The Barry Joule collection of materials from Francis Bacon’s studio in London has been given to Tate Britain and will take years to sort out. cf. Art in America, Mar. 2004, p. 31, 33
The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, received $10,000 from the Judith Rothschild Foundation for “Queer mysteries revisited: David Cannon Dashiell.” A painter, Dashiell (1952-1993) explored issues surrounding gay culture and the AIDS epidemic. cf. Artweek, v. 35, issue 4 (May 2004)
John Davis (Smith College) wrote “The End of the American Century: Current Scholarship on the Art of the United States” in the September 2003 issue of the Art Bulletin. The article talks about some of the queer art historical debates of the moment, paying particular attention to the controversy surrounding the de-sexualizing of Thomas Eakins.
Paul Jaskot (DePaul University, Chicago) has been elected to the CAA Board of Directors.
A review by Jeff McMahon of the book Taliban is featured in the January-February Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. McMahon’s review touches on the complex sexual messages in the photographs discovered by photographer Thomas Dworzak as the Taliban fled Kandahar.
Ann P. Meredith has been invited to the White House by the First Lady Mrs. Laura Bush in recognition of Ann as a lender of her art works over the years for the Art in Embassies Program, especially women with HIV/AIDS. Ann’s photograph “Elena and Rosa at the White House Ellipse, 1988” from her 10-year series “Until that last breath!” is part of the Art in Embassies 40th anniversary book which will be dedicated at a reception by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Ann also traveled to Europe for screenings of her film “Strap ’em down! The world of drag kings” at the Festival international de films de femmes at La Maison des arts in Creteil/Paris (March 9-23) and at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in London (March 23-April 8).
Jenni Sorkin received the Art Journal Award for her “Envisioning High performance” during the convocation at the CAA annual conference in Seattle.
Joan Corbin (a.k.a. Eve Elloree), telephone interview by Tee A. Corinne, Dec. 10, 2000. Corbin she was 79 at the time:
Born May 25, 1921 in Armada, Michigan. Grew up in Richmand, Michigan. Also lived in Mt. Clemens, then in Port Huron on the St. Clair River. Studied art briefly at Wayne University (now Wayne State), in Detroit. Never lived in Ann Arbor (despite what Jim Kepner wrote. And Ruth Bernhard never had any lovers when Joan knew her).
Joan moved to California in January 1946. She was going to study occupational therapy at San Jose University. Went to school a couple of years there, but was so lonely, I couldn’t make any contacts there.
A friend wrote from Los Angeles, the Echo Park district, “Come on down here and live.” Lived with her for almost 7 years, but there was too much drinking so I had to get out of there. Her name was Irma Wolf (spelling?), but was called Corky. She was editor of One for a while where she used the pseudonym Ann Carll Reid, a name Corbin chose for her. “It was a Hollywood crowd. We went to the If Club and drank and smoked (cigarettes) too much. I quit smoking in ’73 and I can’t imagine being so silly, but we all make mistakes. At least I got out of it.”
Corbin took one course in design at Chouinard where she learned “everything about art.” She was art editor of One Magazine for ten years between 1954-1964.
Corbin met Ruth Bernhard at a One, Inc,. meeting when Bernhard showed a photograph of water going through a hose. “I can still see it. The hose was very light and the water was going through it and, I believe, coming out in a spray” at a One, Inc. meeting. Said she had just done it. Ruth Bernhard lived about four houses away.
Corbin offered to model for Bernhard around 1955. “It was very simple. I just showed up on the appointed day. There was a platform and lights. The whole living room was the studio. She had a darkroom which was like an appendage in the back, you entered from the kitchen.”
“I would go over to have my hair cut. She would do it in the yard which was full of grass because she didn’t like lawns.”
She wanted to learn how to drive a car. Several people tried to teach her, but it was impossible. You would tell her to do something, and she would do the opposite. Then she just got this old car and drove up to San Francisco with it.
In August, 2000, Joan Corbin found a lump in one of her breasts. A call was sent out to an e-mail group of lesbian artists for financial help for Joan Corbin and a number of lesbians responded.
She wrote the following to Tee Corinne at that time: “... I think of little else, of you and all those caring women -- how astonishing this is! Certainly, as soon as I can, I will respond. It’s tremendously inspiring to ‘meet’ each one.”
Photographer Alvin Jerome Baltrop (1952-2004) documented life on “The Piers” of the West Village in New York in the 1970s and was a helper and protector of countless young people, both gay and lesbian. An obituary by Charles W. Leslie appears in The archive: the journal of the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, no. 12 (winter 2004), p. 7 and in New York blade (Feb. 13, 2004). A photo essay on Baltrop and his work appeared in the City section of the New York times on 22 February 2004.
Jess (b. Burgess Collins, 1923), San Francisco artist, died on January 2, 2004 at his home in San Francisco. He dropped his birth surname when he broke from his family in the late 1940s. A retrospective of his work entitled “Jess: a grand collage” was shown in 1993-1994 at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo and traveled to New York, Washington, and San Francisco. Obituaries were published in The New York times on January 10th (p. A32), Art in America in March 2004 (p. 160), and in the San Francisco chronicle on January 7th.
Helmut Newton, photographer, obituary in Art in America, Mar. 2004
Francesco Scavullo, fashion photographer. Born 1921 on Staten Island; d. Jan. 6 at home in Manhattan. Obituary: New York times, Jan. 7, 2004, p. C12