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By STEVE WEINSTEIN
Friday, April 02, 2004
The hottest art show in town is being presented by a mainstream gallery. Pet
Silvia, who co-owns Art @ Large with wife Tammey Stubbs, is straight but definitely
not narrow. (The couple were married at the Museum of Sex — a first.)
Silvia has worked closely in the past with the Los Angeles-based Tom of Finland
Foundation, which helped evaluate and authenticate the works displayed here.
Like many heterosexuals, he has a healthy appreciation for Tom’s wild
aesthetic of the gay male erotic imagination.
It was that association that led him to a cache of drawings and paintings
by Etienne and Jim French, who drew under the pseudonyms Luger, Arion and Colt.
Etienne, who died of AIDS, had his work shown primarily in physique magazines
of the 1960s. Both men considered themselves protégées of Tom
of Finland, although they probably never met the legendary artist in person.
In the 1960s, the outlet for works such as these was small, ill paying and
even illegal. “These guys had no place to show this work,” Silvia
says. “They were getting a pittance in those magazines.”
Even the paintings Etienne did in color were reproduced in black-and-white. “Not
only are they gorgeous,” Silvia says, “but it’s what they
represent — what these men stood for doing this work.”
The ephemeral nature of magazine illustration in general — and niche
pornography in particular — makes the find of these 39 works all the
more remarkable.
Silvia says a New York City collector had been buying them from a man who
owned a thrift store in the Midwest throughout the 1970s. The female collector
had no idea of their provenance or place in gay artistic history; like the
best collectors, she was buying them simply because she appreciated them.
Silvia hopes the paintings will fetch in the range of $4,000; the drawings,
around $3,000.
The show, he says, serves as indirect homage to the original master of erotic
gay male art. “We wanted to show masters in the immediate steps of Tom
of Finland in the ‘60s,” Silvia explains.
The show also features New York photographer Kim Hanson, Midwestern artist
Marc DeBauch, and Michael Kirwan. Each one of them has a unique take on gay
life and sex. As such, they stand in a line with Etienne, Jim French, back
to Tom of Finland.
If there is one common thread linking all of these artists together, it would
have to be a passion for uniforms. “There are a lot of different aspects
of the male in uniform!” Silvia says.
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