George Towne's Increasingly Photo-like Paintings of (Usually Hot) Gay Men
He's also in a group show right now in NYC at Equity Gallery through August 9.
Hey Caftaners: Greeting from Mexico City, where I am for the next week, ready to do one of my favorite things, which is simply be in a city other than NYC for a few days. It’s my second time here—the first was in 2018.
It’s now Monday morning and I’ve spent the past few days walking around this very large, handsome, cosmopolitan city, which has always reminded me of a cross between L.A. and some of the capitals of Europe. There is a lot of controversy about how gentrified neighborhoods like Roma and Condesa have become, but I can also understand why, because they’re absolutely beautiful, treasures of 1920s-30s architecture…
…with the gracious large oval Parque Mexico sitting between them. Every day here I must have at least one cup of fruit slices drenched in lime juice, salt and chamoy, this Mexican sauce made from pickled fruit and chiles that is mildly sweet, spicy, sour and salty all at once. This is probably my favorite snack in the whole world.
And it must be said: the lavish, multifloor Sodome—with its full-service bar, naked go-gos under showers, DJs and those skimpy little cotton squares they give you to wear instead of towels—has to be one of the best gay bathhouses in the world, a far better place than a bar in many ways to socialize.
One thing I’ve noted is that when I tell people I’m from NYC, nobody reflexively and disgustedly brings up administration 47, as I thought (perhaps a bit solipsistically?) they would. It’s a bit of a comforting feeling of NYC being a kind of world capital that transcends the country it’s in. Being outside the U.S. also makes you realize how little most people follow the news of other countries. One woman I talked to, a professor here, didn’t seem that fazed when I told her what was going on in the U.S. and instead complained about how, in her view (I don’t really know if this is true), all the media at Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s daily morning press briefings are “hand-picked,” and how “authoritarian” that is. I wanted to say, I would gladly take your version of “authoritarian” over ours any day. But I held my tongue!
Because I’m “off” this week, this week’s Caftan, which I did the chat for before I left, is kind of short and image-heavy. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen the sexy gay portraits of my longtime NYC acquaintance George Towne (link is to his website), who is about my age (midfifties), but I’ve always loved his work because of its very crisp photorealism quality and, well, I don’t really know art language, but just his hand and his style. Here is George with some of his work:
When George recently became a paid subscriber to Caftan, I thanked him and then said: “Hey…I’ve always loved your work…would you want to chat with me for Caftan?” He said yes—and better yet, he has some images in a group show called “Grand Unity” right now at Equity Gallery here in NYC that runs through August 9. So what better time to chat?
There’s no paywall on this post, although I’ll ask as I always do: If you’ve been a free subscriber for a while and enjoy these Caftan posts, please consider becoming a paid subscriber at $5/month to help me keep doing this. I love it so much and the more income I can generate from this, the more time I can devote to it. I’d love to have the time to do two interviews/posts a week instead of one.
I hope you enjoy George’s work as much as I do. I’m not going to go overboard on posting his images here. I’ll let you go to his website, which features a broad selection. So here’s my chat with George, who came to NYC in 1986 from upstate New York (close to the Jersey and PA borders)…
…to go to School of Visual Arts and who has a day job designing books (the actual books, not the covers/jackets) for Penguin Random House but works mostly from his one-bedroom apartment/studio in the East Village.
Hi, George! Thanks for doing a little Caftan chat wth me. So you live in the East Village.
Yes. My husband Corby and I got married in September but we still live separately.
My husband Marlon and I do as well.
We’re looking at options for moving in together, but for now he spends several nights a week here and on weekends I go to his place in Harlem.
What is a typical day like for you?
I go to the gym in the morning and then work from home 9 to 5 and then try to paint from 5:30 to 7:30pm. In the summer my job lets us out early on Fridays, so that’s my best painting day and sometimes I can continue into Saturday.
So your portraits have a very detailed quality—maybe not quite photorealism, but close—which prompts me to ask if you paint from photos.
I do. I take photos of my subjects that are for my use only and pay them about $50. A lot of these sexy guys these days have really great photos of themselves but I prefer to work from my own photos of them.
Looking at some of your work from the 1990s, like the beautiful series you did of portaits of guys holding a beloved item from their lovers who died of AIDS, your work seemed much more painterly and less crisp then.
How did your style change happen?
By starting to use a digital camera around 2003-4. Before, I’d tape up on the easel these 4x6 photos that I’d have developed at a CVS, but with digital, I was able to print them out from my home printer on 8.5x11 paper, which allowed me to blow up parts to see a detail in a hand, or to print out brighter images than the original.
I also do watercolors, too, but looser.
Generally, my love is oil painting and there’s at least three good layers on every painting—a base layer, a second layer that’s more detailed but still loose, and a third layer where everything starts to pop for me. The brights and darks come out and give the illusion of three-dimensionality.
Right, that’s very much true for “Mike with Peony”…
…which is in your current show. And that’s our longtime mutual friend Mike Rubio, by the way. Talk about this image a bit.
It’s based on the memento mori in Dutch portraiture, where they’d have things like a skull, a candle, an old clock or flowers to remind you of the fleetingness of time and the inevitability of death. The biggest memento mori object is a skull, which I also did with Mike.
But with the peony, I settled on having it partially hiding his face. I like those old raking light sources. [When the portrait appears as though it’s lighted from one side only.] Caravaggio and Velasquez are big go-tos for me.
This is a very mainstream observation, but your work reminds me a little of Kehinde Wiley in that he is showing these very contemporary-looking and -dressed Black men in these kind of classical poses against these floral backdrops that are kind of baroque and old-fashioned.
And it seems like you’re doing something similar with contemporary gay men.
That’s totally accurate. There are times when I am really on purpose trying to [evoke other artists’ work]. Like Alice Neel’s portrait of her son…
I told my friend Andy to copy that pose.
I know there’s a long tradition of homoerotic art being discredited by the art world. Like, it was “gay art” so it wasn’t “real” art. Have you experienced that with your work?
Yes, but attitudes have really shifted since since I started painting. The exhibition “Hide/Seek” in the early 2010s, which was the first major exhibition to focus on sexual difference in art, played a big role in that. And now there are some younger queer artists who are starting to have a heyday, like Louis Fratino…
…Salman Toor …
..and Doron Langberg…
They’ve all been given solo shows and they’ve actually opened doors for older queer artists. I think museums might now think, “Oh, who are these artists we’ve ignored for a couple generations?” Like, some galleries now are starting to look at the work of Jimmy Wright, who did drawings of 1970s gay sex clubs.
So I feel like there’s potential for me there.
What would you say the themes or ideas are that come up in your work?
I’ve stuck to the gay male experience. I like the idea of painting what you know.
But I’ve also started doing landscapes. They lack the sexy element for sure, but they often are places that have a certain nostalgia for gay men.
In terms of your more common work of portraits of gay men…what are you trying to say or do with them? Is there an idea or theme that binds them together?
That’s a good question. I guess I’m still trying to figure it out. I think I’m trying to show that I respect and love them. And I’m lucky when I get to paint a couple. Like Rich and Seth. Rich has been a strong role model for me and I wanted to honor him.
I get a strong sense that you have a thing for Latin guys, based on how many of them you’ve painted.
Oh yeah, for sure. At my wedding to Corby, who is of Mexican and Filipino descent, that was the running joke when people spoke—that almost all the guys I’ve dated in the past have names that end with “O.” •
Caftaners, I hope you enjoyed George’s work…see you next week! xo Tim
Tim, you're the best! And I am thrilled. Thank you thank you thank you. And, enjoy Mexico City !!