Horizontal together: Art, dance, and queer embodiment in 1960s New York

By Paisid Aramphongphan

Horizontal together tells the story of 1960s art and queer culture in New York through the overlapping circles of Andy Warhol, underground filmmaker Jack Smith and experimental dance star Fred Herko. Taking a pioneering approach to this intersecting cultural milieu, the book uses a unique methodology that draws on queer theory, dance studies and the analysis of movement, deportment and gesture to look anew at familiar artists and artworks, but also to bring to light queer artistic figures’ key cultural contributions to the 1960s New York art world. Illustrated with rarely published images and written in clear and fluid prose, Horizontal together will appeal to specialists and general readers interested in the study of modern and contemporary art, dance and queer history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526148421

Book preview

Horizontal together

SERIES EDITORS

Amelia G. Jones, Marsha Meskimmon

Rethinking Art’s Histories aims to open out art history from its most basic structures by foregrounding work that challenges the conventional periodisation and geographical subfields of traditional art history, and addressing a wide range of visual cultural forms from the early modern period to the present.

These books will acknowledge the impact of recent scholarship on our understanding of the complex temporalities and cartographies that have emerged through centuries of world-wide trade, political colonisation and the diasporic movement of people and ideas across national and continental borders.

Also available in the series

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Staging art and Chineseness: The politics of trans/nationalism and global expositions    Jane Chin Davidson

Travelling images: Looking across the borderlands of art, media and visual culture    Anna Dahlgren

Empires of light: Vision, visibility and power in colonial India    Niharika Dinkar

Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution    Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro-García and Victoria H. F. Scott (eds)

Addressing the other woman: Textual correspondences in feminist art and writing    Kimberly Lamm

Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai    Jenny Lin

Engendering an avant-garde: The unsettled landscapes of Vancouver photo-conceptualism    Leah Modigliani

The ecological eye: Assembling an ecocritical art history    Andrew Patrizio

Migration into art: Transcultural identities and art-making in a globalised world    Anne Ring Petersen

Horizontal together

Art, dance, and queer embodiment in 1960s New York

Paisid Aramphongphan

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Paisid Aramphongphan 2021

The right of Paisid Aramphongphan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 4843 8 hardback

First published 2021

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover: Paul Thek, Untitled (portfolio fashion drawing), 1957–58. © The Estate of George Paul Thek. Collection of Peter Harvey. Photograph courtesy of The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

Typeset by

Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of plates

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: A dancerly art history

1The moves that queer bodies make

2The queer horizontal repertoire: Andy Warhol and Jack Smith lie down

3Plastiques: Jack Smith, Ruth St. Denis, and the dance of gestures

4Dancing queers: Andy Warhol, Fred Herko, and the A-Men

5Repetition and queer difference: Fred Herko’s history lesson

Coda

Bibliography

Index

Plates

1Harold Stevenson, The New Adam , 1962, oil on linen, nine panels 96 × 468 inches overall, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Anonymous gift, 2005. Installation view: Selections from the Collection: Pop and the Art of Assemblage, 1960–1975 , 13 May–1 September 2006, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photograph by David Heald.

2Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Endymion, effet de lune, also known as Le Sommeil d’Endymion , c. 1790–91, oil on canvas. Photograph © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Angèle Dequier.

3José Rodriguez-Soltero, Jerovi , 1965. Courtesy of The New American Group, Inc. / The Film-Makers Cooperative.

4Norman Solomon, Flaming Creatures set photograph (performers sprawled on the ground), summer 1962. Courtesy of J. Hoberman.

5Joey Terrill, Dormido , 1975, screen print © Joey Terrill.

6Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago) , 1988, color photograph, edition of 5, 82½ × 118 inches © Yasumasa Morimura, courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

7Yasumasa Morimura, Une Moderne Olympia 2018 , 2018, chromogenic print, 82⅝ × 118 inches, framed: 88½ × 124 inches © Yasumasa Morimura, courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

8–9 Jack Smith, The Beautiful Book , 1962 (facsimile, New York: Granary Books, 2001), unpaginated, 8¾ × 7½ inches. Artwork © Jack Smith Archive, Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photograph courtesy of Harvard Library.

10 Mark Morrisroe, Promo Still ‘Hello from Bertha’ [Stephen, Jonathan, Mark], 1984, C-print, negative sandwich, 12¹⁹/₃₂ × 18¹¹/₃₂ inches, The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur © The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur.

11 Lindy Made Easy (with Charleston) and Sex Facts for Men , 1962, mixed archival materials, 10⅛ × 7⅜ × ½ inches. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Accession Number: 1998.3.4497.

12 Trajal Harrell, Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (XL) / The Publication. Pictured: Trajal Harrell. Photograph by Audoin Desforges © Trajal Harrell.

Figures

0.1 Andy Warhol, Be a Somebody with a Body , c .1985–86, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 16 × 20 inches. Image and Artwork © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

1.1 Douglas H. Jeffery, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and Michael White outside Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London during the 1964 world tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company , 1964 © Douglas H. Jeffery / Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

1.2 Robert Rauschenberg interviewed by Mike Wallace on Eye on New York , CBS, May 1964 © 1964 CBS Broadcasting Inc.

1.3 Bob Adelman, Andy Warhol Outside a Newsstand , 1965 © Bob Adelman Estate.

1.4 Wallace Berman, Jack Smith , 1963, printed 2006, silver gelatin print, 16 × 20 inches, edition of 5 © The Estate of Wallace Berman. Courtesy of Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.

1.5 Ugo Mulas, Jasper Johns, New York , 1964. © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved.

1.6 Ugo Mulas, Robert Rauschenberg, New York , 1965. © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved.

1.7 Screen caption from USA ARTISTS: #2 Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein (1966), directed by Lane Slate © WNET.

1.8 Screen caption from USA ARTISTS: #2 Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein (1966), directed by Lane Slate © WNET.

1.9 Ugo Mulas, Andy Warhol, Philip Fagan, and Gerard Malanga, New York , 1964 © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved.

1.10 Hans Namuth, Untitled (Jackson Pollock) , 1950 © Hans Namuth Estate. Courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona.

1.11 First installation of Action Office 2, designed by Robert Propst for Herman Miller, Inc., at JFN Associates in Chicago, Illinois, 1968. Courtesy of the Herman Miller Archives.

2.1 Andy Warhol, Couch , 1964, 16mm film, black and white, silent, 58 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2020 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum.

2.2 Andy Warhol, Couch , 1964, 16mm film, black and white, silent, 58 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2020 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum.

2.3 Paul Thek, Untitled (portfolio fashion drawing) , pastel on onionskin paper, 1957–58, 24 × 18 inches © The Estate of George Paul Thek. Collection of Peter Harvey. Photograph courtesy of The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

2.4 Peter Hujar, Paul Thek Masturbating , 1967, vintage gelatin silver print, 17 × 14 inches © 1987 The Peter Hujar Archive LLC. Courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

2.5 Unknown photographer, Jack Smith at the Factory , c. 1964.

2.6 Tom Bianchi, Untitled , 455, Fire Island Pines, Polaroids 1975–83 © Tom Bianchi Studio.

2.7 Norman Solomon, Flaming Creatures set photograph (Jack Smith on a ladder), summer 1962. Courtesy of J. Hoberman.

2.8 Jack Smith, Flaming Creatures , 1962–63, Still from 16mm black and white film. © Jack Smith Archive. Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

2.9 Jack Smith, Flaming Creatures , 1962–63, Still from 16mm black and white film. © Jack Smith Archive. Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

2.10 David Hockney, In the Dull Village from Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy , 1966–67, etching, editioned, 22½ × 15½ inches © David Hockney.

2.11 Robert Rauschenberg, Bed , 1955, Combine: oil and pencil on pillow, quilt, and sheet, mounted on wood support, 75¼ × 31½ × 8 inches, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Leo Castelli in honor of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

2.12 Carolee Schneemann, Meat Joy , 1964 © 2020 The Carolee Schneemann Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Film still courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

2.13 Yayoi Kusama, Untitled , collage with photograph by Hal Reiff of Yayoi Kusama reclining on Accumulation No. 2 , 1962, c. 1966 © YAYOI KUSAMA.

2.14 Lynda Benglis, Quartered Meteor , 1969/1975, cast c. 2009, cast lead, 57½ × 65½ × 64¼ inches, cast of 3. Photograph by Phoebe d’Heurle, courtesy of Pace Gallery © Lynda Benglis / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

2.15 Installation view: John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition , 22 December 1971–20 February 1972, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photograph by Robert Mates.

2.16 Yvonne Rainer, Trio Film , 1968, 16mm film, black and white, silent, 13:59 min. © Yvonne Rainer.

3.1 Ken Jacobs, Little Cobra Dance , 1956. Courtesy of The New American Group, Inc. / The Film-Makers Cooperative.

3.2 Unknown photographer, Ruth St. Denis in Radha , c. 1906, photographic postcard, 5½ × 3½ inches, Denishawn Collection, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library. Artwork in the public domain. Photograph courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

3.3–3.7 Jack Smith, The Beautiful Book , 1962 (facsimile, New York: Granary Books, 2001), unpaginated, 8¾ × 7½ inches. Artwork © Jack Smith Archive, Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photograph courtesy of Harvard Library.

3.8 Unknown photographer, Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad , 1924, publicity still. Photograph in the public domain.

3.9 Uzi Parnes, Untitled (Photograph of Jack Smith) , 1983 © Uzi Parnes.

3.10 Auguste Bert, Vaslav Nijinsky posing as the Golden Slave in Scheherazade , c. 1913. Photograph in the public domain.

4.1 Andy Warhol, Screen Test: Freddy Herko [ST137], 1964, 16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 4 minutes 36 seconds at 16 frames per second © 2020 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum.

4.2 Andy Warhol, Jill and Freddy Dancing , 1963, 16mm film, black & white, silent, 4.5 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2020 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum.

4.3 Andy Warhol, Haircut (No. 1) , 1963, 16mm film, black and white, silent, 27 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2020 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum.

4.4 Andy Warhol, Male Genital Diagram , 1962, casein and pencil on linen, 54 × 72 inches. Image and Artwork © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

5.1 Al Giese, Fred Herko in Binghamton Birdie , 1963. Courtesy of Judson Memorial Church Archives, Fales Library, New York University.

5.2 Trajal Harrell, Antigone Sr. / Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (L) , American Realness Festival, NYC, 2013. Pictured from left to right: Rob Fordeyn, Ondrej Vidlar, Stephen Thompson. Photograph by Ian Douglas © Trajal Harrell.

Acknowledgements

This book takes as its departure point the possibility of embodied knowledge beyond conscious awareness. It is only fitting that it had its beginning as an inkling of something worth exploring, a story waiting to be told, put in a postscript in a progress report on what would have been a very different project. My thanks to Carrie Lambert-Beatty, who sensed its potential and encouraged me to pursue this line of inquiry. As the project developed, I could not have asked for a more incisive and generous reader. I also would like to express my gratitude to committee members Jennifer Roberts and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth. Both provided inspiring examples in teaching, research, and scholarship. For encouragement and a model of intellectual openness and passionate curiosity, I thank Melissa McCormick. For receptive ears and important feedback at an early stage, I thank Ron Clark, Jennifer A. González, and Gregg Bordowitz, and fellow seminar participants in the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Also at the ISP, I am very grateful for the late Douglas Crimp’s guidance. His work opened up new intellectual horizons for me at a crucial, formative stage. Amelia Jones and Marsha Meskimmon’s interest in the project helped bring this book to light. I would like to thank them, as well as the anonymous readers, for their careful reading and constructive feedback. At Manchester University Press, Emma Brennan and Alun Richards helped see this project through. I thank them for their enthusiastic support of the project.

Many individuals and institutions assisted me in my research. For help with the Warhol material, I would like to thank Claire K. Henry at the Andy Warhol Film Project, Ashley Swinnerton at the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Study Center; Greg Pierce, Matt Wrbican, Greg Burchard, Geralyn Huxley and Jessica Beck at The Andy Warhol Museum, and Gary Comenas of Warholstars. Special thanks also to Robert Heide for sharing his memories with me. For kind assistance in Jack Smith research, I would like to think M.M. Serra at the Filmmaker’s Coop, Johan Kugelberg of Boo-Hooray, Daniel Fineberg at Gladstone Gallery, Jay Sanders, David Platzker, Mitchell Algus, J. Hoberman, Uzi Parnes, and Stephen Koch of the Peter Hujar Archives. For help with dance research, I thank first and foremost David Gordon and Aileen Passloff, for their time and conversations. Thanks also to Patsy Gay, Carla Peterson, Wendy Perron, and especially to Daryl Chin. Thanks also to Gerard Forde for sharing his knowledge of Fred Herko and for feedback on earlier drafts. In addition, I would like to thank Amanda Bowen and Emily Una Weirich at the Harvard Fine Arts Library, Mary Lister at the Harvard Art Museums, and the staff of the New York Public Library’s Dance Collection and Photography Collection, the Downtown Collection at Fales Library, New York University, the Whitney Museum Archives and Library, and the Museum of Modern Art Archives and Library.

Research for this book was supported by Harvard’s graduate fellowships, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, The Open Gate Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. The Terra Summer Residency especially provided an idyllic thinking and writing context for a major portion of this book. I would like to thank Veerle Thielemans and Lucy Pike, and, for helpful comments and suggestions, I thank visiting scholars Bryan Wolf, Harriet Chessman, Jennifer Greenhill, Vasif Kortun, Jean-François Chevrier and Élia Pijollet. Special thanks to Emily Boone, my decadent lunch companion, and Nelly César Marin, an adventurous and inspiring soul.

For generous assistance with image inquiries and reproductions, I thank Artists Rights Society, the Guggenheim Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, CBS Photo Archive, Bob Adelman Books, the Wallace Berman Estate and Kohn Gallery, the Ugo Mulas Estate, WNET, the Hans Namuth Estate and the Center for Creative Photography, Herman Miller, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Louvre, the Filmmakers Coop, the Paul Thek Estate and Alexander and Bonin Gallery, The Peter Hujar Archive, Tom Bianchi Studio, J. Hoberman, Gladstone Gallery, David Hockney Pictures, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Lynda Benglis and Pace Gallery, Electronic Arts Intermix, Yvonne Rainer, Joey Terrill, Yasamusa Morimura and Luhring Augustine Gallery, Harvard Fine Art Library, Uzi Parnes, the Mark Morrisroe Estate and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Fales Library, New York University, Trajal Harrell, Nicolette Misler, Irina Sirotkina, Elena Girich, Jonathan Katz, and Taren Urquhart.

A version of Chapter 3 appeared in Art Journal and portions of Chapter 4 were published in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Special thanks to Bonnie Marranca for early support of my work, as well as the peer reviewers and editor of Art Journal. Materials for the book have been presented at various venues, and I would like to thank the organizers and institutions that have provided a platform for my work, including the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Dance at De Montfort University, the Art History Department at the University of British Columbia (special thanks to Joe Madura), Columbia University, and the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, and Woman in Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A book about embodiment would not be complete without a reflection on its writer’s experience. For seeing the art historian in me even before I became one, I would like to thank K. Dian Kriz. For showing me the rigor and joy of the craft of writing, I will always be thankful for Catherine Imbroglio. For guiding my embodied journey that first paralleled and then became intertwined with this book’s writing, I thank yoga teachers Karma Longtin, David Vendetti, and Domenic Savino, as well as past dance teachers, especially Julie Strandberg and Michelle Bach-Coulibaly. For making the early years of graduate studies so memorable with embodied ventures into queer spaces, I thank David Pullins and Ünver Rüstem. Thanks also to Hyewon Yoon for many exchanges and conversations over the years. For their goodwill and friendships, I thank Claire Grace, Park McArthur, Shawon Kinew, and Julia Havard.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family. They are my home base as the research and writing of this book took me on different journeys. Just as the initial form of this book was starting to take off, I met Brendan, who has watched this project take roots and grow with unstinting support, enthusiasm, and encouragement. I dedicate this book to him.

Introduction: A dancerly art history

Andy Warhol’s Be a Somebody with a Body (Figure 0.1), features an outline of a toned male body, his crossed arms accentuating bulging muscles, his face projecting a confident smile. The text looks roughly painted, but the letters are drawn with a sure hand. Its rhetorical address is assertive, like a command. Yet the power of the image derives just as much from the fact that, at the time of its making, 1985, Warhol was already a household name, his fey personality well established in the cultural imagination. The artist who made this image looks nothing like the body depicted in his artwork. We might read the image as a projection of what, in today’s terms, would be described as a fem guy’s desire, or even, some might say, bodily aspiration, toward the muscular and masculine (the source image indeed was taken from an advertisement in a muscle magazine). The masculine and muscular, however, is not what this book gives pride of place. The phrase with a body speaks to an even more fundamental concern: not how a body looks, but how to be a person with a body at all.

Among queer people, as many of us can attest, negotiations over the taking up of one’s space, how to move, how to extend one’s body, and, by extension, one’s subjectivity into the world, is a tangible social reality that can be felt and has to be worked through at the kinesthetic level in the face of the prevailing masculine and muscular somatic norms of culture. How much of yourself do you want to give away, and at what point, in what context? How do gestures and deportment connote sexuality and how they are played up (or dialed down) according to the situation? Sometimes we get good at this. We do not think about the decision-making process, oftentimes unconscious, that determines our self-presentation. For queer poet and writer Wayne Koestenbaum, outwardly, straight socialization makes queer people discard their bodies, referring to the self-policing of the bodies—in this case, especially voices and manners of speaking—in order to be properly socialized, which is to say, to be socialized into the straight world.¹ Beyond voices and speech, which are no doubt often taken as markers or signals of sexual orientation, the work of having a body—and owning it, presenting it, reading it and being read through it—is never done, especially for non-normative subjects in a culture that polices difference. Even for Andy. While Warhol is now an icon of twentieth-century art, with his work’s significance mentioned in virtually all textbooks on the century’s artistic development, it is also well known, among Warhol aficionados, that such heights in artistic career and continuing posthumous fame was never assured when Warhol began to find a foothold in the art world, what with his swishy body and faggoty art that had shaped the reception of his work even before the start of his rise in the art world in the early 1960s.

0.1 Andy Warhol, Be a Somebody with a Body , c .1985–86, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 16 × 20 inches. Image and Artwork © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Starting with Warhol’s queer body in the straight art world, this book zooms in on a particularly fertile period in both art and queer history and provides a history of queer and related artistic practices in 1960s New York, weaving together art, dance, and queer life through a focus on embodiment. By embodiment, I mean the interplay of subjectivity, kinesthetic experience, and interactions with others that underlies all facets of inhabiting a body. The book locates the kernel of artistic activity away from familiar narratives centered on art objects classified within movements such as pop, minimalism, and, later, conceptual art. The central wager is that attention to body deportment, movements, and gestures can shed new light on art history. In the pages to follow I use embodiment as an umbrella term covering different facets of thinking about the conditions of a body existing in time and space, the gestures it makes, the movements it performs, the poses it strikes, the overall mannerisms—and how all of these embodied moves in turn shape how we feel about ourselves, our identities, and how others perceive us (which inevitably feed back into the former two).

Methodologically, the focus on embodiment serves as a bridge between two disciplines that undergird my approach to the materials: art history, on the one hand, and dance studies, on the other. The live body has been a central component of advanced art practices since the 1960s. Art historians usually call this mode of expression body art or performance art. Past approaches to this genre or medium in visual art practice often fold it into object-based modernist and postmodernist narratives, thus a focus on specific performance pieces as stand-alone objects of analysis. The discrete pieces are usually arranged or incorporated into an art historical order (even as to demonstrate their critique of it), cutting off performance art’s conceptual contributions from the wider context of embodiment—the very same embodiment that the artists were bringing to the table in the first place. Drawing on dance studies and the field’s more expansive parameters for the consideration of bodies in movement, my initial