Memorable, mostly underseen gems that explore the tensions of queerness and camp on screen.
CAMP
Posted inArt
Camp at the Met Museum: A Serious Fail at “Failed Seriousness”
The problem with the exhibition is that it’s simultaneously too self-aware and too clueless to capture the essence of camp.
Posted inArt
Is Camp Still Camp if the Met Gala Makes It a Theme?
This year’s Met Gala is named Notes on Fashion, in tribute to a Susan Sontag essay. But Sontag also wrote that “To talk about Camp is to betray it.”
Posted inOpinion
Shifting From Catholicism to Camp, Met Gala Tries to Update Susan Sontag
This exhibition should feature a wax replica of Donatella Versace, RuPaul’s extensive collection of wigs, and a sliver of John Waters’ mustache — but I fear the Met’s exhibition will be business as usual.
Posted inBooks
Does It Suck? Another Look at ‘Showgirls’
Long brushed off as a horrendous excuse for a film, Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas’s epic flop Showgirls may have more than meets the eye. Or, at least, its vulgar superficiality may be worth critical re-evaluation
Posted inArt
Making the Personal Collective at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Part 2
KOCHI, India — Pepper House is a quaint colonial structure with a lush central courtyard on the Kochi seafront, and serves as a major Biennale venue with some extraordinary displays — Alex Mathew’s monumental anchor rising upward in a surreal bid to touch the sky overhead greets you as you walk in. Named after the once-thriving spice port of Kochi (Kerala, India) the Kochi-Muziris Biennale succeeds in part because of the organizing committee’s courageous curatorial strategy to allow artists the rare final say in the installation of their work. Also, despite bringing together an international array of art-makers, the biennale’s focus is unequivocally on the Indian, initiating a restructuring of the paradigm of the “contemporary” in the country’s national art.
