Be Gay. Do Crime. The Male Nude, 1945 to the Present

 

Please join us for PRIDE! 
We are excited to announce the opening of our upcoming exhibition, Be Gay. Do Crime: The Male Nude, 1945 to the Present, which will be on view from June 2nd – June 24th, 2023 at The Alice Wilds. 

This exhibition is being held in conjunction with QKE, a city-wide viewing of queer identified artists in the month of June started by arts advocate, collector, and queer activist, Andrew Whitver. Here are a few of all the amazing organizations participating in this event: Aquae Nguvu, Green Gallery, Hawthorn Contemporary, MARN, MIAD, Moody Zine, Lilliput Records, MAM, MOWA, MKE LGBT Community Center, Portrait Society, Real Tinsel, Sarah Ball Allis Art Museum, Underscore, VAR Gallery, Tory Folliard Gallery, and Woodland Pattern. 

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We may never know the precise origin of the phrase “Be Gay. Do Crime.” but we can pinpoint the exact moment it made its appearance and began circulating as a catchphrase and protest slogan within global popular culture. 
 
On September 15, 2016, Instagram user @absentobject posted a photograph of the phrase Be Gay. Do Crimes. spray painted on a stone wall in Marseille, France. Since that moment we can follow the trajectory of the phrase in the metrics of social media, accumulated likes, shares, tags and comments, over different platforms as it becomes an ubiquitous statement used by members of the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies promoting freedom from discrimination, a rejection of the profit driven motives of rainbow capitalism, an acknowledgement that anarchy is justified to achieve a more humane society, indeed the phrase is ambiguous enough to be used defiantly by anyone who experiences the entire social order as inimical to individual freedom.
 
For the title of this exhibition being gay and doing crime were one and the same whether the trespass was in violation of official statutes, religious doctrines, or prevailing moral sensibilities. 

Be Gay. Do Crime: The Male Nude, 1945 to the Present traces the evolution of the male nude relative to the developments of gay rights over the last three and a half decades. Beginning with the clandestine and fugitive erotic photographs circulated under the guise of health and fitness or artistic neoclassical conventions of the Physique Pictorial era from 1945 through the 1950’s the exhibition continues through the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement and the fall of obscenity and sodomy laws. The exhibition concludes with the male nude as an act of defiance and protest during the HIV/AIDS Crisis and the culture wars of the 1980s to the contemporary post Marriage Equality politiscape and a new gay generation’s response to it.

FEATURING WORK BY:
Don Bachardy, John S. Barrington, Bruce Bellas (Bruce of Los Angeles), Kevin Brannaman, George Dureau, Wenjie Ding, Jim French (Colt Studio), Alonzo Hanagan (Lon of New York), Reed Massengill, Bob Mizer (the Athletic Model Guild), Mel Roberts, Jose Sarmiento, Richard Taddei, Don Whitman (the Western Photography Guild) and others.

EVENTS:
Opening Reception on Friday, June 2nd from 5-9PM
Open for QKE Weekend: Friday, June 9th from 11AM-8PM & Saturday, June 10th from 11-5PM.