulo I-know--when-I-see- tegory as pornography or obsceny?

In his ey, what mak a piece of art “gay” is the perspective and tentn of the artist.