Image: Honolulu Museum of Art
Dr. David Getsy, a foremost historian of art and performance on queer and transgender themes in American art, talks about queer and trans visibility in contemporary art and film in the 1970s.
Directed by Paul Morrissey but named as Warhol’s creations, the films offered trans actresses ambivalent but increasingly prominent roles.
Getsy will discuss these underground films in the context of the American film industry’s fascination with trans topics in the early 1970s and the critical response they received in Off-Off-Broadway theater.
He will also discuss the films’ contributions to one of Warhol’s largest commissions, his series of portraits of trans women of color, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’.
At the start of the 1970s, Andy Warhol’s brand became synonymous with trans visibility.
