Victor Gadino
Dionysus, 1997
Oil on canvas
44" x 30"
Collection of LLGAF
Founders' Purchase Award 2002.

Delmas Howe
Education of the Mortals, 1991
Oil on canvas
48 x 106"
Foundation purchase

Joseph Radoccia
Snagged Nimbus, 1995
Oil on panel
23 x 15"
Collection LLGAF
Donated by the artist

Joseph Caputo
Untitled, n.d.
B/W photograph
14 x 11"
Collection LLGAF

Leslie/Lohman: A Tribute

It was in the late 70s, a few years after I arrived in New York from Ithaca, New York, where I studied architecture and, incidentally, came out, when Jim Saslow brought me along to a party he said I’d like, in SoHo. The neighborhood was new to me, and felt like a grim, post-industrial wasteland; little did I know that many of the art superstars I would write about in coming decades were living and working there at that time, creating new cultural life among the ruins. And little did I suspect that I would meet two of the superstars who continue to mean the most to me, when I walked into that party at Broome and Mercer—in a building, by the way, that I can see as I write this, from the Broome Street office of my magazine, Trace.

I did indeed like the party. It was at Charles and Fritz’s place, and the evening impressed a country boy for all sorts of reasons—the compelling art on the walls; the intelligent (and sometimes charmingly naughty) chatter of the guests; the enormous grace of the hosts. But Charles and Fritz are more than grace, of course. With their vision, faith and energy they have created as much of the world that I live in now as have Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass and the rest of the legendary crew who were then thriving at the Kitchen, the interdisciplinary arts space that was then (or soon after that) across the street.

I took away from that party inspiration that continues to sustain me—of a world that is at once fearlessly modern yet connected to the eternal flow of history. One of my fondest wishes, therefore, is to help the Foundation perpetuate the vision of its superstar founders and go on re-creating a modern world that feels human and worth living in.

—Stephen Greco, author, editor, NYC

Homage
Anthropology had Margaret Mead, medicine had Jonas Salk, Broadway had Sondheim, dance had Nureyev, allure had Dietrich, style had Astaire, fashion had Dior, Rolls had Royce, and gay erotic artists have Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman. And only Charles and Fritz—our heroes. Without their extraordinary vision and ongoing largesse much of our work would remain hidden under our beds or sequestered in musty attics and damp basements. And without them we would have no way of measuring our value—no sense on which to weigh our artistic viability. So—Charles and Fritz—thank you for literally dragging us out of the underbelly of the arts and into the beautiful bright light of this new, highly visible gallery. In return we will do our damndest to produce work that honors these treasured new walls.

—Robert W. Richards, artist, NYC

Still A Recognizable Gay Voice
I first contacted the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in 1993, three years after it officially opened, when I interviewed Charles Leslie for an article about the gallery I titled “A Recognizable Gay Voice.” I don’t remember how I heard about LLGAF, or where the article was published. But I do remember my thoughts as I walked down the stairs to the basement at 127 Prince Street for the first time: “An underground gallery for what is essentially an underground form of art. How appropriate!”

Over the years, I’ve written a great deal more about and on behalf of LLGAF, and I’ve come to value it more and more. The world is a different place today for the queer population than it was in 1993: The Supreme Court has declared sodomy laws unconstitutional, there are gay sitcoms on TV, the gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain racked up ticket sales in mainstream theaters of over $100 million in the first two months of its release. Nevertheless, the world is still awash in homophobia, and gay visual art is still as vulnerable to the homophobic forces of “church, state, and straight”—in the memorable phrase of Charles Leslie from that first interview—as it ever was. LLGAF’s archive remains an important protective repository for that art; its publications provide a vital source of information about gay art and artists; and its activities—exhibitions, talks, drawing workshops—supply a valuable outlet for artists and scholars to participate in an ongoing dialogue about the meaning of art from a perspective offered almost nowhere else in this country or abroad.

I salute LLGAF’s move to 26 Wooster Street. At last—an aboveground location. How appropriate! The love that once upon a time dared not speak its name is shouted publicly from the rooftops and movie screens these days. Queer art deserves the same.

—Lester Strong, author, artist, NYC

Free from Self-Censorship
I am very honored and grateful for my affiliation with the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. It has played a significant role in my career as an artist, with benefits both professional and personal. Professionally the Foundation gave me many exciting opportunities to exhibit, publish and sell my art, as well as the pleasure of meeting collectors, fellow artists and many inspiring members of the art community.

Even more significantly, at a personal level, the patronage of Charles Leslie, Fritz Lohman and the Foundation has truly and deeply impacted my development as an artist. Their acceptance, support and exhibition of my work gave me the courage to lift the weight of personal censorship from my creative process, to celebrate and explore themes, images and passions I had previously suppressed. As a result I have freely created paintings that have marked an essential period of growth in my work.

I believe that to flourish as an artist one must express and set free what is within. Not to do so would result in a withering of potential, a betrayal of self. For the gay artist this intimate journey of self-discovery and expression can often unveil aspects of self deemed taboo. It is when the artist arrives at this crossroads that the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation serves its most vital role. At a point where one is tempted to give in to self-censorship, the Foundation offers a legitimate space for exhibitions of "gay art,” an audience for its celebration and an archive for its place and protection in art history.
I am sure I am only one among many artists who have benefited in this manner from the unique vision of the Foundation and Charles and Fritz’s unwavering and caring support.

—Joseph Radoccia, artist, NYC

________________________________
The Golden Age of the gay magazine began in 1975. Materials with explicit gay content could at last be sold on the newsstand. Magazines proliferated, flourished and welcomed onto their pages a generation of gay photographers, artists and writers (until competing technologies undermined the primacy of print). I came out on those pages. I’m not unusual in that. But I’m atypical, I think: I bought them not for the naked photo spreads but for the drawings that illustrated erotic stories. Of those illustrators, Blade—Neel Bate—tugged at my sensibilities hardest. I found in Blade’s multitudes a confirmation that sex between (and among) men was good and that it took place in a community (even if just the group that gathered on the pier that night).

Before those magazines were there to disseminate explicitly gay art, individual gay men risked fines, incarceration and disgrace to circulate and collect it. Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman helped bring that world out of the shadows by openly collecting gay work and putting it on display on the walls of their home, and, later, their historically important gallery and, later still, the indispensable Foundation that bears their names. No men are more responsible for the shift in sensibility that discovered artistic value in such work and made it worthy of attention, study, care and preservation. The work of dozens of important gay artists—including my cherished Blade—still exists because the Foundation gave it safe refuge. And in presenting work of new artists and providing a home for the Queer Men’s Erotic Art Workshop, the Foundation remains a dynamic force in ongoing gay art.

My own life circled back on itself in 2000 when I became the editor of Playguy and Inches. I try to provide a safe place for a new generation of gay men to test-drive their sexuality. But economically challenged magazines no longer provide gay artists with much of a home. The Foundation has helped me smuggle some gloriously dirty drawing back into my magazines, furnishing illustrations to articles I’ve written on Blade, Robert W. Richards, Patrick Angus and the artists of the Erotic Art Workshop. In today’s economic and cultural climate, explicit gay art depends on the Foundation more than ever. So I salute those tireless visionaries, Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman, on the exciting occasion of the expansion of the Foundation into new space. No one yet knows what wonders will fill those walls. But it’ll be a blast!

—Jim Eigo, author, editor, NYC

________________________________
Charles and Fritz and I go back to the early 60s. From the very beginning of our relationship they were incredibly supportive and had a huge influence on my career as an artist.

The Leslie/Lohman gallery has shown my work since the Broome St. gallery in the late 70s. At first it was all a celebration of gay art, but everything changed with the development of the AIDS tragedy. As gay art began being destroyed, including some of mine, the need for the Foundation became apparent.

Now the Foundation is an archive that will influence, inspire and educate future generations and will become a treasured part of our history.

—Delmas Howe, artist,
Truth Or Consequences, NM

Homage to Fritz Lohman and Charles Leslie, 1976 to 2006
It is now thirty years—almost to the day—that I presented a portfolio of my work to the newly opened Frederic Lohman Gallery in the deserted district of South-of-Houston Street. My first solo show in New York resulted.

Better still was the constant support, encouragement and friendship I received from those two wonderful men Fritz Lohman and Charles Leslie.

A unique relationship in the classical sense of maecen and artist was born and kept me going, in touch and optimistic about the purpose and theme of my art. An art that was born out of the most severe and bitter of experiences, and which is now accepted and surrounded by many splendid brothers-in-art grouped around the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, the life work of Fritz and Charles. My love to all you creative people, and to my beloved Fritz and Charles.

—Peter Flinsch, artist, Montreal

__________________________________
My interactions with Fritz, Charles, and the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation during the past decade have occurred on several levels: as a member whose dues have helped support the work of the Foundation; as a photographer whose images have been included in a number of group exhibitions; and as a curator who has volunteered innumerable hours working with the staff and a broad range of artists to mount three exhibitions: “The Muses” (2001), “Roy Blakey’s 70s Male Nudes” (2002), and most recently, “PinUp Men” (2005).

I believe in the goals and in the future promise of the Foundation or I would not lend my time, my name or my expertise to help further its cause. I do these things, frankly, because I’m not in a position to write a big check every year. Like most artists, I’m long on ideas and short on cash. However, I believe each of us has something to offer, whether it’s time, artwork, financial support or some combination of gifts.

The wonderful legacy that Fritz and Charles have spent the past 30 years developing is now ready to rise to the next level, and that should give us all pause to think about what the coming 30 years might hold for LLGAF. All of us have a stake in the continued success and growth of the Foundation, because this organization represents not only Fritz’s and Charles’s legacy—it represents all of us. I am hopeful that the move to the new space and the heightened visibility of the organization will translate into broader support for the Foundation in every respect—from artists, collectors, curators, volunteers, board members and donors.

—Reed Massengill, Photographer, TN

________________________________
I first learned about the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in the early 1980s, from an article in Blue Boy or Mandate magazine. I was very impressed that two gentlemen, Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman, had the guts to come forward and protect artwork often deemed improper by heirs and families of deceased gays and lesbians. I had worked in museums for several years and at the time was an art critic for a major southern newspaper, so this and other such stories were very upsetting to me.

By 1983, I had met Charles and Fritz and I was even more impressed with their mission, especially when I learned that it included exhibition space for contemporary art. I personally knew of no such space in the U.S. in which artists working in this genre could exhibit. And it was designed to provide space for all artists working in the genre, not only major names.

A few years later, when my friend and museum colleague John Burton Harter decided that it was time to exhibit his homoerotic drawings and paintings, he was immediately confronted with the reality that there were few places of quality willing to accept this subject matter.

When I informed him about LLGAF, he was ecstatic, not only with the professional quality of the Foundation but with the attitude and courteous welcome he received from the people involved. I think that “Burt” Harter felt he had at last met kindred spirits in his artistic quest.

Unfortunately, Burt’s untimely death halted the completion of his own gallery in New Orleans. Like the LLGAF, he was planning to exhibit contemporary works by artists working in the same genre.

For the past few years, the members of the advisory board of the J.B. Harter Foundation have chosen to underwrite The Archive in his memory. Burt Harter would have been so thrilled to see the progress of LLGAF and he would have been delighted to be a part of it.

—George E. Jordan, author,
a member of the advisory board for the J.B. Harter Foundation, CT

___________________________
I was in my 20s when I met Charles and Fritz—new to Manhattan and the art scene emerging after Stonewall—and in a way they became my surrogate uncles. The sort of gay uncles we all wish we'd had, to lead the way for our entry into the grown-up world. As a graduate student wondering whether studying gay art history would lead to useful discoveries or professional suicide, I was encouraged and inspired to read Charles's pioneering book on the photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden. Talk about role models: he'd put a half-forgotten gay artist back on the cultural map, while he and Fritz soaked up the Sicilian sun, and food, and men, and wrote it off as research.

In fact, they’re everybody's uncle, always quick to open their gallery and their home to interesting people and good causes—especially the cause of gay art. They're raconteurs, bon vivants, generous to a fault. Their Foundation is one big artistic uncle, too, taking in and caring for all the visual offspring of our gay brothers (and sisters). The archive and gallery provide a refuge for all those orphans neglected or abused by their guardians, so often uncaring or even hostile.

Unlike my hereditary uncles, Charles and Fritz are still here, not just surviving but looking forward to broader horizons. I hope the gallery's elegant new windowed space will attract a larger audience, and will convince it that our mission, like our storefront, is no longer “underground.” May more people bring more press, and enable us to mount more ambitious exhibitions and promote greater use of the collection through cataloging and publishing.

—James M. Saslow, author,
Professor of Art History, CUNY, and a member of LLGAF Advisory Committee

_____________________
I can always count on the Leslie/Lohman Foundation to show work that was denied exposure elsewhere. The exhibits run the gamut from the finely crafted drawings of French or Cadmus to the more gestural and brash work of contemporary illustrators. What always is there is the gay experience (male or female), with a strongly sexual presence, and for that I am grateful. As collectors Charles and Fritz have purchased art that no one else would touch; important work that now will not be lost to the studio dumpster every artist fears; and for that I am grateful. It is a unique undertaking born of absolute conviction and the wherewithal to support it. I hope that the Foundation continues its support and look forward to its expansion.

—Patrick Webb, artist, NYC

O frabjous day!
On walls of my studio are three small paper works by the late James Snodgrass. One, a linoleum print, I purchased from Jim in his studio in the mid-1970s. The image is two inches square in black ink on white paper. Like a work by Odilon Redon the image provokes our imagination. A crowd of strange figures dances madly under turbulent skies around a great gnarled tower that rises from a hillside. A celebration? A gathering of witches? Or is it a preparation for a public execution? As one looks closer the tower becomes a slightly curved but firmly erect penis that pierces the sky. No, not quite a sky, for the sky is now a pair of buns, somebody’s hairy butt, the frenzied people are now knotted wet clumps of pubic hair, and the hillside a belly. The magic of the work lies in the shift that occurs from one convincing image to the other, an image that would not have been welcome in most of New York’s galleries at that time.

Nearby on my studio walls are two Snodgrass watercolors that were later purchased from Jim’s one-person exhibition (1979) at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery that was then on the second floor of a small handsome building at the corner of Broome and Wooster Streets. One work, The Nobel Piece Prize, measures only one inch square, but the scale is grand. On a grassy field two fat cocks are sweetly tied together by strands of barbed wire. Color is elegantly understated to enhance the charm of this tiny but impressive work. The late Patty Bosse bought the third work. She left it to Jim and the painter Bob Civello, and they gave it to me. Dreamy pink penises spring mushroom-like from a little green hill under a cheerful pale blue sky. This work measures ten by six inches, but as with the other two, the scale is surprising.

I had visited the new Leslie/Lohman Gallery several times before Jim’s exhibition, climbed the stairs, and discovered on my first visit the hauntingly beautiful photographs of Sicilian boys by Wilhelm von Gloeden. These were loose on a table. Works by other people on the walls sang of the courage and adventurous spirit of Charles and Fritz, who were defying conventions and possibly the police at that liberating moment.

—Kendall Shaw, artist, NYC

An Expression of Desire
The Leslie/Lohman Gallery has provided us, and all visitors who found their way through its doors over many years, a chance to see evidence of the homoerotic in art displayed in all its magnificent glory. There was a lot of it to be found on the premises, along with supporting material and, expectantly, many other enthusiasts of homoerotica—artists and collectors amongst them, sometimes familiar, whether hanging on the exhibition walls or visiting in person. To find a gallery so centered in homoerotic sensibilities that allowed us to study, inquire and exchange information on the subject has always proved to be an event worth remembering, and keeps many of us coming back.

At cause to the Foundation’s presentation of such a diverse exploration of one predominant theme, while building an archive and collection around it that provides a resource invaluable to scholars, students and curators, and serves as a gathering place for artists and collectors of homoerotica, has made it distinctive. No other place is quite like it where art and audience are often interchangeable, giving one the impression, after a while, of visiting a clubhouse, with visitors from other worlds internationally.

Our hopes for Leslie/Lohman and the Foundation’s future: to grow with their unique function serving both art and academic worlds in a new ground-level public space in downtown Manhattan. With the possibilities this new space provides it would be wonderful to see the exhibition program include a wider range of gay contemporary artists that reflect the diversity and expand the potential of its viewing public.

coda: throb throb throbbing squirt splat on fore(skin) walls

—the Greenwich Street Dandies
Geoffrey Hendricks, Sur Rodney (Sur), and Ethan Shoshan as coda author

Reflections on the Foundation
Fritz and Charles gave me my first one-woman show in 1975. Their exhibition space was ground floor with huge windows at Broome and Wooster Streets. My male nudes, because of their subject matter, were too "against the grain" for the other galleries in NYC, with or without the title I had given them; Man as a Sex Object.

While working on the series (1971-75) they also commissioned me to do their double male nude portrait. It become the mailing invitation of the show at Charles’s suggestion. With an additional mailing list from the Gay Activists’ Alliance the show was seen by hundreds and become a subject for controversy in both the newspapers and on the radio.

Charles and Fritz have continued to be among my most important patrons as well as becoming two of my best friends. Their support for my work as well as their guidance and assistance during the past 30-plus years cannot be measured; I don’t know where I’d be if it hadn’t been for their help.

My second one-woman show, Egypt, 1985, developed out of a trip to that country with them in the late 70s, and it was a close friend of theirs who arranged for my 2-year art residency in Japan which resulted in my third major exhibition—Hikawa, Japan, 1996.

Without the efforts Charles made, SoHo as a vital living art community would not exist. (Nor would the other art communities, which sprung up around the world, patterned on this one.) I was honored to have been asked by him to serve as the representative of the artist-renters when the attorney general conducted inquiries before legalization for artists became law in 1971. I was also privileged to participate at that time in the show they organized which resulted in landmark status for SoHo’s buildings.

Fritz ‘s elegance and good taste combined with Charles’s didacticism has enabled their gallery exhibitions and events to maintain a tension that appeals not only to gays of different aesthetic tastes but to heterosexuals as well.

The vigor that imbued the art movements of the 1970s and that there is still a remnant of in the art of the new millennium is unimaginable without the Leslie/Lohman contribution.

—Marion Pinto, artist, NYC

Additional tributes received after our press date are contained in the online issue of this publication.