What makes gay art gay? What, exactly, separates Robert Mapplethorpe’s luscious anal portraits from Ruben’s bursting-at-the seams nudes? Why, sheer audacity and daring, darlings. Never, ever content to lie back and be stuffed, stultified and mounted for England, the gay imagination takes risks to die for.
Why not? All pre-out-gay art had to lose was mediocrity. Forget unreadable trash by the perfectly-named Anthony Trollope – Wilde’s Dorian Gray swamped shocked Victorians with sex, sin and sleaze. Let’s call it the Gay, Midas touch – any subject imaginable becomes pure, artistic gold when viewed by gay aesthetics and forcibly ripped from namby-pamby heterosexuals.
Still, like it or not, it was thrusting, straight artistry that largely shaped our present culture, but no longer – innovation is triumphantly queer. So no wonder every straight, deadbeat Damian Hurst wannabe quivers in his booties – straight, vanilla sex somehow never fuels fiercely shocking art.
How could it? Missionary coupling is like, so restrained, no writhing, non-stop, chemsex tsunami of suck ‘n’ f*ck. How could it be? The average, Sunday morning screw between British guys and gals is a raw, schizophrenic psychodrama of hated bodily functions.
Just imagine; how dare human biology insist our sloppy, ecstasy bits also wee and void poo? Incredibly, that’s enough to trigger nervous breakdown for some poor, non-gay souls, who’d simply die of embarrassment at seeing their genitalia in broad daylight. Sound familiar? It should – that’s the prissy, anal retentive texture that’s so adored by straight practitioners of the fine and performing arts worldwide.
Tough. Me, I’m with Oscar Wilde, who, blazingly unrepentant, declared, ‘All art is quite useless’, as in free of social or moral agendas. Who needs taste, good, bad, offensive or bland? To quote a poxy, modish cliché, art is what it is, but preferably as gorgeously filthy or filthily gorgeous as possible.
Wilde, of course, famously ‘feasted with panthers’, gleefully spattering the icily-starched sheets of the Savoy Hotel with consensual poop. On a vintage, chem-sex high – absinthe and laudanum, FYI – Oscar brazenly shat Vaseline on petty minds and morals. As deviant diva Diamanda Galas so memorably later said, ‘Give me sodomy, or give me death’, indeed!
So guess what? This month, you’re in for a feast. Sodomy, metaphorically, deeply shapes Jean Genet’s masterpiece, The Maids (Trafalgar Studios, 0844-871-7615 to May 21st) and Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (Duke Of Yorks, 0844-871-7651 to June 25th). Finally, there’s director Robert Chevara’s astonishing revival of Tennessee Williams’ In The Bar Of A Tokyo Hotel (Charing Cross Theatre, 08444-930-650 to May 14th). Enjoy – you’ll eagerly devour every inch!
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