Independent UK – February 2020

Does the Barbican’s Masculinities exhibition have important things to say about men?

For once, it’s the normative male who gets poked and prodded as a curiosity in this female-curated photography exhibition, and it may provoke bullish defensiveness among some. It forces Mark Hudson to look at himself

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/barbican-masculinities-exhibition-buy-tickets-liberation-through-photography-a9347101.html

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Christies – February 2020

The art of love: 14 works that make our hearts beat faster 

From Cupid to Kahlo to Keats — the artworks and objects that, when Valentine’s Day comes, encapsulate the power of love

Rebecca Jones: Head of Sale, Photographs

‘Peter Hujar met poet and visual artist David Wojnarowicz in 1980, a year before he made this portrait in his East Village studio. When I look at this picture, which was recently on show at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, I see the love between two people, both estranged from their birth families, left to build their own families within their marginalised community.

Peter Hujar David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II), 1981. Vintage gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 in (50.8 × 40.6 cm). Courtesy Peter Hujar Archive, PaceMacGill Gallery, and Fraenkel Gallery

Peter Hujar: David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II), 1981. Vintage gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 in (50.8 × 40.6 cm). Courtesy Peter Hujar Archive, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Fraenkel Gallery

‘Wojnarowicz was diagnosed with AIDS shortly after Hujar’s own AIDS-related death in 1987. In an interview Wojnarowicz once said, “Everything I made, I made for Peter.”’

https://www.christies.com/features/The-art-of-love-10287-1.aspx?sc_lang=en

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British Journal of Photography – January 2020

Any Answers: Michael Stipe

by Michael Grieve

There is one photograph that has had a profound effect on me. It’s by Peter Hujar of a man with an erect penis, called Seated Nude, Bruce de Sainte Croix from 1976. I saw it the first time I came to NYC in a small group show, and I had never seen nudity and sexuality shown with such grace and objectivity.

Any Answers: Michael Stipe
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AnOther: January 2020

Planning Ahead: Ten Exhibitions You Can’t Afford to Miss in 2020

David Brintzenhofe Applying Makeup (II), 1982

Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography at the Barbican, London: February 20 – May 17, 2020

Masculinity, and its many complex and contradictory iterations, will take centre stage in a new exhibition opening at The Barbican in February. Masculinities: Liberation through Photography will include the work of over 50 photographers and filmmakers from the 1960s through today – from Kenneth Anger, Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz to Laurie Anderson, Collier Schorr and Rineke Dijkstra. Each of the featured works serves to debunk or disrupt the myths surrounding modern masculinity in some way, while exploring how masculinity is “experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed”. The show will be divided into six sections, tackling themes of queer identity, the black body, power and patriarchy, female perceptions of men, heteronormative hypermasculine stereotypes, fatherhood and family.

https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/12148/planning-ahead-the-best-exhibitions-to-see-in-2020

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