There is only one real way to measure the effectiveness of good gay art: the “woody meter”. Ask yourself the following questions: How many visible penises are in the image and does it inspire you to be alone with it as soon as possible? Are potential patrons-of-the-arts playing pocket pool right in the gallery? Does the “finest” of the art make you think, “Do I really need a boyfriend if this image was hanging over my bed, since it has already done more for me than he has?”
A great gay artist would know to give his subjects as many crotches as Picasso handed out breasts. Isn't an “exhibition” designed for “exhibitionists”? So what’s with wearing clothes to look at images of naked people?
You say YOU want to make it big as a world-class gay artist your own darned self? The formula is perfectly clear: Use body wastes to create religious icons such as “Piss Jesus” or an “Elephant Dung Virgin Mother” and when you call the press, be sure to mention you took all the government-supports-arts money and blew it on coke and male hookers. They love that stuff.
Simply take a blank canvas, ejaculate onto it, and call it, “The Only True Portrait Of God” and wait for the cash and the death threats to roll in. My rendition of navel lint, food coloring and bile of “Saint Joan Collins Of The Sissies” is a case in point – a case still dragging through the courts.
Remember, each restroom visit is potential for the next art/“bowel” movement – whichever comes first. Every time you flush, a goldmine of materials washes away and the religious-minded have to look elsewhere for divine inspiration such as abortion clinics and the high-end gallery sophisticates have to do their “seedy sex slumming” in bathhouses, back alleys, and glory-holes like the rest of us. When the heat gets too bad, know when to shoot your load, and tell everyone all profits go to AIDs research and Make-A-Wish Foundation. Suddenly, the stench clears, your shit doesn't stink anymore – in many ways, artistically and otherwise -- while you end up smelling like a rose.
I don’t recommend slicing your dick in half and hanging upside down naked to bleed on a canvas as performance art. It’s been done – and almost to death. And it’s not nearly as funny as you’d imagine. I was afraid to zip my pants for a week after a showing. Zero on the “Woody Meter”.
What did I know? I thought I was going to see “Puppetry Of The Penis”. Now, that’s art. I never thought of playing with your self could lead to an extended engagement playing Off-Broadway, so to speak. “Half Mast” on the “Woody Meter”. I would give it a “Thumbs Up” had they made their asses talk. Instead, the performance was making me a member of the “Blue Men/Blue Balls Group”.
There is a long history of gay art. Cave men could have etched on cave walls about their homo experiences but they were too busy mounting one another, free and uninhibited, instead of pleading with authority figures to absolve them from their guilt while still wanting to bugger them. You need beautifully gilded ceilings of men almost – but not quite -- touching fingertips for that kind of action. But I’m jumping ahead.
Michelangelo’s “Statute of David” is supposed to be an icon of male pulchritude. But, still, have you had a good look at the guy from the neck up? The fig leaf missed his face by a mile. From front -- no “woody”, “stiffy” or “knob knocker”. From behind, with lights low and two beers – “Full Standing Woody”.
Andy Warhol? His “Marilyns” -- celebrity-as-mass-production-products -- are gay icons because ...I got nothing... Zero on the “Woody Meter”. (P.S. M.M.’s makeup job is horrible.) (Note To Reader: Insert some sort of drag queen joke of your own here.)
Tom of Finland’s work proves one thing to me – those Fins love cartoons of muscle-bound leather-fetish Ken dolls, which, of course, I relate to. The images being so close to reality makes me uncomfortable. Tommy has captured my very essence in each and every line drawing. I think I felt something stir...but, no.
Mapplethorpe took classical, tradition art presentation and applied it to pictures of men urinating into other mens' mouths. Not so pretty. “Woody” D.O.A. He redeemed himself with pictures of well-endowed black men. Pretty plus. Sprong! Tip: anything in black and white is “artistic” – even if it a photo-realistic super close-up of a hemorrhoid. Hey, yeah...Call the NEA right now!
We have had virtual sex way, way before the internet was invented. It’s called pornography, and is an art form into itself, and it comes in a variety of media. Galleries have been full to the rafters with smut forever. The difference between high art and crass pornography is in its presentation – who is it intended for and what response is it suppose to inspire? You know it when you see it, according to the Meese Commission a few years back. It’s all research, you know...Thank you, tax payers, for compiling my Christmas wish-list.
Now smut-peddlers are gaining wide-range respectability. Tom Bianchi, a common pornographer, has taken the art of photography and elevated it to a new level of...well...very EXPENSIVE common pornography. What the prestigious, talent-less, Mr. Bianchi lacks in basic art principles of composition, movement, texture, contrasts, color theory or meaningful subject matter, just for starters, (i.e. actual talent is perhaps a hindrance for artists these days) has made up for it in sheer volume, volume, volume. Therefore, embarrassingly tenacious Bianchi has earned his Warholian “fifteen minutes of fame” (isn't time about up?) by documenting his redundant and trite sex life and disguising it with false seriousness, as though intending to produce quality art, as oppose to, say the work of Diane Arbus, where the art (even degrading sexual situations) in a documentary style was abundantly evident. For Bianchi’s bulk of nonsense by the pound (or pounding, in this example): You owe me some “Woodies”, pal.
Anyway, I had chili for lunch and am expecting a bonanza of creativity at any moment. I feel a whole series coming on. Perhaps a year’s worth of crap can be produced in a single sitting, more or less. The plastic is laid, the ventilation is good, and the press has been assembled. If I become too successful, I might have to have an I.V. drip to maintain body fluids. God, I wish I was strung out on heroine but who has time?
Though, no matter how good my work is – once it dries -- nothing could take the place of my overly-heated appreciation of the great works of the past, the shoulders of the giants of the art world on which I stand: dogs playing poker and the painting of “fat” Elvis on velvet from Tijuana. Only my stuff will be more “swishy” and reverential, like the homage to “The Last Supper” with effeminate naked disciples -- on the head of a pin, using snot as a medium, using my “tool” as a painting tool. How artsy. How gay. I’m getting hard just thinking about it.
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