At David Zwirner, a seri of exhibns looks back at inic works by gay artists. But forty years after was first reported, AIDS is not yet history.
Contents:
LIVG WH HIV/AIDS: 22 WORKS OM GAY ARTISTS
In amassg work ma by the mostly overlooked gay artists who lived and died durg the crisis, a global group of llectors is refg what the Wtern non looks like. * gay artist with aids *
Hujar: © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkIn amassg work ma by the mostly overlooked gay artists who lived and died durg the crisis, a global group of llectors is refg what the Wtern non looks llector, who wish to rema anonymo, keeps some of his more explic art the bathroom of his Connecticut home, cludg (middle, om top) McDermott & McGough’s “The Spir of the Htler” (2003) and “Uny Repeated” (1993).
For as long as he n remember, Baer believed that beg gay was an aberrance — and that to dulge would lead to a lonely ath. He rejected that part of himself, attemptg to cure, or at least curb, his gayns through therapy and an outsir, Baer entered middle age as a happily married straight man wh a quirky reer path that ma him popular at dner parti: In addn to beg a Harvard-ted doctor, he also wrote and produced h TV shows such as “ER” and “Law & Orr: SVU. ” But even as he helped troduce gay and trans characters to televisn, his sire gnawed at him, as did the attendant shame.
Enavorg to make up for lost time, Baer, who had been a sual art llector, started buyg work solely by gay artists, begng wh a lorful 1990 acrylic on paper portra by Don Bachardy of the wrer Pl Mote, whose 1992 g-out memoir, “Beg a Man: Half a Life Story, ” helped Baer do the same.
Felix Gonzalez-Torr is well-known for his nceptual art stallatns wh everyday objects, that addrs them like his experienc as a gay man, the impact of AIDS, love, and ath. * gay artist with aids *
“I don’t know that the world n change for the better except wh stori, ” says Baer, 67, om the apartment he shar wh his hband, the 37-year-old psychologist Brandon Weiss, which overlooks a seclud tangle of gkgo, ailanth and rk tre Central Park known as the Ramble, where gay men have gone cisg sce at least the 1920s. Much of Baer’s llectn clus subject matter he’d long nsired taboo — maybe distasteful — and which he now displays throughout his home on Manhattan’s Upper Wt Si for the same reason gay bars screen vtage porn: as a way to rve out a space for himself and others like him where tolerance, even acceptance, of queerns isn’t enough.
In the rooms, gayns is worshiped, champned, fend and DavisBaer’s tert queer art spans genr and sexual inti, but there’s an emphasis on work by gay men om the early days of the AIDS epimic the 1980s and ’90s, many of whom created relative obscury and have often been fotten, only to be reclaimed recent years by a new generatn of llectors. A selectn of work by gay male artists who lived and died durg the AIDS era.
* gay artist with aids *
1 of 9 A selectn of work by gay male artists who lived and died durg the AIDS era.
Has arranged the works wh a curator’s eye, pickg up mon threads among the artists: Wojnarowicz’s and Wong’s tratn over feelgs of isolatn and nfement; how Steers and Hujar uld make even an ailg gay man — pecially an ailg gay man — look like a kg; the special cursy and re wh which othered people saw one another and, one another, themselv. At the time, some dienc found pictns of sickns too disturbg to study or hang above a crenza, among them even gay men who need to have their pa unrstood but may not have wanted to live wh nstant remrs of a plague that had fected every aspect of their liv.