The New York Times Book Review (8/7) looked at a new bio of American artist Marsden (1877-1943). Hartley painted in many genres from landscape to impressionism to abstraction. The review of the book Marsden Hartley: Race, Region, and Nation by Donna M. Cassidy, relies heavily on revelations of his Nazi sympathies but nowhere does it mention that he was gay. While it wouldn’t excuse Hartley, part of his pro-German stance may’ve been his love affair with a young German, a Lt. von Freyburg, killed in World War I. Hartley’s well-known abstract painting ‘Portrait of a German Officer’ incorporates von Freyburg’s initials and military decorations in it. He also painted ‘Eight Bells’ Folly’, a memorial to another relationship (who committed suicide), American poet Hart Crane. One wonders why it is important to extol Hartley’s anti-Semitism while skipping his homosexuality.
You did catch the Chicago Sun-Times political cartoon (8/23) of Pat Robertson wearing a ‘Who Would Jesus Assassinate?’ T-shirt, didn’t you? Robertson, who can’t seem to open his mouth without frothing at someone, was the target of a Sun-Times editorial (8/24) where he was quoted as hating Planned Parenthood for ‘teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism.’ If he advocates the murder of the president of Venezuela, what might he have in mind for gays and lesbians?
The NY Times (8/14) spent a page interviewing gay author Kevin Bentley whose erotic memoir Let’s Shut Out the World has just been published. The book remembers the raunchy but relatively innocent sexual adventures of ’70s San Francisco. Bentley, whose physical survival is due to genetic luck, refuses to condemn these times before safe sex was even a concept and has something of a literary following on the West Coast.
When it gets here check out the gay Chinese movie Formula 17 says the reviewer in The NY Times (8/26). This Taiwan indie by director Ms. DJ Chen ‘swoons with youthful innocence’, was a big winner in highest-grossing Chinese films and is a charming love story.
Across the water from Taiwan, a university in Shanghai is giving China’s 1st class on gay culture. The class is way over-enrolled, says the Chicago Tribune (8/17).
The end must be nigh; drag queens across the world are gnashing their teeth … silently. The president of Turkmenistan has banned lip-synching. Saparmurat Niyazov cites the cursed practice as having ‘a negative effect on the development of singing and musical art.’ Saparmurat, have you heard some of these folks’ real voices?