More than any other profession, art criticism creates temptations to say stupid things. It's the duty of every critic to resist those temptations.
That was my thought after reading Blake Gopnik's silly review in the New York Times of the current J.C. Leyendecker exhibition in New York.
People have long understood that Leyendecker was gay, and that his sentiments emerged in his paintings of dashing and muscular men. But in recent years, there has been an effort to abscond with Leyendecker's legacy, injecting gay connotations into every brush stroke, and transforming the artist into a clandestine warrior for gay rights, while neglecting his broader array of artistic talents that produced 322 brilliant covers on a wide variety of subjects for The Saturday Evening Post.As far as I can tell, this unfortunate trend began in 2008 in the poorly researched book, J.C. Leyendecker by Judy Goffman Cutler and Laurence Cutler. It was certainly appropriate for those authors to note that Charles Beach, Leyendecker's model for the famed Arrow man, "was not only a homosexual but a kept man, the live-in lover of the famed artist who thrust himself into such an exalted status," but 200 pages later the book's fixation on "thrusting" continued unabated. We were still reading that "Charles Beach and Joe Leyendecker are held up as examples of monogamy among the gay community, so often criticized for promiscuity," or that "Charles' Dorian Gray image never [ages] in Joe's eyes nor in ours either" or that "members of the gay community [remember Leyendecker] for icons of masculinity and sensitivity." The authors inform us (without support) that Leyendecker was sending out "subliminal" homoerotic messages.
That book seems to have been the springboard for the new narrow focus in the show, “Under Cover: J.C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity,” at the New York Historical Society, and also in Gopnik's review of the show.
Turning back for another gratuitous swipe at Rockwell, Gopnik falsely implies that Rockwell was hostile to Leyendecker's sexual orientation:
Norman Rockwell, 20 years younger than Leyendecker and eventually his neighbor, writes quite brutally in his memoir about how Beach had “insinuated” himself into Leyendecker’s life and especially about the duo’s social withdrawal once he had.If Gopnik had bothered to read Rockwell's autobiography, he would've learned that Rockwell deeply admired Leyendecker and wrote about him with great affection and concern.
Yes, Leyendecker painted beautiful men who reflected a gay aesthetic. He also painted beautiful women, beautiful children, beautiful fabric, beautiful metal surfaces and even beautiful elephants. You'd never know it from Gopnik's review. And that brings me to my primary gripe: Leyendecker painted major pictures of romantic heterosexual scenes, domestic scenes, parenting scenes and other types of images demonstrating diverse skills.
But what image does Gopnik select for his review? The following mediocre, unrepresentative painting, because Gopnik is able to spin it into a masturbatory fantasy:
Gopnik writes:
There’s one case where the subversion was barely hidden at all: In an ad for Ivory Soap, the shadow Leyendecker placed on his model’s crotch seems clearly to hint at an erection, according to an exhibition wall text. You can’t unsee it once it gets pointed out.
Leyendecker exhibitions are too few and far between to be wasted on such nonsense. Leyendecker was a remarkable talent and the New York Times owes him better coverage than Gopnik monopolizing the conversation with his personal fetishes. Are there no copy editors left?
31 comments:
Just one more example of how a once great institution has been infiltrated and degraded by the snowflake mentality.
*sigh*
Just a different weed from the same miserable seed; evidence of how deeply Postmodernism poisoned the possibility of deeper aesthetic investigation among the 'educated class'.
Without an actual education in aesthetics and poetics - leaving aside even basic artistic appreciation - there's nothing left to art except surfaces and subjects; pigment and politics.
And, these days, subjects are just pawns for ideological/political obsessives.
To a Maoist there is only subject. The aesthetic insensitivity of Maoists is half of what makes them so dangerous.
The nightmare for the burgeoning field of Illustration History is just how much subject there is for the ideological goons to lunge for and dry ravish for Woke Tribal Status Points™.
Leaving aside presentism for a brief moment, Blake Gopnik tendentiously barks from the cult song-book of "Queer Theory" here; that nihilistic college-incubated grand strategy of a spreading homosexual fifth column overthrowing social normalcy and traditional mores as it propagates. (Nevermind that Pomo is supposedly against grand narratives.)
All to say, this wasn't some 'fumbling' of a review. This is how the woke cult members get paid; by the status they accrue by pledging allegiance to the cult in public using the rapidly diminishing prestige of legacy media outlets. (Batya Ungar-Sargon has done some nice work on this issue of status, prestige and how the woke extract social credit by hijacking legacy platforms to their cause; in lieu of garnering a passable income from their writing.)
Gopnik's review has nothing about the qualities of the art. It's all political screed. He should be writing a political column.
JSL
I totally agree with this review. Trying to see hints of the artists' live in every brush stroke is not knowing how artists work.
Yes, Leyendecker painted beautiful men who reflected a gay aesthetic. He also painted beautiful women, beautiful children, beautiful fabric, beautiful metal surfaces and even beautiful elephants.
Beautiful women, children, etc. that also reflected an extremely gay aesthetic. And not just in their subject, but in their handling and aspect.
Leyendecker’s gayness is as fundamental to his work as is Cassatt’s women-ness, Frazetta’s machismo, or Rockwell’s new england Protestantism is to theirs.
I think in every great artist we do see “hints of the artists' live in every brush stroke”. It is that they’ve synthesized themselves into every stroke which makes them great. The canvas becomes a testament to the artist's mind, filled from corner to corner with their taste and perspective.
Homosexuality is not just a bedroom fetish, it permeates every aspect of the person’s mind, attaching itself to their every response to the world. If you strip the gayness from Leyendecker, you’re left with very little.
Neither the NY Times writers or audience have the vocabulary or sensitivity to delve into just how gay Leyendecker’s art is, but even their naive observations correctly pinpoint the pervasive effeminacy in his art. Leyendecker's pervasive, 'limp-wristed' aesthetic doesn't diminish his work; instead, it defines it, manifesting as a masterful application of technique to express his personal poetry.
Now, if the critique is that the NY Times doesn’t delve deep enough into the nuances of art, that's valid. But to claim they’ve misrepresented Leyendecker feels more like a defense mechanism than a substantive argument. Let's appreciate his art for what it truly is: a testament to a man's identity skillfully translated into visual poetry.
If you strip the gayness from Leyendecker, you’re left with very little.
Richard, are you saying this in the sense that you would consider the same claim about Michelangelo to be true?
Developing an individual style as a representational artist takes years of practice. It especially involves borrowing from many different sources (other artist's, lifedrawing, etc.). Characterising Leyendeckers work simply as 'gay' is actually quite insulating to him.
*insulting
But I think it is too reductive to put this down to sexuality alone. There is a lot more to Leyendecker than his gayness, a lot more to Frazetta than machismo. What is human, true and beautiful is too universal to be yoked to human partials.
Not that it is sexuality alone. But that without their sexuality, their specific gestalt is gone. If you strip machismo from Frazetta you don’t have Frazetta at all. The qualities that make Frazetta are how these disparate elements multiply – (sexuality * spirit * physicality * atmosphere * … * n). If you zero out the sexuality variable in the Frazetta equation (or any other significant variable for that matter), the whole equation gets zeroed out. If you strip the homosexuality from Leyendecker, you don’t merely get straight Leyendecker. You'd end up with something much less.
Aren't Alphonse Mucha and Maxfield Parrish right in the same ballpark as Leyendecker in terms of how decoratively pretty – how feminine and airy - the work. Yet both got busy in the standard way.
And Frazetta’s muscular men have all the vascularity of a throbbing member.
I think sorting out why this feels very gay, but this does not, would get at something important about what is specific to these artists. What makes their work tick.
are you saying this in the sense that you would consider the same claim about Michelangelo to be true?
Michelangelo is an alien to me. I'd have a hard time formulating an opinion on what made him tick.
Richard-- How do you account for George Petty, a contemporary of Leyendecker's, who was heterosexual and yet painted prettified, oiled, muscular men who made the Arrow collar man look like a scruffy lumberjack? ( https://fineart.ha.com/itm/george-petty-american-1894-1975-you-have-a-good-line-darling-but-your-jantzen-lines-are-better-jantzen-s/a/5165-78176.s ) Petty's paintings were commissioned for the pin-up girl market so his images had to pass a heteronormative market test in Esquire magazine and ads for products such as Jantzen swimsuits.
That same market test applied to Leyendecker's work; millions of American women swooned over Leyendecker's men as the epitome of masculinity. Thousands wrote fan letters to the Arrow collar man, many of them proposing marriage. Men's clothing companies flocked to Leyendecker because they believed his "pretty" treatment of their fabrics and styles would be appealing to heterosexual men. These companies weren't looking for a "limp-wristed aesthetic" to attract gay customers. Over many years Leyendecker's paintings were proven to have plenty of appeal for heterosexual men trying to look their best and attract heterosexual women. The very conservative Saturday Evening Post didn't see any problem putting Leyendecker on their cover for decades.
On the subject of Frazetta ("If you strip machismo from Frazetta you don’t have Frazetta at all") I once got in a lot of trouble with women readers for writing that Frazetta painted great asses on women. One reader tried to come to my rescue by pointing out that Frazetta also painted great asses on men, and that these asses were the object of fantasy by gay fans.
https://arthive.com/artists/65344~Frank_Frazetta/works/358718~Mammoth
https://arthive.com/artists/65344~Frank_Frazetta/works/358767~Black_star
I would never deny that Leyendecker's paintings often had elements that reflected gay taste (to the extent that I understand what that is). But I think it's a historical lie for Gopnik to claim that Leyendecker, (a very private, reserved, elegant man) was a gay warrior hiding erections in his paintings to subvert the hetero status quo.
Just as I think Gopnik's heavy handed political agenda poisons his ability to judge Rockwell's work with any kind of objectivity, I think it equally poisons his ability to judge Leyendecker's work. I'm sorry to see this rare spotlight on Leyendecker wasted on such an agenda.
Kev -- I agree about Leyendecker’s gay "strange superficial, performative, dollish-plastic, hollow, and haunted quality”. But I think those aspects of Leyendecker are requirements of his artistic greatness. If we were to strip away the theatrical camp superficiality, more genuine narratives may surface, yes, but to the oeuvre’s detriment.
With more authentic narratives, he loses his freedom to design the canvas to the same degree. As his picture stops being so clearly decorative, we lose his (perhaps gimmicky) signature mark making. With more authentic pictures we lose his grand theaterical qualities.
We can see in his early work, like The Garden Walk, where that would have left us. Had he not been gay, he would have been footnote.
If we made Frank Frazetta into a genderqueer egalitarian vegetarian, while maintaining all his artistic skill, his magic would be gone. Without the violence and sex and whathaveyou, the art is dead. You need both craftsman and muse. Frank Frazetta would also have painted shit Parisian society still lives.
Poetry comes from the person of the poet. Poets are not interchangeable, and merely being incredibly skilled will not turn any old geezer into a great poet. The Art Establishment correctly emphasizes this uniqueness but errs in pre-selecting "potential" poets based on the Early Life section of their Wikipedias, neglecting to check if the poetry is any good.
Does being a fop make you a good poet? No, absolutely not. But is being a fop a precondition of being Lord Byron? Yes.
The very conservative Saturday Evening Post didn't see any problem putting Leyendecker on their cover for decades.
I’m not sure what you mean by the Saturday Evening Post was “Conservative”. What is the Saturday Evening Post to a Roman? To a biblical Israelite? To a Georgian? To a Pilgrim? To a Russian Medieval Peasant? To a BLM protestor?
The Saturday Evening Post was a business doing good business in its specific, peculiar cultural context. Their media and cultural context was heavily influenced by homosexuals. Today, many young women think it’s rather dashing for young men to wear nail polish and cross dress.
I'm thinking that maybe what I'm getting at about identity and poetry gets lost when we're talking about artists with technical genius.
But there are great artists who have little in the way of classical/technical skill, where their particular identity is perhaps more obviously a requirement of their poetry...
Consider Saul Steinberg with his jewish-brand wit, Quentin Blake with his juvenile whimsy, Woodie Guthrie with his dustbowl anxieties, or Sister Rosetta Tharpe with her cotton-picking evangelism.
Even in these instances, for example that Saul Steinberg's work wouldn't be poetry without his jewishness, do you contend we're dealing with beach ball counter-factuals? Or does this problem only arise with more classical masters of an artform?
"...the New York Times owes him better coverage than Gopnik monopolizing the conversation with his personal fetishes. Are there no copy editors left?"
The New York Times owes only its subscribers, who presumably are pleased with what they get. And no, so nearly as I can determine there are no copy editors left. Does anyone know what happened to them?
"The New York Times owes only its subscribers, who presumably are pleased with what they get."
What about their advertisers? Secret sources in government and business? Ideological tribe and political allies? Their personal interests in power, money, status, and societal influence and control?
The readers of the New York Times are as much the product of its enterprise as they are consumers of its product.
David—I want to complement you on this Leyendecker post. Your opinions regarding this gifted artist, his work and his critics are right on target. I’m a big fan of Leyendecker, from way back. As a high school sophomore in 1954, I studied the work of illustrators of the past in bound copies of the Saturday Evening Post going back to the early 1900s. I was amazed by the work of Joe Leyendecker and searched for more of his work. There was nothing like his technique. I was always surprised that there was little about him from the mid 1940s until the book published in 2008.
Joe Leyendecker’s work has to be reviewed within the context of his time and the reason the work was created. The fact that he was gay should have little to do with his paintings. His creation of the Arrow Shirt Man was to sell dress shirts and collars to an emerging class of educated young men who were fashion conscious. In doing so, he produced illustrations of men who became the ideal of the young American man—and he sold a lot of shirts and collars. Arrow brought the campaign back in the 70s with in-store poster art.
Rockwell was one of Leyendecker’s friends and a great admirer of his work. In fact some of Rockwell’s covers are reworks of Joe’s original cover ideas. Joe’s personal life should be little more than a footnote to any review of his work.
An artist’s nature influences his or her art but I am drawn to their work by their talents and skills in creating these marvelous images. In a way it reduces their work to frame it as gay or straight. Did Van Gogh paint the way he did because he was mentally I’ll or was he a great artist that expressed himself with his paintings?
Did Van Gogh paint the way he did because he was mentally ill or was he a great artist that expressed [his mental illness] with his paintings?
>Steinberg seems to me the ultimate New York City Jewish intellectual folk artist.
And because he is a folk artist his identity is central to his work.
But I think we are all folk artists in this way. The most naturalistic artists are themselves folk artists. Their naturalism itself is folk. Yes, every human is subject to natural law, but awareness of those facts are not culturally universal. (Science is itself folk in this way.)
And even in how we apply naturalism there is folk – Japanese watercolors have folk atmosphere, Turner has folk atmosphere, Frazetta does too. Atmosphere without the folk is photography.
It's fascinating to delve into the rich history and impact of renowned artists like Leyendecker. Promo Code Hq, a platform that offers exclusive discounts and promotional codes for various products and services.
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Well, I imagine that now everyone will be looking for phalluses like crazy in the work of this great artist and all the art and magic will be in the background
Agreed, David.
Gopnik's reading of L's male attire advertising work is being made in a visual culture vacuum. He might have looked at other illustrators' and photographers' work for comparison, and found that two blokes in a setting together is the established MO of the fashion genre. Does Gopnik open a GQ or Sears catalog photo shoot and also see everyone pictured and credited as gay?
Furthermore, the statement that the period birthed "a nascent gay culture" is woefully wrong, since "gay culture" (which is what, exactly?) has been around as long as humans.
I love u.
It’s shocking to me that these other commenters cannot see what you are describing in his work. It could hardly be more blatant. “The male gaze” focused on male subjects.
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