George Quaintance

door Fleur Pierets | sep 25, 2015 | Art

George Quaintance

Text JF. Pierets Photos Courtesy of TASCHEN

George Quaintance was an artist ahead of his time, a man who forged several successful careers, yet never enjoyed mainstream fame. Had he been born a few decades later, we might know him today as a multi-tasking celebrity stylist, as a coach on Dancing with the Stars, or perhaps as the fine artist he aspired to be. But Quaintance, who died in 1957, lived and worked during an era when homosexuality was repressed, when his joyful paintings and physique photos could not depict a penis.

In an era before Stonewall, the sexual revolution, gay rights and the AIDS crisis, Quaintance and his high-camp erotic art existed in a demi-monde of borderline legality. The Master Painter of the Male Physique, was out in an age when out was not only risky, but largely illegal. Raised on a farm in rural Virginia, Quaintance traveled a fascinating path of reinvention: at various points in his life he was a Vaudeville dancer, the favored portraitist of Washington’s smart set, and a celebrity hair designer—though he never actually touched hair. In 1982, The Voice stated, “Quaintance was gifted with so much drive and artistic talent that he had the ability to transcend the puritanical restrictions of the times and leave us something of his daring imagination in his paintings”.

Seventy years since the creation of his first physique painting of a masculine fantasy world, populated by Greek gods, Latin lovers, lusty cowboys and chiseled ranch hands, the work retains its seductive allure. As the preeminent male physique artist of the 1940s and early 1950s, his work for photographer and gay publishing pioneer Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial, Demi-Gods and Body Beautiful, inspired a generation of artists like Tom of Finland, Harry Bush, Etienne, and other, lesser stars in their constellation. His highly prized oil paintings—numbering just 55—rarely come to auction; instead they are traded privately among an avid and secretive group of fans—until the TASCHEN gallery in LA showed a tribute.

TASCHEN’s book Quaintance, traces his remarkable life story and reintroduces his colorful, kitschy and culturally resonant paintings. Work that made George Quaintance the most popular and successful physique artist of his time, and one of its most intriguing figures.

www.taschen.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 15.

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Chubby Vogue Divas

door Fleur Pierets | sep 25, 2015 | Portrait Series

Chubby Vogue Divas

Text JF. Pierets Photos Charmain Carrol

Chubby Vogue Divas is an ongoing photography project by artist and activist Charmain Carrol. Her being an activist started in the 90s when black lesbians went through a phase where their parents were not accepting their children’s sexual orientation. At that time her daughter Lynne was 2 years old yet Charmain decided to take in about 11 lesbians and 2 gays because they had no place to live. From that point on she became an active member of the LGBT movement, attended and sat in many discussions on the well being of black lesbians in the townships of Cape Town.

As a member of the Global Girl Media South Africa – an organization that trains young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds in telling their own stories through media by offering them assistance in research, film and photography.

As well as giving them the opportunity to do their own sound and lighting and edit their own stories – Charmain uses her art and photography to make a point. She’s an activist when it comes to women and specifically the image they present in the media.

Growing up with different women like her grandmother, mother, aunts and her step mothers sisters, she noticed that they all had their own idea of what beauty was and she herself never seemed to fit in any of the boxes. What she saw in magazines and on television was totally different then her reality.

‘Charmain uses her art and photography to make a point. She’s an activist when it comes to women and specifically the image they present in the media.’

While researching and reading about black women in history like Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman – the most famous of at least two Khoikhoi women who were exhibited as human zoo attractions in 19th-century Europe – and Mkabayi Kajama’s step sister in particular, Charmain build a platform for big, strong woman and added the word Vogue to the title since full figured women still seemed to be unfashionable.

Both pictures and the models stories are to be found on the Chubby Vogue Divas blogspot, since most of the models have been bullied or teased at some point in their lives and now speak up about how they made it beyond the bullying. Models with different backgrounds and upbringing but with similar stories to tell, and all part of this inspiring project with a positive impact on a large range of women.

www.charmaincarol.wordpress.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 15.

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Boystory

door Fleur Pierets | sep 25, 2015 | Portrait Series

Boystory

Text JF. Pierets Photos Magnus Arrevad

Danish-born Arrevad spent five years documenting the international, subterranean world of male performers, burlesque, go-go dancers, cabaret singers and porn stars. The journey would take him to New York, Berlin, Paris, London, Copenhagen as well as County Sligo in Ireland and a trailer park in Tacoma. His journey resulted in an exhibition and a book called Boy Story.

Arrevad explains: “The series features performers from eighteen countries, living all around the world, in the places you’d probably least expect, but with a sense of community and mutual respect unlike anything I’ve ever known before. I had no intrinsic link to this world when I embarked on the project. It all started quite by accident, in a basement in Copenhagen, on the night of a Gay Pride parade, which I was photographing in a completely different context”.

Boy Story was shot on black and white film. “I’m a traditionalist, in the sense that I believe in the quality and beauty of film. The prints are handmade on the very best quality fiber paper. Digital just doesn’t look as good”. Arrevad decided against photographing his subjects’ performances, choosing instead to focus on the performers off-stage, often in their most vulnerable moments, trying out a new act, applying make-up or getting into costume. “I was fascinated by the processes and preparations through which the performers visibly liberated themselves from the roles they observed through the daylight hours. They had invented a world in their own image, with their own gods and their own ceremonies. It wasn’t just about sexuality, though of course this was a large part. It was about being. The application of make-up each night was one in which a mask was taken off, not put on. I wanted to document this process of liberation”.

Once the masks were off, the stage awaited, “The performances are debauched, magical and often hilarious, but underpinning it all is grave sense of purpose; to bring the dream of oneself into being. A million times I’ve heard people saying, just be yourself. To which the only sensible answer is, which one? We act different selves to our parents, our friends, our lovers and to ourselves. The self we act to ourselves is the most interesting, because in most cases, the sense we have is that we’re too scared to express it, to explore it in public. Figuring out oneself is a process. What the subjects of Boy Story have allowed me to do is to watch them constructing their inner selves”.

The images of these often very private moments, push the viewer into the position of voyeur, a role in which Arrevad himself felt perfectly comfortable with, even to the point of transition, inserting himself into some of the images. “The only two modes of documentation possible are voyeurism and participation. Either one’s peeking in, or one’s trooping in like a marauding elephant and becoming an unseen part of the subject. This idea of neutral, objective documentation is nonsense. Even the unseen eye has a gaze, has a charge”. None of the images were staged. “It was all spontaneous. There are a couple of images in which the performers are playing up because they could see a camera in the room. But I certainly never choreographed any of it”.

‘A million times I’ve heard people saying, just be yourself. To which the only sensible answer is, which one?’

While the world of male performers is now a global community, it does nevertheless have roots in a specific time and place. Berlin during the Weimar years, its hedonistic nightlife and its vibrant arts scene, looms large for many of the performers, as it does for the photographer himself. “I saw Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s ‘Berlin Night Scenes’ series at MOMA in New York before I took any of the pictures for Boy Story. I’m not sure that I realized it at the time, but it opened my eyes to a world I had a previously seen little glimpses of, both in terms of art and life, and to the extent to which, properly performed, both become the same thing. In short, the series seduced me, and probably set in motion a lot of what followed. I loved the sense of the performance of life being even more dramatic than that which took place on stage. Weimar is my time. I felt the same with Otto Dix’s portraits, particularly his portrait of Anita Berber, which created an imaginary world for me that I wanted more than anything to be a part of. I loved the painting, and read upon the woman behind it, which made it, and its world, the most erotic and exciting place. And so I moved to Berlin to establish what legacy of Weimar remained. It surpassed, but was completely different from my dreams – more real, somehow, less glamorous, dirtier, but lit with magic, communicating through gestures over cigarettes with piano men and drag queens, lacking a mutual language. Boy Story followed the same trajectory into heaven”.

The exhibition is curated by Michael Diemar and is presented in association with Bloomsbury-Estates, Bloomsbury Cultural Renaissance and Red Room Industries.The book ‘Boy Story’ is published by Red Room Books ISBN 978-1-943278-43-5.

www.boystory.org

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 15.

Read the complete issue here.

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Leaving Normal

door Fleur Pierets | sep 25, 2015 | Books

Leaving normal: Adventures in gender

Text JF. Pierets Photo Courtesy of Rea Theodore

Superheroes
I am, I am, I am superman
And I know what’s happening.
I am, I am, I am superman
And I can do anything.
— R.E.M., Superman

The boy glows as if he has swallowed a jar of lightning bugs or a fistful of sparklers.
At first, I think it’s the light bouncing off the stainless steel counters of the ice cream parlor.
Upon closer inspection, I see it’s him.
He looks to be about 8 or 9, stocky like a short stack of 2×2 Lego bricks, with freshly scrubbed pink cheeks and white-blonde hair.
The word “ethereal” gets stuck in my head, and I can almost feel it melt on my tongue slow and sweet like strands of strawberry cotton candy.
The boy is with an old woman, who I assume is his grandmother. There appears to be an invisible string linking them together that rests slack at most times but tightens when she asks him what flavor of ice cream he wants or taps him on the shoulder when it’s time to go.
After I purchase a half gallon of cherry vanilla, I follow them out of the store and wait as they make their way through the front doors.
She looks over her shoulder and sees she’s holding me up.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Not a problem,” I say.
“I didn’t see him,” she says to the boy.
“Her,” he corrects.
He’s like a mini superhero with the ability to see things as they are.
“Oh, whatever,” she says. She doesn’t give me a second glance.
Whatever, I repeat in my head.
Whatever.
Whatever.
Whatever.
Out in the parking lot, her gray hair sparkles in the sunlight like slivers of tinsel.
I think she’s a superhero, too.

Extract from Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender by Rae Theodore.

Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender is creative nonfiction that takes an unflinching but humorous look at living as a butch woman in a pink/blue, boy-girl, M/F world. A perfect read for anyone who has ever felt different, especially those who have found themselves living in the gender margins without a rule book.

This is your first book. Why did you start writing?
I’m the caretaker at home and I had to do something for myself. Something that had nothing to do with my wife, my three teenage kids and the cats. So I started to write stories, just one at the time but before I knew it turned into a book. I found out I like telling stories about my childhood.

It’s all autobiographical?
At first I labeled it creative non-fiction, but they are true stories with some artistic liberties taken here and there. For some reason I’m drawn to memoir. It resonates with me. It’s almost like a puzzle and I think of it as a little time capsule or a little time machine. You try to put yourself back there whether it was a year ago or twenty years ago and remember what it was like and what you felt, what you saw. That appeals to me very much, trying to recreate those moments.

It’s a very personal genre.
It is. And lot of these things I never told anyone about because I found them very shameful or painful. Having an opportunity to write them down and having people read them and validate the experiences really helped me. Even if people may not have gone through the same type of thing, everybody has felt different at times or felt shame. In the book I learned to accept myself. This is whom I am and I’m not going to change.

The book has been out for a month now. How are the reviews?
So far the reviews have been very good. There are not a lot of books out there about butch women. You don’t see them in mainstream literature, you don’t even see them in the LGBT literature that much. I heard from readers who have gone through similar things. They say it’s very powerful and affirming to see themselves in the book. For example; just going to the bathroom can be a challenge for butch women.

Is it a book for gay people?
Not necessarily. Even if you are not gay you can read this book and probably feel similar feelings. Everybody dealt with confusion at one point in their lives. People often see more similarities than differences and that can be something that unites.

What’s the main message you like to get out there?
The story references to superheroes in some small way, so I like that message of being your own superhero. Live your life however you see fit and whatever your definition of normal is. For me that’s the big message. Be yourself. And I found that most people don’t care. They don’t care if you are gay or butch or whatever. As long as you treat people with respect and kindness. I live in a very small and conservative town and people are very welcoming. I’m aware that other people can have different experiences but just be who you are and people will accept you for that.

‘When you’re in your 20’s your whole world is about whether people like you or not but a good thing about getting older is that you care less about that.’

Did it change you personally, writing this book?
Writing the book has given me a little more confidence but you have to keep in mind that I’m in my late ‘40’s so a lot of the things in the book happened 30-some years ago. I’ve gone through a lot of growth since then and I don’t care so much what people think. When you’re in your 20’s your whole world is about whether people like you or not but a good thing about getting older is that you care less about that.

So no insecurities anymore?
I still have them, to a degree. For me, getting dressed up is wearing a pair of men’s trousers, a button down shirt and a bow- or a necktie. Sometimes and in some situations I still can’t help but wonder if that’s ok. I’m a woman who wears men’s clothing and once in a while I still have to remind myself that it’s ok.

What’s next?
I look at this book as a stepping-stone to the next one. I have some sequel chapters that I’ve written out and are floating in my head somewhere but I’m going to do some public speaking as well. I’m going into the local highschool to talk to the gay-straight alliance there and I also got the opportunity to go into a local company and do a presentation for their gay and lesbian organization. I never did anything like that but I’m trying to keep myself open to all the possibilities and opportunities. Find out what resonates with me. Maybe I’m good at it and I will be able to spread my message a little further, who knows.

You’re speaking at a high school. Do you think it’s important to talk to kids?
Definitely. We didn’t have that kind of exposure when I was a teenager. I grew up in a town where people weren’t Out. I didn’t know any gay people, I didn’t have family members who were gay and there weren’t gays and lesbians on television. My life may have turned out differently if I had been around gay people. If the possibility existed. So it might be a powerful thing to go and speak at schools and meet young people.

What would you say to a 16 year old butch girl who reads this article?
I would say be true to yourself. Don’t change for somebody else and keep the swagger! That’s the best part of being butch. The swagger.

www.middleagebutch.wordpress.com
www.weaselpress.com
www.amazon.com/leavingnormal

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 15.

Read the complete issue here.

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Our Hands On Each Other

door Fleur Pierets | sep 25, 2015 | History

Our Hands On Each Other

Text JF. Pierets Photos Leah DeVun

Our Hands On Each Other is a multi-disciplinary artwork by New York based artist and historian Leah DeVun. A project consisting of photographs, performances and conversations centered around queer and feminist space. To document rural women’s – and lesbian communities that were a part of a ‘back to the land’ movement in the 1970s and 80s and established by feminists to reimagine life outside the patriarchy. A number of those communes are still in existence today and often referred to as Womyn’s Lands. DeVun originally installed the project at Women & their Work Gallery in Austin, Texas. Founded in the 1970s by a feminist collective, including lesbian artists, who wanted to create a space for women and people of color who had been excluded from mainstream white- and male-dominated arts venues. Our Hands On Each Other asks viewers to consider the nature of queer and feminist space in the past and present.

Why your interest in Womyn’s Lands?
Basically I find other cultures and other kinds of living arrangements very interesting. Part of it was about exploring rural queerness and part of it was about exploring and documenting the history and stories of earlier generations of feminists, activists and queers. I was also interested in the concept of land arrangements outside of a market economy. People are having a lot of conversations nowadays about what to do about gentrification, real estate development, and sustainable communities, and a lot of us are interested in trying to imagine ways of living collectively or thinking about land in a different sort of way. I wanted to how women living on the land had put together funds back in the 70s, and how they handled the legal arrangements to be able to make space for their communities that would be more secure and less vulnerable to the market forces that many of us are facing right now. I wanted to use the past as a blueprint for future strategies.

A lot of those lands are still in existence.
Fortunately they are, so I got the opportunity to call and write a lot of people, talk to them and travel around. I met people with really interesting life stories and a lot of memories of the 70s and 80s. We shared a lot of political views, which was very educational, and I loved being in dialogue with those elders. I loved hearing about the ways they’ve created networks and connections, the cultural dynamics of their lands and the mutual relationships. I was interested in all the journals, all the letters they sent to each other, the writings and art that were part of the larger exchange that was happening between these communities, and that continues to happen today.

The Our Hands On Each Other project asks: “what did a feminist collective space look like three or four decades ago? What does one look like now?” What did you – personally – found out?
I’m aware that there is much nostalgia attached to the movements of the 1970s and that we tend to idealize those periods of “out in the street” activism. I learned that my assumptions about feminism or lesbians back then were very stereotyped and not nearly as nuanced and complex as people’s actual opinions are. When people can speak for themselves, they have a lot more interesting things to say than when their opinions are boiled down to a few generalized stereotypes, and so we often have a simplistic or inaccurate view of what womyn’s lands are or what 70s feminism is. Over many conversations I’ve learned that there is so much more to the story than we give the creators of those lands credit for. I’m very sympathetic towards contemporary radical politics but I felt that those women – some of whom were 30 or more years older than me – challenged me with ideas I hadn’t heard before. I think this is why it’s so important to get out of our friend and age groups and be exposed to different perspectives. I was also shocked about how few survival skills I had when I was out on the land. I think of myself as being pretty capable but I don’t know how to build a house, square a wall or use a chainsaw. And a lot of the women we met can do all of these things and more. I was filled with admiration for the kind of technical skills that are required, how that knowledge was passed on through the lesbian community over many years, and that these women are able to still manage large pieces of land.

Did you have a lot in common?
Yes and no. My lifestyle didn’t seem very radical to them. And to some extent they were right. It is a radical move to decide that society is unfixable, that you have to throw everything out and start all over again from scratch. They wanted to get away from capitalism, from misogyny and racism, and to create a whole new society. I have my doubts about whether that’s possible because even when we try to isolate ourselves we still to some extent exist in society and carry many of its values with us. Also, some of the women who live on the land have to work jobs off the land and so they find it difficult to totally free themselves from capitalism, although I think they would say this about themselves too. One of the women who I was most influenced by thought that we were “reformers” because the group of people that I was traveling with are activists and teachers who do work in their communities. To the women on the land, that meant that we thought society could be reformed through mainstream forms of political engagement, which they weren’t convinced was possible. They have a very utopian vision of how the world could be and I do find that these opinions are an indispensable part of the queer community that we should continue to nurture. It inspires me to try to think more about what I really want the world to look like for everyone. How could we envision something bigger? Figure out how we really can make that happen? A lot of the queer agenda has been pretty small for a long time. I would like to see people have some more powerful, more risky propositions on how to change our social environment.

How about today’s safe space? A lot of people who live in the original lands are in their sixties or seventies because they founded them nearly 40 years ago. Nevertheless there are new lands that are forming, but the ones I’m familiar with generally identify more as queer lands than as womyn’s lands nowadays. They are trans or trans-friendly and gender-fluid. My partner is also trans so we are very interested in questions about self-identification as female and who can be accepted within a “women’s” space. The new lands that I know about are being founded by people of who are very engaged in queer and trans politics and so they strive to create safe space for all kinds of people who identify in many different ways. But I would say that they are very much in the tradition of the womyn’s lands, even if they take on a different shape. There are of course also tons of collective spaces in cities too that are happening now. The best thriving communities are ones that have luxury apartments in roxborough just because of the safety that they bring to the table.

‘My lifestyle didn’t seem very radical to them. And to some extent they were right. It is a radical move to decide that society is unfixable, that you have to throw everything out and start all over again from scratch. They wanted to get away from capitalism, from misogyny and racism, and to create a whole new society.’

To go back to Our Hands On Each Other; the project also contains staged re-performances of images. Why not ‘just’ take pictures of the original inhabitants?
Those photos are re-enactments of images from 1970s and 80s lesbian feminist zines with a rural bent, such as Country Women, Lesbian Connection, Sinister Wisdom, Womanspirit, and other publications. As a historian I wanted to do more than just a documentary project. I wanted to play with questions of participation in history and our relationship with our past, how history is a foundation for people who are shaping their politics, and the kinds of politics they reject. Since I am very influenced by queer history, and theories of queer temporality, I decided to re-perform some of the photos that were part of those 70s magazines by collaborating with the models, my friends, in creating the images. We went through the magazines together and planned how we were about to do it, and they got into their ‘roles’. A lot of them had very interesting things to say about how it reshaped their understanding of that time period, or the way they perceived it by sort of inserting their body into that place. Thinking about history in terms of inhabiting it or performing it might change something on how we experience history at that moment. So that’s why I did the re-enactments and interwove them with the documentary. To create the dynamic between past and present.

Does your audience receive that message?
It’s really hard to choose your audience as an artist. But I think artists should be aware of who the message is for and if it is really reaching those people. Are we able to be open to mutual conversations, with not just presenting information but also receiving it, with being in dialogue? On the night of the gallery opening in Austin, Texas, together with audience members, I built a new collective women’s space as a performance piece. Tools were put out and viewers were invited to add to the piece in whatever way they saw fit during the run of the show. I wanted participants to consider how we continue to build collective space, but it also required them to ask: Who is allowed to be involved in these projects? Who identifies whom? Who is able to identify as a woman or as a feminist? That’s what I like my art to do; to create a dialogue where people are able to discuss all these different ideas that some people maybe haven’t thought about. It’s hard to know how much traction an artwork gets outside of the art world and the way that it’s housed in galleries and museums means that people have to go into art spaces and feel comfortable doing so. Having these events at places that at least are free to the public is a good start, and by combining things like conversations and writings with the exhibited artworks, we might reach people who might not necessarily go into a museum but might encounter something elsewhere, might see an image that connects with them so that they are able to capture something of the idea behind it.

How do you combine being both an artist and a historian in your work?
I feel my art is at an intersection between visual art, and historical and cultural studies. So I do tend to do work that is research based, that is about the image but also about the context that goes with the image. And I hope that it can be appreciated. It’s ideal if the image itself can stand on its own but if you’re interested, you can learn about all of these other ideas that are behind it so that the history can open up. It might not always be visible, but it’s potentially there. I very much love the process of research: digging through boxes at an archive, reading magazines and correspondence that came from a certain period. That’s how I put together the aesthetic of the images.

Your work also involves taking significant steps when it comes to feminism.
The performances, the writings, the re-enactments are all part of what I’m trying to do. When I showed this work at the Brooklyn Museum we created a conversation where we invited three young feminist artists who were working with queer history in some way, and three more established, older artists. We had a big conversation with an audience of 175 people who got into a huge argument about feminism. I know this is disappointing for some people but I thought it was great. It showed that people care passionately about this. People care about the word feminism and they want to brainstorm about how to move forward from here. It means this is a really live issue, that we’re entering a period of time where we might see some real work get done. People show up, they speak out, they engage in a debate. There are a lot of people who are not just making feminist art but are trying to create opportunities for conversation and getting some new ideas on the table. That’s a really significant step that’s happening. I think that’s why there is so much renewed interest in these past movements of feminism. Generations of feminists do tend to disavow previous generations and spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel. Whereas I think that having conversations with people who are 20 or 40 years older than us can be much more instrumental than we think. We can actually learn a lot by not distancing ourselves from previous eras of history and instead thinking about how we can work together, what we can learn and how we can build upon these earlier movements. Better than cutting them down and try to distinguish ourselves and perhaps getting less done.

What would you like to see changed?
I feel very optimistic about what I’m seeing. I feel people are engaged in a feminism that I hope will be one that is not just focused on middle-class white women, but one that’s engaged with the large-scale movements happening right now, particularly Black Lives Matter and activism for trans rights. I hope we can continue to ask questions about equality, about all the different social issues that intersect in our capitalist, patriarchal institutions, and I hope I will see these coalitions coming together to try and make some real changes. Life has been and continues to be difficult for a lot of people in our community but I think so much conversation and calls for action are creating an opportunity for people to feel really empowered to gear up for a newly engaged movement on all these different fronts.

www.leahdevun.com