BerlinAlmost 30 years after his death, the extraordinary work of Patrick Angus (1953–1992) has returned to the public eye with full force. Opened a few weeks ago in the prestigious Stefania-Bortolami-Galerie in New York the first solo exhibition on the artist. In the past two years, two retrospectives have been dedicated to him – one at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart (2017) and the second at the Long Beach Museum of Art in the USA (2019).
The exhibitions as well as an anthology of Angus’ work, which was recently published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, have not only snatched from oblivion his extraordinary talent and his very personal view of the world. No, they are also a valuable testimony to US realism.
Indeed, reality is always at the center of Angus’ work. Be it the melancholy provincial landscapes of Arkansas, the streets of Santa Barbara or Los Angeles or the gay saunas and underground porn cinemas in New York in the 1980s. Angus’ painting is a poetic, violent, sharp, often ironic reference to the world in which he moved.
Those: Leslie-Lohman Museum NY
„Self portrait as Picasso“ (1980)
The story of his rediscovery begins in Germany. The first to become aware of his talent was Andreas Sternweiler – a curator who was open to queer topics and who included Patrick Angus’ work in the 1997 exhibition “100 Years of the Gay Movement”, which was shown in the Schwules Museum in Berlin. Angus died of AIDS in New York in 1992. At that time he was still completely unknown, with no gallery or institutional support. The Berlin exhibition was the first to show his work in Europe. It is also thanks to the support of the Schwules Museum that Douglas Blair Turnbaugh (Patrick Angus Estate) was able to publish the first book with Angus’ drawings – “LA Drawings” – in 2003.
But the German contribution to the rediscovery of the artist should not end there. The Thomas Fuchs gallery named after its owner, which still represents Angus’ estate to this day, is located in Stuttgart. Fuchs and his partner Andreas Pucher discovered Angus’ work through a film dedicated to Quentin Crisp – the gentleman in New York sung about by Sting. He was Angus’ friend and mentor in New York in the 1980s. In one scene of the film, the actor playing Angus can be seen rolling out Angus-themed canvases from gay clubs in Times Square to show his friend.
It hit the gallery owners like a bolt of lightning: They decided to follow the trail of Angus and contacted his administrator, Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, in New York. He provided them with some of the artist’s finest works, works that Angus had painted in his more mature years.
It is thanks to the intense work of Fuchs and Pucher that Angus’ estate was moved from oblivion into the spotlight. We also owe the first gallery exhibition on Angus in 2015, a retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the publication of the Angus monograph to the two gallery owners.
Patrick Angus has also become a constant obsession for Fabio Cherstich, an Italian theater director and art collector. It started when he first saw Angus’ pictures on a friend’s cell phone. It all started in 2012. “I was in Paris at the time,” recalls Cherstich. Thus began an obsessive and at first daunting search: “The only solo exhibition dedicated to Angus was at the Regional Art Museum in Fort Smith, Arkansas. In short: In the damn nowhere. ”
–Those: Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart
“Untitled”, late 1970s
The curator of the remote museum was initially in disbelief when she received a call from an Italian stranger asking for information about Angus. Nonetheless, she gave Cherstich what could possibly be the most valuable contact for Angus that he could imagine: the details of the person who loaned her all of the works: Betty Angus, Patrick’s 80-year-old mother, who to this day lives widowed in a house in Fort Smith .
Cherstich called immediately, they talked for an hour. Betty had waited almost 20 years for this call, perhaps without knowing it: someone had finally found access to her son’s forgotten world. “Betty told me the only way to see Patrick’s work would be to visit her in person. She said she had hundreds at home. ”Cherstich and Angus’ mother broke up with a promise that they would see each other in Arkansas as soon as possible.
Next stop: Fort Smith, Arkansas. Here Cherstich is received by Betty Angus, a magnificent 80-year-old who is always dressed in monochrome and who takes the guest to her house museum. His son’s paintings hang all over the house, even in the garage. But they are different from the homoerotic works that Douglas Blair Turnbaugh owned. “Betty showed me the whole previous production,” recalls Cherstich, “that is, the Californian one of the 60s and 70s, where the focus is on portraits, but also on landscapes – all works that show what a great painter, but Angus was also a draftsman. “
–Those: Estate of Patrick Angus – Bortolami Gallery NY
“Untitled”, late 1970s
There were portraits of enigmatic boys, friends or schoolmates, along with models from the Santa Barbara Institute of Art. Angus’ muses: adolescents, dandies, workers, athletes, half-naked people. Portraits on beds or sofas, fleeting poses between tight jeans and skin-tight T-shirts, but also female nudes, portraits, objects, grotesque scenes – in the background often the beaches of LA or the skyscrapers of Santa Barbara.
Cherstich can’t understand how Angus’s work could be forgotten. “Betty had organized a couple of shows, all without success. The last one, a few months earlier, at Fort Smith Hospice. Then it became clear to me that I had to wrest this immense work from oblivion. ”After three days that he spent with Betty, Cherstich finally found a second part of the treasure.
Because in 25 years of hyperactivity, the artist (at the age of 13 his main occupation was drawing and painting) created hundreds of works that were extremely heterogeneous in terms of technique and form. For Angus, painting and drawing were the result of constant practice of observation: an homage to love for the world, for the real.
Possibly an unrequited love, at least that’s how the artist felt it himself. Because his existence was characterized by existential insecurity and disregard for his potential – in art as in his relationships. Angus’ painting arises here, on a threshold that unfortunately has never been crossed. Viewing his works is like leafing through a visual diary. The topic of sex only became more explicit and haunting from the end of the 1970s, when Angus landed in boundless, but also frightening Los Angeles.
–Those: Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart
„Untitled (Ken in Chair blue Shirt)“, späte 1970er
When he arrives in the City of Angels, Angus is preoccupied with his role models (especially Hockney and Picasso, in complete contrast to the trends in the art market of those years) and with the desire to become part of an artistic and liberal world in which he is can finally express his homosexuality. Ultimately, this remains only a hope. “A self-condemnation for loneliness, maybe, but certainly the only possible way to really experience something,” Cherstich calls it. The climax of the sexual themes can be found in Angus’ works of his late period, which are set in New York: in porn theaters or in Gaiety Theater, a gay burlesque club in Times Square that was closed by Mayor Giuliani in the late 1980s when AIDS decimated the community around the world, especially in prominent New York.
But Angus’ primary concern is not the disease or the sex on the screen, but the humanity of the gay milieu. He perpetuates his devotion with bright colors. It shows naked bodies in a darkness surrounding everything. The uniqueness of this work – the work of a short and intense life – is well recognized by the admiration of intellectuals and artists of its time, including Quentin Crisp, Robert Patrick and Douglas Blair Turnbaugh. The latter dedicated two monographs to Angus, which tragically only appeared posthumously: “Strip show – paintings by Patrick Angus” (1993) and the aforementioned “LA Drawings” (2003).
–Those: Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart
“Untitled”, late 1970s
The great success Angus deserved as an artist did not reach him until the end of his life, in a major solo exhibition organized by the University of Santa Barbara in February 1992. At that time, David Hockney bought six of his works and made a short video. What remains is a photo of two laughing men: One is Hockney – tall, corpulent, already known as the grand master of the art of the 20th century – the other is Angus, tiny, fragile and visibly exhausted from the illness that lasted him a few months should kill later.
However, you can see him smiling, he looks as if he is here for the first time aware of his extraordinary talent. A star that radiates its strongest light just when it is about to go out. And of which we can say today that, thanks to the contribution of a Berlin museum, a gallery owner in Stuttgart, an Italian collector and a gallery owner in New York, it has started to shine again today. “After too many years of indifference, New York – the city he loved most – pays tribute to this great artist,” says Cherstich. “Patrick Angus, for me this is the protagonist of an endless chase. Like an old friend from the past. “
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