Art Magazine Homosurrealism Magazine | Page 34

In the 1970s-1980s, Andy Warhol bought many of his sexiest paintings and pastels, and in 1989, I profiled him in “Drummer” #134, and in Mark Thompson’s significant book “Leatherfolk.” In 2008, the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco cleverly borrowed our 1976 “Drummer” label “Lautrec in Leather” for its retrospective. In 2012, Nayland Blake recreated Arnett’s world-famous Tool Box mural in his exhibit, “Free!Love!Tool!Box!”at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Arnett believed in the surrealism of drugs as a reality superior to the dream of daily consciousness, but his reality was pricked by a virus. As an eyewitness new journalist, I long ago intuited that the sharing of needles during the Titanic 70s—perhaps more than unsafe sex itself—was what killed many speed-driven leather players, especially fisters, in the first wave of HIV.

In addition to Fey-Way founder Robert Opel exhibiting Arnett at that 1978/9 new year’s gala, Opel—who had famously streaked the 1974 Academy Awards—also premiered his own film “Fuck You, Santa Claus.” The artists he featured were the divine “Camille O’Grady direct from the Mineshaft in her first West Coast appearance,” Ruby Zebra’s queer rock poetry, Spikey Dummer’s live music, Tom of Finland, Rex, Chuck Arnett, Olaf, the Hun, A. Jay, and photographer Bill Moritz from the LA salon of filmmaker Fred Halsted.

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