Mannered Faggot
Oct. 7th, 2003 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseMy subject title is stolen, if I remember correctly, from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scapegoatee who used it to describe what he perceived as a more affected younger version of himself before he had sucked cock and grown more genuine.
But today, I am here to honour the mannered faggot and perhaps, for a time, to aspire to his lofty, artificial heights. I have been reading a wonderful if circumlocuitous "triography" of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus and Lincoln Kerstein by David Leddick. From the 1920s to the 1950s, they were part of a glittering, New York homosexual demimonde devoted to beauty and art. Platt Lynes was a pioneering photographer whose work was inspired by surrealism and the naked form of beautiful boys whom he photographed until his early death. Cadmus was a magic realist painter who felt a direct kinship to his Renaissance predecessors. Lincoln Kerstein was an impressario who brought ballet to America. Their lives intersected both professionally and socially and all were sincere, dedicated to art and surprisingly out. (Perhaps only surprising when we mistakenly think of our time as a the zenith of social progress.)
In the introduction, Leddick elegantly demolishes the mid-20th Century move to abstraction when painting became about paint, music about sound and dance about abstract arrangment of the human body. He writes:
I don't entirely agree with this assessment, but it has merit. I would argue that Jackson Pollock's work is about emotion and the role of chaos in life. But Leddick understands that in losing the world of representation, we lose the beauty of artifice -- the essential virtue of that gay world. In the world of artifice, true, subterranean beauty is mined and polished and worshipped. And what is essential and important is that this process happened in the face of -- in defiance of -- prejudice that declared same-sex passion to be grotesque and filthy.
Paul Cadmus, before devoting the remainder of his career to painting beautiful men, created lovely and savage murals featuring drunken sailors picking up drunken floozies and cavorting through the streets of New York. Many of these murals were public-works commissions and were either rejected before they were hung or were the subjects of controversy once they were. One is reminded of the Diego Rivera frescoe destroyed in Tim Robbin's "The Cradle Will Rock".
Why did Cadmus, a quiet and gentle man, become such a savage satirist? Leddick conjectures:
I enjoy reading this. I take pleasure at being invited into the world through a gay sensibility. Of course, I am now becoming a mannered faggot. In addition to the use of "one" in my writing, I am entering a new aesthetic phase in the decoration of our home. We recently purchased this print of Cupid and Psyche by Jean-Louis David and had it framed in foofy gold.
Isn't it splendid? Look at Cupid's face, staring into the camera as if it had already been invented, saying with his eyes, "I had her, you know! Isn't she lovely? Am I not, as well?"
And I want to have parties like Platt Lynes' with witty, beautiful people drinking wonderful concoctions, making connections -- both artistic and social -- and then fucking into the night in defiance of the Joe Millionaire, SUV and Doritos world around us.
scapegoatee who used it to describe what he perceived as a more affected younger version of himself before he had sucked cock and grown more genuine.But today, I am here to honour the mannered faggot and perhaps, for a time, to aspire to his lofty, artificial heights. I have been reading a wonderful if circumlocuitous "triography" of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus and Lincoln Kerstein by David Leddick. From the 1920s to the 1950s, they were part of a glittering, New York homosexual demimonde devoted to beauty and art. Platt Lynes was a pioneering photographer whose work was inspired by surrealism and the naked form of beautiful boys whom he photographed until his early death. Cadmus was a magic realist painter who felt a direct kinship to his Renaissance predecessors. Lincoln Kerstein was an impressario who brought ballet to America. Their lives intersected both professionally and socially and all were sincere, dedicated to art and surprisingly out. (Perhaps only surprising when we mistakenly think of our time as a the zenith of social progress.)
In the introduction, Leddick elegantly demolishes the mid-20th Century move to abstraction when painting became about paint, music about sound and dance about abstract arrangment of the human body. He writes:
The emotionality of the Surrealists, Neo-Romantics, and Magic Realists became embarrassing to an art world that only felt comfortable handling the materials of the trade. The world had become difficult to interpret. Perhaps it was better to make no attempt. There was, of course, a great falling off of public interest in this kind of new art, which had nothing to do with people's lives and feelings. Art became for the most part a world only interesting to its practicioners and the millionaires who bought artworks as a kind of banking. Or gambling.
I don't entirely agree with this assessment, but it has merit. I would argue that Jackson Pollock's work is about emotion and the role of chaos in life. But Leddick understands that in losing the world of representation, we lose the beauty of artifice -- the essential virtue of that gay world. In the world of artifice, true, subterranean beauty is mined and polished and worshipped. And what is essential and important is that this process happened in the face of -- in defiance of -- prejudice that declared same-sex passion to be grotesque and filthy.
Paul Cadmus, before devoting the remainder of his career to painting beautiful men, created lovely and savage murals featuring drunken sailors picking up drunken floozies and cavorting through the streets of New York. Many of these murals were public-works commissions and were either rejected before they were hung or were the subjects of controversy once they were. One is reminded of the Diego Rivera frescoe destroyed in Tim Robbin's "The Cradle Will Rock".
Why did Cadmus, a quiet and gentle man, become such a savage satirist? Leddick conjectures:
Most homosexuals do not like to play a double game of pretending to be someone they are not. Certainly, Cadmus never did. With his work, Cadmus was only asking the rest of the world to face up to a little bit of the reality that he was facing up to every day of his life.
I enjoy reading this. I take pleasure at being invited into the world through a gay sensibility. Of course, I am now becoming a mannered faggot. In addition to the use of "one" in my writing, I am entering a new aesthetic phase in the decoration of our home. We recently purchased this print of Cupid and Psyche by Jean-Louis David and had it framed in foofy gold.
Isn't it splendid? Look at Cupid's face, staring into the camera as if it had already been invented, saying with his eyes, "I had her, you know! Isn't she lovely? Am I not, as well?"
And I want to have parties like Platt Lynes' with witty, beautiful people drinking wonderful concoctions, making connections -- both artistic and social -- and then fucking into the night in defiance of the Joe Millionaire, SUV and Doritos world around us.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-10 01:18 am (UTC)Yes, it is splendid.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-10 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-10 11:35 am (UTC)Capitol, eh? I've heard the name, but that's it. I liked Treason, his first, but I seem to be the only one who does. Anything in the Ender series is brilliant, including the latest, Ender's Shadow--except the terrible Xenocide. The Alvin Maker series is pretty good, too.