FIRE ISLAND ART

A lush survey that makes a powerful case for Fire Island as a wellspring of queer art.

This illustrated feast frames Fire Island not simply as a queer sanctuary, but as an incubator of queer style across the 20th century. Dempsey, president of the Fire Island Pines Historical Society, is an engaging guide to a vibrant history: Readers learn that Oscar Wilde is said to have visited in Cherry Grove in 1882; same-sex couples danced at Duffy’s in the 1930s (“after the hotel’s owners went to bed”); and in 1952 Lone Hill was rebranded as Fire Island Pines, with lots advertised for as little as $275. Pilgrims followed, including W.H. Auden, Frank O’Hara, and Andrew Holleran (whose 1978 novel, Dancer From the Dance, supplies the perfect metaphor: “nothing but a sandbar, as slim as a parenthesis”). At its best, the book links libido to the aesthetics of sun, sand, sea, and skin: Richard Meyer writes about the artistic and sexual ménage à trois of Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French (aka PaJaMa); Philip Gefter tells of a shy but excitable Richard Avedon gradually shedding his clothes; and Fabio Cherstich provides a vivid account of David Hockney’s 1975 summer sojourn, including a page from his scrapbook for host Arthur Lambert. The second half widens the lens: Andy Warhol’s diaries; Sam Ashby’s queer cinematic history (“a fantasy of a fantasy”); Ksenia M. Soboleva on lesbian absence; and a conversation between photographer Lola Flash and poet and actress Pamela Sneed about grief in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. But while the 1980s haunts the edges, the thesis holds: As Thomas Mann wrote in Death in Venice, “We artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us.”

An exhilarating reminder that this “parenthesis” in the Atlantic shaped generations of queer artists.