GAYLETTER

There is no better moment for Peter Berlin — the artist, model, and filmmaker whose icon status is solidified with a new eponymous book of sexed up self-portraits. Against the sotto voce background of current LGBTQ voices  —  all trying to convince mainstream America that we’re just like them and worthy of membership in their most conservative institutions (military, marriage, the church) — comes this mostly forgotten statement of gay male libido, a violently subversive gesture. Promiscuity, even public sex, for the sake of sex alone, is currently the “dirty” unmentioned secret of today’s activists who continue their efforts to transform gay liberation into gay assimilation.

The early 1970s, when Berlin (birth name, Armin von Hoyningen-Huene) created many of the photographs featured in Peter Berlin (Damiani, 2019), was a time when exceptions to community trounced the building of community. It was a time when promiscuity was a breathless celebration rather than a threat to the stable dyad, when activists strove to end the draft rather than add their population to it, and when attacks on the concept of gender were self-invented and deliriously unconventional (consider, for example, the gender-bending Cockettes), seldom looking to the medical establishment for support.

I should know because like Berlin, I experienced firsthand the groundbreaking sexual culture of early 1970s San Francisco. During my years there, from 1969 to 1974, unbridled sex was the central focus of my life and that of most of the young queer males I hung out with. I would see Berlin at The Stud on Folsom Street, motionlessly on display against the same pillar almost every evening, his right foot raised and planted on that pillar so that his pelvis jutted forward to present his absolutely unobtainable loins to anyone with the courage to stare. …

Describing herself as a transdisciplinary artist, Nash Glynn uses photo, video, and painting to address the planet’s future. She explores subjects like fossil fuel extraction and plans to terraform Mars while using traditional figurative painting to increase trans representation and playing with the feminine idea of Mother Earth through personas like Lover Earth.

Glynn grew up in Miami, where rising sea levels made the threats of global warming feel more urgent. As a kid, she learned to paint, working in her father’s set shop, with visual art eventually becoming her ticket out of the city and out of harm’s way. Coming of age as a queer teen, there were the usual fears, violence and bullying, so Glynn commuted two hours to study graphic design instead of attending traditional middle school. She went on to study at Tufts and Columbia, graduating with an MFA in 2017. During grad school, Glynn medically transitioned, no easy feat navigating both at the same time. Today, Brooklyn-based Glynn makes work challenging the gender binary and probing environmental issues, interrogating the idea of nature in both.

Fresh off her recent exhibition at Participant Inc., I met Glynn in late August at her home studio in Greenpoint. While the pressures of validating her identity and processing environmental threats both weigh heavily on her, she’s quick to giggle and incredibly generous. That night she drove me home in a car she bought off Craigslist.

When I returned later in the week for the accompanying photoshoot, Glynn had thrown out her back a day earlier. …

With his elegant accent, Sam Morris is an exceedingly charming champion of body and sex positivity. He shares his notably artistic films on his website, offering previews to his nearly 400,000 Twitter and Instagram followers. There’s no studio or camera crew —  just Sam, his partners and a camera.

Formerly a child actor in London, Sam, now 31, appeared in various TV shows and West End productions. Later, he trained to become a professional dancer. For the past few years, as erotic film developed into Sam’s area of expertise, Berlin has been home.

His films aren’t scripted or planned; the hookups are honest. His partners are hot, yes, but they aren’t actors or porn stars. Thus his work bleeds into the realm of documentary. It isn’t traditional porn, per se — there isn’t always penetration or the famed “money shot” — but chemistry is guaranteed.

Sam strives for authenticity, both in work and private life. He speaks highly of Amy Winehouse, a woman who couldn’t be anyone but herself. “She lived so authentically and fucking died in her authenticity,” Sam says. “I’ve never seen anything more authentic in my lifetime. She lived and died in the public eye so raw. That, to me, is inspiring.”

Jeans by Helmut Lang.

When did you first realize you were getting popular? Instagram’s been a bit of a slow burner for me. I would say I started doing more stuff on Instagram about four years ago, and essentially everything’s slowly grown. …

Tegan and Sara scaled the music industry mountain and planted their names in the sky. Born Tegan Rain Quin and Sara Keirsten Quin in Calgary, Canada, the identical twin sisters achieved indie stardom with their eponymous band in the ’00s, before becoming pop icons in the ’10s, in no small part thanks to touring with Katy Perry in 2014.

Now they’re rounding the bend into the 2020s with a nostalgic turn. Their ninth album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, inspired by ’90s cassette tapes, and the accompanying co-authored memoir, High School, gave the twins a chance to look back at their teen years.

GAYLETTER spoke to Tegan and Sara each separately — Tegan about the new music and Sara about their first book.

TEGAN

One of the tracks on your new album, “I’ll Be Back Someday,” it really captures that teenage need to get away, to find a more tolerant place. Did you feel like that growing up? I mean, even as an adult I need to get away sometimes. [Laughs] With that song, though, it sounds poppy and upbeat, but the undertone is this idea that you’re anxious about facing the person that you are, anxious about admitting what you feel for somebody. While I didn’t physically run away as a young person, I definitely repressed who I was for a long time. You know, when I eventually ended up hooking up with my best friend who was a woman. …

Institute 193 features artists from the Southeastern United States, celebrating creatives from the ‘fly-over’ areas and the unique richness of their production. Their latest exhibition presents a grouping of paintings by Aaron Michael Skolnick, born and raised in Kentucky, and recently relocated in Hudson, New York. Before his move, he spent years taking care of his late husband, who was taken by complications related to the diagnosis of ALS. Their life together changed under the terms of the illness — looming frustration, selfless patience, and a delicate intimacy became their reality. The abundance of paintings he made during this period reflect this state of being, serving as a kinky film score, a gentle love song, and a requiem all at once. Two years have passed and Skolnick has moved into a new chapter in Hudson, painting more recent lovers with a fresh intensity but without forgetting his harrowing and tender memories.

The paintings are mainly articulated in pastel hues; strokes and smudges are turned into smart details. His compositions are focused on scruffy bodies in repose, with seldom a background apart from a soft pillow. Sex acts become gestures of affection rather than carnal transactions, erotic but contemplative. Time is slowed down in the painted scenes, turned into a distant dream of golden light and soul connection. Apart from the portraits, Skolnick also paints still lives: bedside vases of flowers. The age-old trope of cut flowers is framed by the context of the other sensual paintings, a symbol for inevitable decay and fading beauty that must be enjoyed in the moment or memorialized in art. …

Abi and I first met designer Jonathan Anderson on the dancefloor of the iconic Twist nightclub one December during the annual Art Basel Miami Beach. It was hot and sticky and Kylie was playing on the speakers. Sardined together on the tiny upstairs dance floor he seemed as happy as we were to be escaping the real world for a moment.

This September when we met in Paris to shoot this cover, I wasn’t sure if he remembered our South Beach encounter, but he was in equally good spirits. Considering he was in the middle of preparing his Loewe Spring 2020 show, only a few days later, and had just shown his latest collection for JW Anderson in London days prior, his calm was especially impressive. With our cast arranged around the spacious, high-ceilinged showroom his eponymous brand uses when in Paris, Anderson walked onto set and announced: “Just tell me where to stand, I’m easy.” For the rest of the shoot he happily traipsed from room to room as we improvised (in true GAYLETTER style) each set up.

If you spend more than 10 minutes with Jonathan, you can’t help but notice he has a great sense of humor. There’s an irreverence in him that is reflected in many of his designs. Shirts with extra arms, leather bags that look like baseball caps, and his update to the classic Chuck Taylor All Star High Top sneakers that adds at least an extra two inches to their soles are just a few examples of the playfulness and originality that has made him such a coveted designer. …