Ron Athey

Wrestling With Demons

Ron Athey
I first witnessed the manic energy of performeractorartist Mario Gardner in the early 1990s, when he helped emcee many of the ACT-UP benefit parties under the drag name Melena d‘ la Moja. I wasn’t aware of Gardner‘s above-radar acting talents until 1994, when I went to Hamburg to see Reza......
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The Dating Test

Ron Athey
Photos by Issa Sharp IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1980s, BLITZ KIDS, GOTHS AND New Romantics put the peacock back into men's fashion in a way it hadn't been since the court of Louis XIV. While such dandyism mostly appeared in underground clubs, there were enough showboaters -- Boy......
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Apocalypse Culture Now

Ron Athey
Photo by Anne Fishbein BEFORE RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS AND AMOK Bookstore refined the art of merchandising radical ideas such as Survival Research Labs' fighting robots or body-mutilation photos from real life and the stage, there was virtually no place to find examples of extreme culture. By the late '90s, between shock-value......
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Flower Power

Ron Athey
Photos by Lucas Michael IVETTE SOLER'S GARDEN LAYOUTS ARE ANTI-MATHEMATICAL AND eclectic. For a landscape architect, the path is more important than what's planted around it; for a garden designer, such as Soler, it's all about letting the plants take the spotlight. She prefers simple landscaping support: gravel, colored concrete......

10 Fierce Style Statements

Ron Athey
1. Selene Luna, the living embodiment of Betty Boop. She not only has an Epi-Lady look and a Velvet Hammer smile, she has an act. 2. Diamanda Galás, black-veiled and wailing at the grand piano, in the premiere of her Defixiones, Will and Testament at Royce Hall. Unlike your average......

The Erotic Arts

Ron Athey
Photo by Gregory Bojorquez Here are some words that describe a few details from a Tom of Finland drawing: horse-hung, bubble butt, pencil-eraser nipples. Suffice it to say that the late artist Touko Laaksonen, Tom of Finland to the world, knew what he liked: hypermasculine gay men. Yet the Tom......
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Polka Dot Uptown Girl

Ron Athey
Somehow in this city with every level of costume need, custom-made clothing resources have remained a secret. I found out years ago that you could buy decent quality ill-fitting leather pants off the rack for $200, or get them customized to fit like a glove for $150 at Wayne‘s Leather......
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Pumpin’ Circumstance

Ron Athey
Photos by Ron Athey EDITED BY KATERI BUTLER For years, artists and developers have touted the imminent revival of downtown. For nearly as long, fashionistas have tried to cultivate a design scene on a New York scale. Four FASHION WEEK shows, in particular, suggest that both these things are occurring......
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Truckers, Tricks and Sarah

Ron Athey
At 16 years old, J.T. LeRoy began writing regularly for New York Press, Spin and Nerve under his street name Terminator. Now 20, he has just published his first novel, Sarah, about the life of a preteen Appalachian truck-stop whore who takes on his mother’s name to turn tricks. LeRoy......
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Vanessa Beecroft

Ron Athey
ITALIAN ARTIST VANESSA BEECROFT, WHO CAME out of such prestigious art venues as ICA London and the Venice Biennale, has established herself as one of the most provocative fresh faces on the international art scene. More tableaux vivants than theater, Beecroft's performances -- in which she never appears -- seem......