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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Visual Art Currently Hanging

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:11 AM

From my review of The Old, Weird America at the Frye, out yesterday—these two guys are terrific:

One of the great pleasures of the show is the small body of paintings and sculptures by David McDermott and Peter McGough. The two artists, formerly a couple, live anachronistically (using candles rather than electric lights, for instance) and make their art that way, too. Each work has two dates, one given and the actual date of the making, as if to reinscribe their subjects—gay men—into history retroactively. The effort is a form of resistance with endless potential, and the results are moving. The white painting In Praise of Shame, 1915 (2000) is dotted with portraits of dapper men in hat and suit; each reads both as target and window into another, more colorful world. There are so many pasts to remember.

Here's their Divine Fury, 1932 (2002), oil on linen, 60 by 48 inches.

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Their photography is also quite excellent. I recall seeing their work in that media for the first time way back during the Punic Wars...New York...Robert Miller Gallery (?)

Posted by baconpussy on October 8, 2009 at 8:22 AM

WoW! Some of those dudes look like Alan Cummings.

Posted by Keekee on October 8, 2009 at 8:59 AM

Boh! In everything I read about them, they never mention that they appropriated a lot of their male iconography from J. C. Leyendecker, a fashion illustrator famous for his "highlight" portraits of men.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Leyendecker

Posted by --MC on October 8, 2009 at 9:49 AM