Homoeroticism in Gay Male Art: Then and Now

The John Burton Harter Foundation proudly presents  “Homoeroticism in Gay Male Art: Then and Now,” a panel discussion examining the art of Patrick Angus (1953-1992) and John Burton Harter (1940-2002) and the recent work of Los Angeles artists Rubén Esparza and Ken Gun Min.

The panel will take place on Saturday, November 16, 2024, at 3:30 p.m. at Gabba Gallery, 235 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. A reception will follow.

The panel is inspired by the publication A Tale of Two Cities: Patrick Angus in New York and J. B. Harter in New Orleans. Attendees will receive a complimentary copy, featuring an essay by curator and art critic David S. Rubin. Rubin will also moderate the discussion.

Panelists will discuss the works of Angus and Harter, both of whom led the use of gay male erotic imagery in paintings of the late 20th century, but who never received commercial or critical success during their lifetimes. Esparza and Min will also focus on homoerotic themes and imagery in their own artwork.

“Placing Angus and Harter side-by-side helps show that even in the throes of the AIDS epidemic, the gay community remained a vibrant place where people lived and loved,” said Jack Sullivan, John Burton Harter Foundation Advisor.

Gabba Gallery is located near the new Historic Broadway stop on the E Line of the L.A. Metro. Parking is available in a lot by the gallery.

For more information, please email jbharterfoundation@gmail.com.

Angus and Harter: A Realist and an Idealist

Although more than ten years apart in age, Patrick Angusand John Burton Harter realized they were gay in the late 1960s, just as the sexual revolution was accelerating. Whereas Angus remained fairly open about his sexual orientation, Harter stayed closeted until the early 1990s, after both of his parents were deceased.

In the 1980s, Angus created a significant body of paintings documenting the performances, cruising, and hustling that took place at the Gaiety Theater. This male strip club in New York City was frequented mostly by gay men who socialized with the models in lounge areas and cruised in the theater while pornographic movies were shown.

Working in a style influenced by the paintings of David Hockney and the Bay Area Figurative School, Angus showed life at the Gaiety using gestural brushwork in a manner replicating the immediacy of the early 20th-century Ash Can School. He also viewed his subject matter from vantage points that put the viewer in the audience. Because photography was not permitted at the Gaiety, Angus worked primarily from memory. The late playwright Robert Patrick referred to him as “The Toulouse-Lautrec of Times Square.”

Although there were no male strip clubs in New Orleans, where Harter lived and worked as a museum curator, he nevertheless drew inspiration for his paintings and drawings of the 1990s from a gay culture that included a bathhouse (also a subject for Angus), private sex parties, and outdoor cruising. Harter’s paintings are based on photographs he took of his models, most of whom were young men that he met at the gym or on the street.

Whereas Angus was a realist, in the sense that he sought to recreate what it felt like to be at the Gaiety, Harter was an idealist who preferred the classical style of antiquity and the Renaissance, which had influenced the homoerotic paintings of Paul Cadmus in the 1930s.