Today’s fascination with gender bending and ambivalent, provocative
dress up is evident in a variety of media — through films such as Tootsie,
to Calvin Klein ads, and stars such as Ru Paul and Dennis Rodman. Rrose
is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography, organized by
the Guggenheim Museum in New York, is a contemporary look at androgyny,
gender identity and sexuality. These images appear in a wide variety of
photographs including portraits, self-portraits and photo montages. The
birth gender of each person is manipulated by dress up or posture for the
camera as well as through technical alterations of the image.
Photographers represented in the exhibition include Cecil Beaton, Brassai,
Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman
and Andy Warhol. The title of the exhibition combines Gertrude Stein’s
famous motto, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” with the name of
the artist Marcel Duchamp’s feminine alter ego, Rrose Selavy, which is
pronounced, in French, like the phrase Eros, C’est la Vie, meaning, “Eros,
that’s life.” A catalogue, which includes essays and photographs, is available
in the Museum Store. The Andy Warhol Museum has been selected as the only
other venue for this exhibition. Accompanying the exhibition will be a
seven-week film and video program which will examine the construction of
gender identities in cinema.
The transvestite Candy Darling was one of Andy Warhol’s most illustrious,
enigmatic and talented Superstars. Through photographs and Darling’s personal
journals and diaries, this exhibition examines her life and career from
her Long Island childhood to her central role in New York’s most exalted
artistic and social circles.
“It plays a major role in our exhibition philosophy, which often focuses
on the careers of artists who were catalyzed by the influence of Andy Warhol,”
says Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Warhol Museum.
“Candy Darling was one of the most talented and glamorous figures in
Warhol’s circle during the late 1960s and early 1970s,” says John Smith,
Warhol Museum archivist and curator of the exhibition. “Her beauty, talent
and personality made her the favorite not only of Warhol, but also of Tennessee
Williams, Salvador Dali, Jane Fonda, Diana Vreeland and a host of upper
East Side socialites.”
Drawn from the collection of Jeremiah Newton, a long-time friend of
Darling’s, The Andy Warhol Museum Archives and private collections, the
exhibition includes works by photographers such as Francesco Scavullo,
Peter Beard, Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol.
Candy Darling, Always a Lady was first shown in the Feature, Inc., gallery
in New York to coincide with the forthcoming publication of My Face for
the World to See, The Diaries of Candy Darling, published by Hardy Marks
Publications, then in San Francisco’s Braunstein/Quay gallery before opening
at The Andy Warhol Museum.
