GLR May-June 2026

one offscreen appears and slaps them across the face, then moves on. In the exhibition Free! Love! Tool! Box! they are being rit ualistically pierced with needles by Lolita Wolf, a BDSM au thor and educator. In a forced-feeder scenario titled Gorge, the scene is silent but features a monotonous, nonstop loop of the 1950s song BunnyHop . Gorge has a master-slave subtext, de picting the artist, seated and shirtless, being repeatedly force fed by an archetypal bearish Black man, naked to the waist. Blake is biracial, with a Black father and a white mother, and the feeder, who is Black, suggests a social dynamic concerning race and power. Blake’s stomach becomes noticeably distended during the final scenes of being fed watermelon—a hyperbolic signifier of white supremacy—in a visceral reversal of the dy namics of racial oppression. Many 20th-century artists controversially employed ready mades or found objects, including Duchamp’s urinal sculpture, Fountain ; Picasso’s Bull’s Head, crafted from a bicycle seat and handlebars; and the work of Louise Nevelson, who scavenged New York City streets for discarded furniture parts to create sculptures. Blake’s readymades—such as bondage leather and chains, examination tables, furniture, restraints, straitjackets, and whips—transform the ordinary by selecting and recontex tualizing objects from his personal archive. Blake shifts readymades from their original use and mean ing into statements about art, identity, and perception, prompt ing viewers to see objects differently. His collection of 2,500 vinyl records and electronic equipment was used for an instal lation titled Ruins of a Sensibility , inviting visitors to DJ tracks from a nine-hour playlist. Feeder 2 , a one-room cottage built

with gingerbread tiles mounted on a steel frame, releases a strong gingerbread scent that entices visitors to nibble on it. Dual Restraint is a sculpture made of canvas, brass, and plas tic—a large straitjacket with empty compartments big enough for two bodies, inviting viewers to consider “elective intimacy” within a restrictive space. Blake is a recognized queer visionary, but some of their ad vocacies are concerning because they promote a gay male cult of hypermasculinity that deradicalizes queer identity. Although the multipart essay “Tom of Finland: An Appreciation” was written in 1988, the debate about the artistry of Touko Laakso nen continues today. Blake wrote: “Tom of Finland is one of the gay world’s few authentic icons.” This presents a challenge: Can fascistic iconography be seen as iconic, inclusive, or pro gressive? Blake suggested: “After the experiences of Nazi Ger many, it is impossible to claim that its symbols are neutral. However, it is equally wrong to say that once symbols acquire a meaning, that meaning is fixed forever. … [I]t would be a mis take to say that even those that contain Nazi imagery are fascist in intent or effect.” Undoubtedly, the eroticization of fascist symbols is common in gay male subculture and pornography. It’s worth revisiting the debates about Nazi iconography that have persisted since the 1970s, what with the rise of the New Right, the Alt-Right, MAGA, and dark-MAGA. Blake’s impressive body of work explores complex ideas about æsthetics, gender futurity, queer identity, interconnect edness, intersectionality, and sexuality. They envision the dun geon as a utopian space, where their work aims to turn that vision into reality. One hopes the dungeon isn’t just a patriar chal daydream.

Getting Used to Not Getting Used to It

N OW in his mid-fifties, Michael Lowenthal realized he was gay as a teenager, and this revela tion left him feeling displaced from his family, who were struggling with their own sense of dislocation as American Jews who had lost many relatives in the Holocaust. We hear Lowenthal in a pierc ing first-person voice trying to think through his confusions in a series of essays

came to America. Lowenthal tracks down a picture of Peter and becomes obsessed, certain they would have shared a meaning ful relationship if he had survived. Lowen thal comes to believe that Peter probably shared his own sexuality and his ambiva lent Jewishness, as well as the hostility the world thrust upon them. He thinks of asking his father about Peter but holds back, seeing his father as a distant

E LAINE M ARGOLIN

PLACEENVY Essays in Search of Orienta ti on by Michael Lowenthal

Mad Creek Books 296 pages, $24.95

in the provocative Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation . Lowenthal’s usual medium is fiction, and he’s received acco lades for novels like The Paternity Test , Sex with Strangers , and Charity Girl . Here he’s breaking new ground. There’s a palpa ble tension throughout that pulls us in as Lowenthal struggles with past heartaches and the difficulties he still faces as a gay agnostic Jewish man who dreams of finding a transcendent love. Lowenthal tells us about a half-uncle Peter who died in a concentration camp. He learns about Peter accidentally at age fourteen while reading his paternal grandfather’s obituary; the patriarch had left behind a child from his first marriage when he Elaine Margolin is a freelance writer based in New York City. May–June 2026

presence ever since his parents’ split when Lowenthal was eleven. He considers asking his paternal grandmother, Nana Susi, about Peter, but she refuses to speak of those times. He stares at the photograph of Peter and thinks about how there might be some sort of life out there for him. He’s struck by Peter’s movie-star looks and can’t deny feeling attracted to him, seeing him as a male mentor who might have given him what his father could not. He feels ashamed of this infatuation, as if it were unseemly to have such feelings for a dead Holocaust victim. Lowenthal describes how hard it was for him as a young man to negotiate and navigate every relationship. He was over whelmed by guilt and awkwardness. Who can be trusted, and who must be kept in the dark? When he revealed his sexuality

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