Author: Michael Chappell

October is Gay Pride Month in Hawaii. Rather than just enjoy the festivities and overdose on aloha- and mai tais- a bit of literary sobriety might be in order. A few thoughts, therefore, penned a few years ago, but worth repeating, and remembering.

On the drive home from the gym this morning, I was caught up short by the squib on NPR about LGBT pride month, marking as it does 50 years since the Stonewall riots. As it happens, it is also 39 years this month since Keith McCullar and I plighted our troth, and the confluence of the two events bears some more than modest consideration- primarily for myself, but briefly told for benefit of my gentle readers who might find these musings of interest, too.

In June of 1969 I was 15 years old, and in benighted central California had no knowledge of anything about the Stonewall riots. Indeed, The Fresno Bee, our local newspaper and source of most information, was absent about what was probably considered in New York at the time a minor incident. Let me tell you, though, I was sufficiently self-aware to know I was gay as pink ink, not out, but certainly aware of what I was about, so Stonewall anything that was printed in our local rag would not just have caught my attention but seared itself in my memory. All this by way of saying, at the time, there was little or no coverage beyond what little there was in far, far away New York.

It is astonishing to consider, though, how just a few years post Stonewall, there was the florescence of gay liberation that also enveloped me, but I must say, with the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978, I wondered if we had seen the highwater mark, and that the backlash his killing seemed to represent might betoken a return to repression. It didn’t happen, and I was fortunate enough in 1979 to attend the memorial 50th birthday party for Milk hosted in San Francisco by the Alice B Toklas Democratic Club, with Jane Fonda as the featured speaker. It was a wonderfully celebratory evening and as I think about it, something of a relief that, with so many local and state officials in attendance, everything appeared to be proceeding apace.

As they were for me, too. Not all that long after, Keith and I met- in benighted Fresno of all places, gold being where you find it- and the rest is generally pleasant sometimes blissful occasionally fraught history. But what I mean to say in this paragraph is that, with all the opportunities for dating, for tricks, for social outlets, and for lovers- everything that was on offer for a gay man in his 20’s- it seemed to me then that there could be nothing more gay than there then was. Hedonistically shallow as this sounds, yet aware that Stonewall was the watershed I was without apology having a great time.

What was yet to come was the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. After a certain point, I became numb to the suffering of so many of my friends. Indeed, Keith and I now have very few gay acquaintances of our own age, as very nearly all of them died in the 80’s and early 90’s before drug therapies developed to stem the tide. Not entirely numb, as I become sad as I write this, thinking of those friends with whom I looked forward to growing old. Shared experience is a cornerstone of friendship, and for those friends with whom one came out, there can be no substitute. Early on, it seemed that what Dan White couldn’t do with the assassination of Harvey Milk, HIV could do, and we braced for ostracism at the very least, if not broadscale exclusion, as the mysteries surrounding the disease frightened everyone. ‘Frightened’? What understatement- I should more accurately say ‘drove everyone straight or gay to the panicked fringes of rational thought and beyond.’ I will never forget receiving a letter from someone very close to me, asking Keith and me to avoid playing with her small children, as we might infect them.

Neither Keith nor I from the beginning hid the nature of our relationship, and if it made any kind of difference even in our work lives, we were at the time so focused on our careers, and of course the lives we were making with each other, we were not aware. What I did see, though, was in the late 80’s and early ‘90’s a gradual, more than a tolerance but less than an acceptance of gay men in the straight community. Perhaps it might better be said as an easing of tension. It occurred to me the why of this, as so many gay men having moved away post Stonewall to live in the big cities, they then came back home when desperately ill and absent all else sought family to provide care for them. The tragedy of HIV/AIDS brought gayness literally inside the homes of very many Americans. That there was a paucity of national recognition of the crisis is probably best characterized by President Reagan’s laggard acknowledgement, but the fact is, those who lost their lives were martyrs to the emergence of a broadscale realization that gayness was a human phenomenon, common to all populations- white and people of color, rich and poor, urban and rural. And liberal and conservative. The Bible thumping fundamentalist had to, and did, have a rethink about the nature of love and Christian commitment when their gay son returned to his childhood bedroom to die.

And all the eventual good for surviving and newly out gay men wrought of this tragedy proceeds, well not apace, but forward. We’re married Keith and I, file our tax returns jointly, and if one or the other of us pops his clogs, will be eligible for Social Security survivors’ benefits. What I thought 40 years ago of an environment about as gay as one could get was substantially less than, and it is with my own advancing age and experience that I’ve come to realize what in fact we lacked, and what the human cost has been in trying to achieve what we have a right to. A bit of a sidebar, and you can call me a recidivist, but the moves forward in this country have had some effects that, to my mind, are wistfully bittersweet. The gay ghettoes in the larger American cities are dwindling, as those who formed them finding safety and comfortability in numbers now find they don’t require what they formerly found in places like The Castro in San Francisco or Boys Town in West Hollywood or Greenwich Village. And I do miss the plethora of gay bars, with one or more even in small communities, always fun to hang out, in the manner of a private club. Mind you, very many of those private clubs were about as pleasant aesthetically as a public restroom, but perhaps for the sake of nostalgia, Keith and I yet make some effort to visit gay bars whenever we travel.

It may be my style of writing, or my way of thinking, but the sort of linear narrative I’ve communicated about the progress of gay liberation shouldn’t even in this brief squib detract from what it is that concerns me now, that is, how much further we have to go. I am reminded of this frequently, with continued back of the bus treatment from people who would deny to their last breath they’re any way homophobic. For those who know us, gay or straight, close friends to casual acquaintances, Keith and I probably wouldn’t be identified as anything other than bright, ambitious and hardworking. Nothing unusual in that, but faced with us in a business setting, we’ve both of us often been dismissed and shunted aside in ways and by people that seemed otherwise friendly disposed to us. Finally, after years of this treatment- not constant, but frequent enough to become notable- it occurred to me that to this day the straight world has an enduring notion certainly of gay men that’s concretely fixed. Keith and I should and must be limp-wristed sissies, addle brained and more interested in flower arranging than debt swaps or real property syndications or inventory turn days. And these same homophobe deny-ers will fight to maintain those opinions and fight to relegate us to a role that they think, actually, no, that they know is appropriate for gay men. The older Keith and I get, the more combative we become, and we’re given to confront this phenomenon more and more, and in an in-your-face manner.

Well, we’re up to it. In fact, I find myself, where in former times I would just not hide my gayness or the fact of my relationship with Keith, now make a point of communicating all this immediately, becoming, as it were, a solo swat team for gay socialization.

Pride Month has gone, and LGBTQ+ has broadened gay liberation beyond anything anyone could have imagined in 1969. While at times I wish for a return to the fun of those very brief halcyon years just post Stonewall and just pre-HIV but am now old enough to realize that with fun and good times comes complacence, and that complacence beckons a return to repression. We are then, Keith and me, as we look forward to our fifth decade together mindful of the past and unwilling to allow a creeping social conservatism to disintegrate what we’ve at last achieved. Again, I’ll correct myself, as ‘at last’ implies we’re at the top of the mountain in terms of legal and social equality. Closer to the top, perhaps, but further to go to crest the hill. In our home, we’ll always be mindful of Stonewall and its effects and fight for a brighter future. But to repeat what I wrote just a moment ago, we’re up to it.

In response to what my friend Max thought I would interpret as a rhetorical query, as to whether we’re still buying artwork, my answer was that we yet have space where the walls are adjacent to the floor, so plenty of stacking room. Mind, there are collectors and there are those who aren’t. A collector and I claim unashamedly to be one, is always collecting.

There are those whose range of collections is narrow. One particular artist, one particular school, one particular medium. I term that kind a constipated collector. My innards are in good working order, and as such, our collecting habits are varied and regular. In case you were worried, the scatology ends here.

Lest you think we’re entirely unrestrained, we do have some particular areas- British modernists and ukiyo-e most prominent. These two areas are not so disparate, as the likes of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell – two artists we collect- were not unlike impressionists of a generation earlier in borrowing colours and general themes from the Japanese woodblock prints that made their way into Europe from the 1870s. A surprising booty, worthless ephemera in Japan, the prints served to wrap and protect against damage Japanese porcelains and earthenware shipped to the west.

In further restraint, we do apply the same rubrics as we always have- an object must be a confluence of quality, condition, and price. Price, indeed, as so much of what’s out there to collect is in sufficient quantity we can consider it a fungible commodity. If my gentle readers need a reminder, Keith McCullar is an accountant and I spent decades in the banking business so money remains a primary loyalty- and we do in whatever we purchase expect good value for it.

That we do, with a reluctance to as it were splash out, happens to allow our acquisitions to proceed apace. Unless, of course, an artist we happen to collect is having a moment. A well-received monographic exhibition, for instance, can cause an escalation in prices that may be short lived. Right now, for instance, the artist John Craxton is having one such, apropos the wonderful monographic exhibition that ran late last year at Pallant House in Chichester. A painting from that exhibition is on offer at auction as I write this, estimated into the low six figures. We’ll see how it does.

Also in the same sale are a number of pictures by Keith Vaughn, one of which, I’ll admit, I had an eye on, until I actually inspected it, that is. Vaughn’s prolific output very much ran to pattern- similar pallet, similar angularity to the figures, which tended to run to depictions of nude men. An artist in the tortured homosexual class, his own homoerotic images were, although nude, fairly chaste. Angular, with flattened perspective, and largely absent of genitalia.

For reasons that I do not know, Vaughn too is having a moment. Pallant House had an excellent monographic exhibition of his work, on the centenary of his birth, but that exhibition was in 2012. But looking at one of the databases we normally consult, there has over the last couple of years been an almost five-fold increase in the number of Vaughn’s works that have passed through the salerooms, driven by an unaccountable increase in the value of the works on offer.

Not surprising, price increases bring works by an artist out of the woodwork, with owners, including more than a few dealers, seeking to cash in. That’s the good part. The bad part is, it also brings to the market a fair number- I won’t say fakes because I don’t want to be sued- but shall we say ‘enhanced’ images. Did I say no penises? Well all of a sudden, they are there a plenty, plumped up a bit for effect. One would not know, looking solely at so many of these travesties that Vaughn was indeed deeply troubled by his sexuality which no doubt contributed, along with ill health, to his ultimate suicide in 1977. Erotically suggestive, but chaste in their way, a visual reticence that perhaps reflected Vaughn’s own sexual stricture.

But now, in the age of the overt, visual eroticism if it means anything it means everything on view, and Vaughn’s visual restraint is not to the taste of the buyer of the present day. Everything that used to be a shaded sexual byway is now labelled queer, whether it is so or not. And I presume the penchant for queerness is at least partially driving interest in Keith Vaughn. With his standard palette of greys and greens and typically small size of the support for his very many gouaches that have made their way onto the retail market of late, fairly easy to, shall we say, enhance. With a bit of water as a diluent, the pigment at the top of an appropriate figure’s pelvic ‘v’ can be dissolved and then shall we say anatomically strengthened with a few strokes of the brush.

Having a moment, and for all that’s resulted, I’ll be avoiding Keith Vaughn for the next little while.

You know the rest, but in the case at hand, the cows have already gone to the knackers, made into mince and the leftovers, hides and tallow, doubtless someone’s shoes or a lady’s handbag, and a bar or two of soap.

I am in crude metaphor referring to the British Museum’s current exhibition in Room 3 of gems that have been returned- 10 out of a count into the several hundreds. But no one really knows because, as the tombstone plaques on the wall tell us, the engraved gems had never been catalogued.

Oh, yes, of course, pressure of work and all that, but the fact is, many of these, again information the museum admits to within the exhibition, were part of the collection put together by the antiquary Charles Townsend and acquired by the British Museum in, wait for it,1814. Well, it’s been a nightmare of work for the BM, and perhaps the curators had planned to prepare some accession information in the upcoming 210 years.

That the museum has prepared this exhibit is something, caught with their pants down, they had to do. Ostensibly, it also serves the purpose of alerting the public to be vigilant, letting the museum know when and if someone sees something that might have been stolen from its study collections and acquired innocently on eBay. Fat chance. Were there any images of anything on view that one might look out for? No, of course not, because such images do not exist. Let me remind you, none of these items were catalogued. It was only the result of a sharp eyed academic who had seen first hand some of the items who recognized them when they turned up offered by an online seller.

‘On the advice of recovery specialists, we are not sharing full details of the lost and damaged items at this time.’

British Museum

‘Not sharing…’ because there is nothing to share. The museum has a group of experts in the policing services and the field of art loss recovery assisting in their efforts to locate the missing items.

As if, fat chance- whatever efforts are being made cannot be considered as any more than window dressing. Close the barn door, at long last- the cows are gone for good.

In a recent edition of Apollo, there was an article about how the system of public service examinations had beggared curatorial and art historical positions at some of Italy’s national museums, with the nation’s cultural affairs bureaucracy making it nearly impossible to deliver the right arts professional in a timely manner to the right cultural institution.  

Although given Apollo’s connoisseurial bent, I would prefer to respond in appropriate prolixity, but believe in this instance I can sum up my reply in a single word in the vernacular- crap. 

The plain fact of the matter is, positions cannot be filled because the cultural sphere internationally has no money to pay qualified staff. Sadly, museum visitor totals, indeed the attendance at any number of cultural sites have the uniform appearance when viewed on a bar graph that can also be communicated in a single word, well, two, with an intensifying morpheme-  rapidly shrinking.  

And with this shrinkage, not lost on politicians, the presumption is that those shrinking numbers represent a smaller constituency upon whom no beneficence needs be extended- read, no money needs be spent. And I suppose, looked at from the point of view of political expediency, they’re right. 

Not long ago I was told by an erstwhile colleague who sought to apologize for not reciprocating my acquaintance that we should put our friendship, his words, ‘on ice.’ I didn’t know that friendship worked that way, as indeed, heritage doesn’t, either. Both must be valued and nurtured to have the chance to survive. It can’t be put in cold storage, delaying decomposition because decomposition will ineluctably occur. Mind, I am, mercifully, not at a loss for friends, so the chap who sought to put ours ‘on ice’ will be at most a footnote in my memoirs. Cultural heritage however, once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. It can’t be put on ice with the hope that, in the fulness of time, the pendulum will re-swing and it will again be worthy of note, worthy of politicians’ consideration, and consequently, in receipt of the funding it requires. 

In the meantime, however, all those who might be keepers of the flame are left with difficult choices. Consider four years of a first degree in art history, then two years to achieve a master’s in a particular specialization, say Renaissance Italian art, and highly likely followed by a PhD in the same subject. So now, with some eight years of university training, one is prepared to enter the workforce, and the choices are- let me see, shall I work for the- you name the London or New York or Paris or Rome- museum, or shall I get a job as a checker at Tesco, where I can get benefits and enough pay to allow me to rent a flat?  

This is not something I have made up or exaggerated to make a point. Within the last couple of weeks, I was in contact with one of the scholarly societies about some research materials when the fellow who runs the place told me to spread the word amongst my colleagues about a half time editorial position requiring someone with training at PhD level. Pay, wait for it, £20 an hour, and on contract, so no benefits. Don’t spend it all at once and it will seem like more. 

The upshot was, I was a day or so later mentioning this to a collegial friend who lives in Buckinghamshire. She put it neatly in context, saying the job wouldn’t pay her return train ticket to make her way into London. Before we the two of us began to just guffaw, another colleague, younger and with whom we were not on so intimate terms, sidled up, heard the rate of pay and said that sounded like something she was interested in pursuing.  

Well, what more can I say? Heritage is ill regarded so ill requited and those whose mission it might be to safeguard the world’s treasures are not able to earn a living safeguarding the world’s treasures. The senior curator at the British Museum solved that problem, ostensibly, anyhow, making off with items from the museum’s collection over the course of 20 or so years. His thefts, given the context of his employment, while not anything anyone could sanction, becomes, however, a little more understandable. One does have creatural needs, like buying groceries. 

Again, theft is hardly anything any of us can sanction, but what of the functional theft of our heritage, the result of public and consequent political disinterest? Of course, the pendulum of public interest will indeed swing back, but the open question is, what will be left to humanity once it does?  

It must take lots of practice, as my few efforts at a selfie always depict me with some manner of ailment that might be characterized as far-gone dementia. Mind, the use I make of my iPhone extends to the now rare receipt or placing of telephone calls, and the much more frequent placing or receipt of text messages- except in England, where the cost of a single text message is about equivalent to a starter, entrée, and pudding at Rule’s. So, displacing texts in some quarters, substitute emails.

With all that, I do need to take a selfie, albeit rarely. The Warburg Institute, where I hang my academic hat of late, requires an updated ID photo, to affix to an updated ID card, annually. Given that the full compliment of Warburg scholars is only about 80, one can imagine that, with all of us well known to each other, it is rarely anyone has given my ID card even a first look, much less a second. Good thing because, as noted, had anyone done so, they’d opine I was some manner of mental defective and had no hope of flourishing in an environment of advanced scholarship. A sidebar- that sounds ego-driven, as I am not sure to what extent I am in actuality flourishing. However, I am still there, with my colleagues still friendly, but it might be they’ve taken pity on an old man of diminished capacity.

Now I have put my colleagues on their mettle to come to my defence, and before the cries of ‘no, no- you’re highly valued’ become overwhelming, let me crack on.

Of course, those cries would be voiced virtually, and that’s what I really want to write about, the confluence of selfies and social media. Can one in this day and age avoid social media? In the olden days, that is, three years ago, when we closed down our last gallery location, we had already established our presence on Facebook, Instagram, Medium.com and Twitter- which isn’t even Twitter anymore, but not claiming social media maven status, I don’t remember what it is called- so take that, Elon Musk.

Our motivation for all this was entirely venal, or should I say, less cynically, ‘commercially motivated.’ We’d have images of current stock, images of stands at various antiques and art fairs, images of the gallery spaces, and, just rarely, ourselves depicted within, doing whatever it is we were doing. Although a lot of what we were doing was hoovering the floor, most typically we were shown expatiating, and this generally linked to the images of the gallery interiors, in our attempt to provide some manner of virtual experience for punters.

Did it work? Was any of this worth it? Well, frankly, yes. We achieved a few sales early on from people who, ultimately, never did darken our door, and with our need to move on in life and eventually close down our bricks and mortar premises, we believed that, along with the Chappell & McCullar website, we were well along the road as successful online merchants.

As perhaps we were. We quickly determined, however, that we were not the only venal ones, and that our online posts were hardly seen by anyone save being ‘boosted’ with some manner of strange and mystical algorithm that magically presented our posts to those others who, based on their online affinities, might be interested in what we were selling. So far, so good, one might say, and, for a time, it was. We acquired friends and followers, most of whom one would have to stretch the general understanding of those words to so characterize them, but we had them all the same, and in vast numbers.

And sales increases thereby? Well, no. The magical algorithms regularly linked our stock in trade with things like painted flower pots, throw cushions, and pet care items. Go figure.

However, the cost to promote our posts was cheap, but did require the keeping on file credit card information and that, finally, is where we had to part company. Despite so very many assurances that our credit card information was secure, we were repeatedly hacked and while nothing ever happened beyond the inconvenience of having to cancel the card on file and then replace it with another, we figured, reasonably enough, that we were just asking for it. Besides, the utility of the posts for sales purposes had run its course. I found, like so many others- so many millions, in fact- I was viewing the success of a post by the numbers of times it was liked and the numbers of new followers/friends it engendered. This very nearly became a mania, or addiction- you choose- from which, thank goodness, I recovered. Hello, my name is Michael- I am a social media whore. By the way, it was my third nephew then age 27 who so characterized me. I suppose that might be counted an intervention.

And so it is, I suppose in my recovery I feel some manner of superiority to those sods who are still in the throes of addiction, posting selfies every damn day, or more often, in any manner of inane activity. Mind, the more comely the person depicted, the more followers they seem to have, but I would also note, very many of these ostensibly non-commercial posts are promoted by the poor sods. The question is, why? ‘Friends,’ or ‘followers’, or what have you, that are having their addiction fed by others

1. Living vicariously, ‘liking’ images and activities more attractive and interesting compared to what’s happening in their own dismal lives, or
2. The selfie posters attempting to live vicariously through other’s lives, with the hope of some vague affiliation and ego strokes from ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ who will provide kudos about one’s otherwise inane posts.

That of course, if one were on fire, these same friends or followers wouldn’t provide an ounce of piss to put out the flames, even if they could, has, sadly, restructured the heretofore generally accepted definition of friendship. Friendship, it now seems, no longer implies a degree of intimacy that carries with it an understanding of frequent, and person to person, social interaction.

That interaction, the central tenet of friendship, has gone out the window, and what there is of it that does survive, survives only to the extent it mirrors one’s ‘friendships’ on social media. And I suppose that’s where selfies form some manner of matrix, that if one meets a person in real, as opposed to virtual life, if that person does not accord with the facial imagery one has chosen to befriend on social media, one gives that real life person the go by. With all that, I doubt the late great director of the Warburg Institute, Sir Ernst Gombrich, would fare very well on social media, but then, I can’t picture him taking very many selfies, either.