Re: Gregory Markopoulos and queer aesthetics

From: Marc Siegel (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Dec 01 2009 - 11:00:14 PST


Hello,

Another suggestion: Ron Gregg at Yale University has been doing work on
Markopoulos and would be a good person to contact.

I find Chuck's comments quite useful, but do think that there is evidence
that Markopoulos was not merely "tolerant of" but actually enthusiastic
about Jack Smith (whose work by the way I wouldn't describe as emblematic of
Camp. Perhaps it depends on what one means by Camp.). He not only cast Smith
in The Iliac Passion (1964-67), but also gave a quite beautiful lecture
about Smith's Flaming Creatures in the summer of 1964 published as "Innocent
Revels" in Film Culture 33 (1964). He viewed Smith's FC and Normal Love not
as "deliberate lowbrow and vulgar" (not that those things are necessarily
bad­I'm sure Chuck and I would agree here), but as some of the most
important works of art of its day. Anyway, certainly worth grappling with
Markopoulos on Smith so as to complicate our understanding of both.

Best wishes,
Marc

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