GLR January-February 2023

Herb Ritts, Francisco Scavullo, and Bruce Weber. George Platt Lynes’ photograph Nude Boy (1937) is included in the exhibit because of Lynes’ profound impact upon fashion iconography. Historian Elspeth H. Brown in her book Work!: A Queer History of Modeling asserts that Lynes’ so-called “amorous regard” or “amorous glance” be came the fashion model’s look—the ex change of glances central to queer desire: “[T]he fashion tableau references public out door cruising practices.”

Peter Hujar’s encounter with fashion dates to 1967 when he attended a master class taught by photographer Richard Ave don and art director Marvin Israel. He would later shoot for Harper’s Bazaar and GQ. He made portraits of performers in the back stage dressing rooms of theaters and night clubs. Many performance artists posed for him, including members of the Cockettes, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, and the Theatre of the Ridiculous, including Ethyl Eichelberger, John Edward Heys,

FASHIONING MASCULINITIES The Art of Menswear Victoria & Albert Museum March 19 to November 6, 2022 FASHIONING MASCULINITIES The Art of Menswear Edited by Rosalind McKever and Claire Wilcox V&A Publishing. 272 pages, $60.

During the euphoric 1970s, Peter Hujar and Robert Map plethorpe were immersed in New York’s downtown art and ho mosexual underground, and their photography bears witness to it. They cruised the pre-gentrified districts of Greenwich Village be fore displacement—on the Hudson River waterfront piers, at the graveyard shift in the Meatpacking District, and in the after-hours sex clubs. Their work may be considered marginal to fashion. Still, sartorial tropes appear in many of their images, often campy, parodic, and cynically subversive. Both Hujar and Mapplethorpe understood the importance of fashion in constructing subcultures and identities. Queer cultural historian Jack Fritscher wrote in Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera : “Robert was a canny fashion photographer, creating fashion by cruising the streets and bars where, as Vivienne Westwood knew, fashion hap pens first. From the leather bars and the movies, Robert texturized leather peerlessly in his photographs of chaps, vests, gloves, jack ets, and hoods.” Included in the exhibit is Mapplethorpe’s portrait of former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger (1976), which points to the photographer’s interest in Classicism and an atti tude toward the self, the body, and personal identity. In a couple of images of Ken Moody, his most photographed subject, he sat irizes high fashion with the model portentously about to devour a stiletto shoe or balancing one on his butt. He was transgressive about gender, going into territory beyond his leathermen images, as in Self-Portrait (1980), where he’s in partial drag with makeup, his hair coiffed into voluminous curls, and wearing a fox fur boa.

Charles Ludlam, Larry Ree, and Mario Montez. Several of his best-known images were Warhol superstars, such as Candy Dar ling on her Deathbed (1973) and Jackie Curtis Dead (1985), em ploying dramatic chiaroscuro lighting techniques. The photograph Christopher Street Pier #2 (Crossed Legs) (1976) uses only a few items of clothing—well-worn work boots and athletic socks—as signifiers. The location is a pier on the Hudson River. Hujar was a consummate storyteller, and this is an exam ple of his photographic narrative technique. In this image, we see only the legs of a reclining man, his face blocked by his crossed legs in a campy pose reminiscent of a high-kick dancer. The gay clone uniform requires only few items of clothing to identify the subject as a gay man. While he appears to be sunbathing, it’s more likely that he’s cruising in a well-traveled Greenwich Vil lage gathering place. § W HILE IT MAY SEEM that the promotion of cosmetics, skincare, and beauty products for men is a recent phenomenon, masculine grooming has its roots in the 18th century with the proliferation of elaborate male grooming paraphernalia. The exhibit includes a veneered satinwood and leather, velvet-lined dressing-case, tortoiseshell shaving sets, and silver tweezers. Alan Withey’s catalog essay “A Polished Impression” explains that, as part of an interest in physiognomy in the 18th century, eyebrows were considered an indicator of character, and men plucked and dyed

F IG . 2. Left: Joshua Reynolds. Portrait of Charles Coote, 1st Earl of Bellamont, 1773-74. Middle: Photo by Giovanni Corabi. Harris Reed, Fluid Romanticism . Left: Harris Reed on Harper’s Bazaar , April 2022.

January–February 2023

29