This week another one heads off to Fabulon. R.I.P to James Bidgood, the visionary gay artist who created the film Pink Narcissus, a gay classic to me, created breathtaking photography, one who impersonated Carol Channing nightly at NYC'S fabled Club 82, and was a huge inspiration to the likes of Dave LaChapelle and Pierre & Gilles. He was 88 and a very sweet man, and just as kooky as you would imagine. I have always loved his work, just beautiful, and conjures for me, dream like images full of color, fantasy and imagination. Which was the world of James Bidgood. This innovative and totally unique artist solidified his place in queer culture with the film Pink Narcissus, a fantastical, homoerotic celluloid dream mixing surrealism and fantasy to create some of the most beautiful and colorful illusions ever seen on film. To me, as a young gayling it was like being inside my mind, if you have ever wondered that?!?
He created and built a compete world in which to shoot his art and forever changed the way queer imagery was viewed. Because of his eye for beauty and detail the highly stylized, elaborate scenes he created have continued to push the boundaries of homoerotic art for over more than fifty years. Largely self-taught, Bidgood transformed tricks both male and mechanical into proofs of better, queerer worlds. Forced perspective mixed with male-on-male affection, with smears of glitter and Vaseline that blurred the male gaze into a horny swoon. Bidgood frothed his Follies memories into elaborate set and lighting designs for the stars of Club 82, a drag club, and his costumes for them, and even his own drag alter ego, Terry Howe. James was a delightful city and club fixture, and could be seen, boothed among vast hetero's at Club 82 in a clenched pose. He was known to hang with the like of Liz Taylor, Eddie Fisher, Judy Garland and the Gabor Sisters. The appeal became irresistible of his frocks. By the early 1960's, the women took his gowns and creations uptown, gentrifying them into jaw dropping creations paraded around the Junior League Mardi Gras Ball, of which some say, prefigured and similar appropriations by todays Met Ball. One of his more subdue creations....
Some of my favorite photographs above and below...
What I like the most about his work, he was elevating men who don't get elevated: queer men, fem men, sex workers, hustlers, and people from the drag world.
James Bidgood
March 28, 1933-January 31, 2022
