Hello everyone! Welcome back and happy Pride Month! If you listen to the Justuff League podcast, then you may remember I was invited on to talk about artists that are part of the alphabet army a while ago. If you haven’t given it a listen, give it a go! It’s educational and entertaining!
Anyway, let’s get into it! So, here’s the deal. There are many artists we could talk about like Keith Haring, Kehinde Wiley, or Leonard Fink’s photo documentation of queer culture, but I must stay true to one of my all-time favorite artists I gushed about before. Rashaad Newsome is a contemporary artist known for his larger-than-life video installations and collage work.
My first encounter with Newsome’s work was during my first year of college with his work titled Knot. It was vibrantly colored, fast paced, and at times felt like it transported me to wonderland due to the work’s moving collages. What caught my eye was the use of strictly POC men in high heels super imposed over ornate baroque ball rooms and generally luxurious scenes. Taking inspiration from New York’s Ball Room scene, Newsome elevated drag to a higher fine art. Ball Room for those who are unfamiliar, is an underground scene started in Harlem where queer members compete in drag and hold voguing competitions. This is an oversimplification, but if you are curious, I recommend watching Paris is Burning for a more in-depth explanation. Vogue may sound familiar to you Madonna fans out there, her inspiration for her hit, Vogue, came from the very same queer underground.
Now don’t think that just because Newsome and Madonna used drag queens and gender nonconforming people that they are the reason drag queens have more representation. In fact, Andy Warhol was probably the first to use a transgendered woman as his muse! Warhol featured Candy Darling, a transgender woman he met at an underground burlesque show, in two of his art house films: Flesh and Women in Revolt. Warhol, Darling, and Holly Woodlawn (who was another of Warhol’s muses from the same scene) brought Drag into pop culture. Darling was also part of the first wave of people to begin hormone transition therapy. Even if the idea of gender nonconforming figures was seen as taboo, and is sometimes still considered as such, spotlighting certain communities and lifestyles in such an approachable and thought-provoking way makes it easily accessible for everyone. So, thank you Andy Warhol, Candy Darling, and Holly Woodlawn for starting a revolution!
This month take some time, dive into the wonderful world of queer art, and immerse yourself in the vibrancy of their works! Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll see one of these artists come up for auction!
