Thek's lovely shot of his two boyfriends, Peter Hujar and Joe Raffael, 1956.
Peerless reader JMK tips me to the NYT piece about the Paul Thek at Leslie Lohman which looks at
"a very early, formative phase in Mr. Thek’s life, when he drew his primary influences from a network of young gay men in the arts.
"In 1954, just out of art school at Cooper Union, Mr. Thek was the lover of two such men, the photographer Peter Hujar and the painter Joseph Raffael. A short time later he moved to Florida and formed a partnership with the set designer Peter Harvey, who would design for Balanchine and who introduced him to artists, composers and writers, among them Tennessee Williams.
"The exhibition, organized by Mr. Harvey and the art historian Jonathan David Katz, documents Mr. Thek’s art from the time, and his earliest known drawings and paintings hint of things to come, particularly his 1980s work. Equally valuable, though, is the image formed, through snapshots and letters, of the social environment in which Mr. Thek moved, an image far removed from the conventional picture of 1950s gay life as furtive and underground. Instead, we see men openly sharing affection and exchanging creative sparks, a nurturing reality we might know nothing about were it not for the dedicated labor of this invaluable museum."
On display until July 7. For more, read Paul Thek: Artist's Artist
Leslie Lohman's show Lust in Uniform: Images of Military Homosexuality closes tomorrow. For more of that, bring back Fleet Week.
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