Met Museum of Art Hockney exhibit

[lennygoran]

A wonderful exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art-Hockney was into opera but i didn't know it extended to this length! Len

[jbuck919]

I happen to like Hockney's art pretty much, but he has had a weird past. Among other things he advocates smoking on the basis that not everybody who engages in the addiction dies before the age of 90. I saw a movie about him way back while I was in college and it included an extremely explicit scene of him having frotting sex with a handsome young man. (I am not making this up.) In and of itself this is nothing, but to allow it to be filmed and not classify it as porn? Also, at the time, gay sex was still considered something to be giggled at, so the audience at the McCarter Theater erupted in inappropriate laughter. Irrelevantly, I always noticed in those days the mandatory booing and/or laughing at scenes that should be taken for granted. That was the first context in which I saw Ben Hur. It has a number of awful scenes in addition to its classic great ones, but it would never occur to me to laugh because (as I know now) Stephen Boyd was gay and Charlton Heston was clueless that the initial scenes written for them together (partly by Gore Vidal) had a now obvious gay undertone.

[lennygoran]

I happen to like Hockney's art pretty much,...gay sex was still considered something to be giggled at

John we were aware of the male relationship paintings and the LA paintings-the nature scenic garden type paintings caught us off guard-they were just superb for us-the colors were just spectacular! Regards, Len