In 1964, a young Susan Sontag penned what would become a treatise on “bad taste.” In “Notes on ‘Camp,’” largely crediting “the homosexuals” for their aesthetic and stylistic sensibility, Sontag detailed the many specificities that constitute “camp taste”: essentially over-the-top sincerity, artifice, and how “to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.”
So what has become of camp in this, the age of unbridled, self-mocking mass culture and unfettered irony? Invisible-Exports attempts to answer this question with a sparse yet rewarding group exhibition, fitting work from 12 artists into its cramped Lower East Side gallery. Camp stalwarts like John Waters and Karlheinz Weinberger are balanced with lesser-known artists like the opportunely named Vaginal Davis (who is, it should be noted, quite famous in certain circles).
Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp.
Two early-’70s photographs by Bob Mizer provide a little history of camp taste. “Tony Rome & Ron Nichols” is like a still from a gay, safari-themed version of On the Town. The models, clad in military uniforms, radiate such excessive machismo that it’s impossible not to appreciate the picture’s underlying eroticism and sexiness. Jeremy Kost’s “If My Sister Only Knew” picks up a contemporary, DIY thread of hyper-masculinity turned awry. Seventy-two Polaroids, arranged in a Grindr-like grid, depict a grown man playing with a heap of Barbies. That, as Sontag wrote, “what is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine” seems to be a safe refuge for 21st-century camp.
Perhaps the most authentic work of camp is a “painting” of seven smeared faces by Davis. “No One Leaves Delilah” was created using make-up counter products with ridiculous names like “Pinkham health tonic” and “Wet & Wild nail polish.” The title recalls Cecil B. DeMille’s 1949 Samson and Delilah, in which Hedy Lamarr stars as the beautiful Philistine. The fact that Lamarr distinguished herself as a scientist and inventor only adds to her camp appeal. After all, she’s the one who summed up her movie career by saying, “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
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Through May 8,
Invisible-Exports,
14A Orchard St., 212-226-5447.
