There Goes The Neigborhood, 2010
In the years directly before the AIDS crisis, urban centers exploded with large populations of politicized gay men engaged in radical forms of open sexuality. In 1979, the year I was born, the AIDS crisis had not yet reached it’s full devastation and the largely gay and Latino neighborhood of Silver Lake—an artist’s enclave adjacent to Downtown Los Angeles—boasted over 10 exclusively gay bathhouses. The sexual revolution of the 1960’s contributed to the slow (and on going) liberation of gay men to openly (some what) express their same-sex gender choice. Prior to this ‘revolution’, closeted gay men met in clandestine spaces, fearful for their life given the open hostility that the culture in general, and the authorities specifically, thrust onto their same-sex desire. During this era of forbidden desire, bathhouses became popular meeting grounds for gay men, and even after the progress of the sexual and cultural revolution of the 1960’s, bathhouses became the safest spaces for gay men to openly express their sexual desires.
In his book, “Beyond Shame: Reclaiming The Abandoned History Of Radical Gay Sexuality” Patrick Moore chronicles the history of bath houses and sex clubs, aligning it with the history of the radical left, feminism, and the counter-cultural revolution of the 60’s and 70’s. Speaking about the ‘radical’ aspect of sex clubs and bath houses, Moore writes:
“In the 1970’s, gay men initiated an astonishing experiment in radically restructuring existing relationships, concepts of beauty, and the use of sex as a revolutionary tool.”
AIDS of course, changed all of that. By 1981 AIDS would become a full-blown epidemic that was shrouded in mystery and misinformation. Major cities shut down legal bathhouses and an entire generation of gay men fell victim to the disease. We will never know what would have become of their ‘experimentation’. All we are left with is a gap in the lineage of elder gay men.
Driving down Hyperion Blvd in Silver Lake must be a very different experience than it was when the street was lined with bathhouses. Although the bathhouses no longer exist, the buildings in which they were housed still remain. One of the most popular baths of the time, Mac’s Baths, is now the campaign office of Equality California, one of the biggest pro-gay marriage advocacy groups in the state. This curious fact strikes me as poignant and emblematic of the state of queer history. In the shadow and aftermath of the AIDS epidemic, and in an attempt to gain acceptance, many gay men have shunned the radical in favor of the traditional. In Beyond Shame Moore writes: “Because of a lack of continuity between generations and a disavowal of our sexual history, the gay community has arrived at its present state: disassociated assimilation that excludes all except those leading the most traditional of lives”
Like the history they housed, these buildings became ‘disguised ruins’ of a controversial past. A carefully erected façade of gentrification erases their former function, cleansing them from a scandalous past. Now a present-day volunteer works toward approving gay marriage in the same spot where 30 years ago a man gave a blowjob to another man without any knowledge of how the two acts are linked. The ruins of this era are there; only they are shrouded in shame. Ruins are historically used as markers of history and memorials of the past, yet the ruins of this radicalized past have been systematically white-washed leaving a ghost of a shell in their place.
In my new series of work titled “There Goes The Neighborhood”, I make paintings of bathhouses in ruin. Moldy, disheveled and abandoned, the paintings are memorials to the absence of memorials—indexes of the traumatic erasure inflicted on the radical gay sexuality of the past. They are paintings of what I imagine those spaces to look like, had they not been disguised and hidden from sight.