Regardless of the endless data obtainable on the web, there are usually not many particulars about artist Edward “Ted” Fawcett Carey. A meticulous painter from Chester, Pennsylvania, he has principally been acknowledged by students for the shut friendship he developed with Andy Warhol after shifting to New York Metropolis to pursue a graphic design profession. Nevertheless, Carey’s personal art work — a collection of American folks artwork work created over the past decade of his life depicting facets of New York’s homosexual group — has typically been missed. In 1985, one week following his loss of life from AIDS, ArtViews Gallery held a memorial present that includes 14 of his work, however there haven’t been any exhibitions of the artist’s work since.
Almost 4 a long time later, 9 work from Carey’s physique of labor have been most not too long ago spotlighted at East Hampton’s Guild Corridor this summer season. Curated by Matthew Nichols, Ted Carey: Queer as Folks explored the artist’s life by way of his elaborate depictions of Manhattan’s traditionally homosexual areas, such because the now-defunct bar Boot Hill and cultural establishments together with the Lincoln Heart for the Performing Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork. The exhibition additionally supplied a glimpse into Carey’s social circle by way of a set of homages to homosexual friends together with Warhol, Broadway costume designer Miles White, and photobooth artist Herman Costa.
Nichols defined that he initially got here throughout Carey as “a footnote within the Warhol literature” whereas writing his dissertation on the Pop artist’s early profession three a long time in the past. But it surely wasn’t till after the pandemic, when Guild Corridor digitized its everlasting assortment, that Carey returned to Nichols’s consideration. After Carey’s loss of life, his associate Tito Spiga had organized a bequest of his art work to the humanities heart; in a full-circle second, Carey’s work have been displayed in Guild Corridor’s exhibition area named after Spiga.
Nichols advised Hyperallergic that he was drawn to the artist’s use of the style’s “pictorial language” to seize what have been modern-day moments in New York’s queer scene. “There’s this deliberate stylization of the figures and this kind of stacked, typically symmetrical association of the compositions,” Nichols defined. He additionally pointed to Carey’s emphasis on two-dimensionality within the works, intentionally omitting shadows and casting scenes and characters in evenly distributed mild, observations additionally famous in an essay he wrote for the exhibition.
Whereas it’s unclear what Carey’s private motivations have been for utilizing this visible vernacular, Nichols identified that the artist’s work subverts the style’s conventions in its centering of the homosexual group members he knew or admired and the queer metropolis areas he frequented. In a single instance, Nichols described how Carey’s portray of Boot Hill serves as a kind of “doc of a subculture” from the time interval in its rendering of the bar’s Western-themed decor and denim-wearing patrons.
“One other side that I feel is in that portray is the gentrification of the Higher West Facet, as a result of there’s just one individual of coloration within the portray, whereas the remainder of the figures are White males,” Nichols added.
Though this exhibition solely confirmed a portion of Carey’s work, the curator stated that he has additionally recognized a number of different work that he’s nonetheless monitoring down in private and non-private collections to hopefully piece collectively a extra complete understanding of the artist.
“This feels prefer it’s simply the beginning,” Nichols advised Hyperallergic.
This text, a part of a collection centered on LGBTQ+ artists and artwork actions, is supported by Swann Public sale Galleries. Swann’s upcoming sale “LGBTQ+ Artwork, Materials Tradition & Historical past,” that includes works and materials by Dinh Q. Lê, Concord Hammond, Tom of Finland, and plenty of extra will happen on August 22, 2024.