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Take Down Portraits: Drawings and Portraits by Larry Stanton
Takedown. Definition 1: 'To get into one's hands control or possession.' The portraits of artist Larry Stanton, (website larrystanton.net), display his eventual mastery of crayon, pen, and brush as he confronted opportunities to record what he saw, whether in his studio, or at a Village diner. Definition 2: 'A wrestling manoeuvre through which an opponent is swiftly brought to the mat from a standing position.' His sitters were never opponents, were unlikely to be standing, but strangers whom he noticed, friends, and/or well known men in the arts, such as the poets Donald Britton and Tim Dlugos, the playwright/actor/director Charles Ludlam, the writers Brad Gooch and Dennis Cooper, the critic Oleg Kerensky. His portraits, thrown onto a canvas mat, pinned their likenesses. Definition 3: 'Having the capability of being taken down or taken apart.' Fighting his own demons, Larry could, and did, look deeply into himself, and into others, when drawing and painting them, dragging those insights up into the image surface. This is a book about the portraits, the drawings, and paintings, by Larry Stanton, 1947-1984. It consists of what I call 'duets,' or conversations which I imagined taking place in his studio while he was working with each of his sitters.
166 pages, Paperback
Published April 20, 2021
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September 2, 2022
PORTRAITS RENDERED INTO POEMS
Takedown Portraits: Drawings & Paintings by Larry Stanton is a beautifully produced and reasonably priced paperback. Here is a quote from a review of the book that appeared in the Gay & Lesbian Review (November/December 2021) that describes what Takedown Portraits is and does better than I can: “Poet Winthrop Smith, who came out the year Stanton died [of AIDS] (1984), has brought these portraits back to life by rendering them as poems. Each poem has a ‘sitter’ who apparently speaks with Stanton as he’s being drawn. Some sitters were famous poets like Tim Dlugos and Donald Britton—both died of AIDS—and some were unknown . . . Smith has brought a lesser-known but gifted artist back to life in the context of these trying times.” A self-portrait of Larry Stanton appears on the cover of Takedown Portraits. Thumbnails of the portraits appear above the poems.
To paraphrase Winthrop Smith from his introduction to Takedown Portraits, Larry Stanton threw his sitters’ portraits onto canvas mats and pinned their likenesses. Hence, the title of the book, Takedown Portraits.
Approximately forty subjects comprise Takedown Portraits, including well-known gay men in the arts and many men of no renown. A lot of Larry Stanton’s subjects were young gay men whom he met in gay bars and diners. Stanton, knowingly or unknowingly, chronicled an entire generation of young gay men, many of whom would remain in obscurity if not for Stanton’s portraits of them. Many of these subjects were probably lost to AIDS. I will never get tired of looking at Larry Stanton’s portraits of these young gay men. The expressions on their faces are unforgettable. They are not interchangeable. Stanton captured each subject’s unique likeness. And Winthrop Smith wonderfully captures their voices in his poetic dialogues between them and Larry Stanton, their portraitist.
At first, I first found Takedown Portraits difficult to read; but when I sat down with the book a second time, I found myself enchanted and involved in Winthrop Smith’s imagined back-and-forth banter between Larry Stanton and his subjects. I guess I had begun to understand what Smith was doing with his poetry. Even if I didn’t understand many of the references in the dialogues, I was overwhelmed by Winthrop Smith’s words and how he uses them. Smith obviously spent a great deal of time and research to compose these made-up conversations that seem true to the sitters and to Stanton.
I really enjoyed Smith’s plays on words. For example, from “(Ross Bleckner 1982)”: “-Posterior glutes /-Unclenched an obscured, /-Humanist /-Rebuttal.”
“Christopher Makos 1969” with its references to the Stonewall riots is one of my favorite poems from Takedown Portraits. It concludes: “-Handcuffed woman, hit /-With baton, asked crowd, /-‘Why don’t you… /-Do something?’”
Many of the poems give a vivid picture of gay life during the early 1980s. For example, “(Brad Gooch 1983)”: “Touring Mineshaft by / Cigarette pinprick, / I watch this, / I watch that,”
Larry Stanton was lost to AIDS early in the epidemic in 1984 at the age of 37. His productivity as shown by these many portraits that were drawn and painted during the early 1980s is absolutely amazing.
Winthrop Smith, a poet whose imagination knows no bounds, has composed a fantastic tribute to Larry Stanton, the portraitist, and his subjects.
Takedown Portraits: Drawings & Paintings by Larry Stanton is a beautifully produced and reasonably priced paperback. Here is a quote from a review of the book that appeared in the Gay & Lesbian Review (November/December 2021) that describes what Takedown Portraits is and does better than I can: “Poet Winthrop Smith, who came out the year Stanton died [of AIDS] (1984), has brought these portraits back to life by rendering them as poems. Each poem has a ‘sitter’ who apparently speaks with Stanton as he’s being drawn. Some sitters were famous poets like Tim Dlugos and Donald Britton—both died of AIDS—and some were unknown . . . Smith has brought a lesser-known but gifted artist back to life in the context of these trying times.” A self-portrait of Larry Stanton appears on the cover of Takedown Portraits. Thumbnails of the portraits appear above the poems.
To paraphrase Winthrop Smith from his introduction to Takedown Portraits, Larry Stanton threw his sitters’ portraits onto canvas mats and pinned their likenesses. Hence, the title of the book, Takedown Portraits.
Approximately forty subjects comprise Takedown Portraits, including well-known gay men in the arts and many men of no renown. A lot of Larry Stanton’s subjects were young gay men whom he met in gay bars and diners. Stanton, knowingly or unknowingly, chronicled an entire generation of young gay men, many of whom would remain in obscurity if not for Stanton’s portraits of them. Many of these subjects were probably lost to AIDS. I will never get tired of looking at Larry Stanton’s portraits of these young gay men. The expressions on their faces are unforgettable. They are not interchangeable. Stanton captured each subject’s unique likeness. And Winthrop Smith wonderfully captures their voices in his poetic dialogues between them and Larry Stanton, their portraitist.
At first, I first found Takedown Portraits difficult to read; but when I sat down with the book a second time, I found myself enchanted and involved in Winthrop Smith’s imagined back-and-forth banter between Larry Stanton and his subjects. I guess I had begun to understand what Smith was doing with his poetry. Even if I didn’t understand many of the references in the dialogues, I was overwhelmed by Winthrop Smith’s words and how he uses them. Smith obviously spent a great deal of time and research to compose these made-up conversations that seem true to the sitters and to Stanton.
I really enjoyed Smith’s plays on words. For example, from “(Ross Bleckner 1982)”: “-Posterior glutes /-Unclenched an obscured, /-Humanist /-Rebuttal.”
“Christopher Makos 1969” with its references to the Stonewall riots is one of my favorite poems from Takedown Portraits. It concludes: “-Handcuffed woman, hit /-With baton, asked crowd, /-‘Why don’t you… /-Do something?’”
Many of the poems give a vivid picture of gay life during the early 1980s. For example, “(Brad Gooch 1983)”: “Touring Mineshaft by / Cigarette pinprick, / I watch this, / I watch that,”
Larry Stanton was lost to AIDS early in the epidemic in 1984 at the age of 37. His productivity as shown by these many portraits that were drawn and painted during the early 1980s is absolutely amazing.
Winthrop Smith, a poet whose imagination knows no bounds, has composed a fantastic tribute to Larry Stanton, the portraitist, and his subjects.
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