This is a production still from the 1971 London run of “Pork”, Andy Warhol’s only play, with the actor Tony Zanetta playing the silver-wigged artist himself. The shot is by Leee Black Childers, one of many of her photos up last weekend at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York. The other photos, many showing lots of naked flesh, give a sense of how naughty avant-garde theater could get at that time. At the exhibition launch, a reading from the deeply scatalogical, largely non-sensical play gave an even better idea of Warhol’s pleasure in ruffling feathers and breaking rules; even after all these years, the old Warholians at the opening showed how deeply committed his crowd could be to the values of bohemia. If in his later years Warhol embraced the moneyed establishment, it was always with the knowledge that his roots lay outside of it – he enjoyed rank and money as living examples of camp.
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