BOOKS: The Ultimate Art Collector

The Art of Looking: The Life and Treasures of Charles Leslie is the book I have been waiting for all my life. Not only is it packed with an enormous number of images from Leslie's collection (and completely uncensored); it also tells the story of the remarkably handsome and sexy Charles Leslie.

Included in the book are a number of essays that cover Leslie's legendary personality, his 48-year relationship with Fritz Lohman, and his varied and quite active sex life. Leslie is a pre-Sexual Revolution-ary free thinker. He also has the world's largest -- wait for it -- collection of phalli.

Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman began showing and collecting art in their Soho loft in 1969 to provide an outlet for gay artists. With an attendance of over 200 people at their first weekend exhibition, they quickly realized there was a need for this type of venue in the community.

During the 1980s, with the rise of AIDS and the death of so many artists and collectors, Charles and Fritz realized that many important works of art were being destroyed by families who, because they didn't know what to do with this type of art or didn't want to acknowledge the sexuality of their loved ones, threw amazing collections of art into the trash. Charles and Fritz knew these works had to be preserved.

This need for a safe haven for art that is often excluded or looked down upon led them to create the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, a nonprofit organization, in 1987. Since then, the organization has grown from a small "underground" gallery on New York City's Prince Street to its present spacious location at 26 Wooster St., housing the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

Best-selling author Kevin Clarke (Beards: An Unshaved History, Porn: From Warhol to X-Tube) has written and edited a book that gives the content the authority it deserves, and his detailed history of Leslie helps us understand that we are what we collect.

Here is the Amazon link, and for more information go to Bruno Gmunder. Below and on the following pages are images of the art, the magnificant Soho loft, and the life of Charles Leslie.

THE ART

BERNARD PERLIN
Soldiers in the South Pacific
American painter * 1918-2014, Drawing on paper
12 x 18", 1942-45, Founder's gift

MARCO SILOMBRIA
Terrace II
Italian painter, sculptor, ceramicist, photographer * * 1936 Oil & pencil on canvas
43 x 58.75", 1985, Gift of the artist

PATRICK ANGUS
Hanky Panky
American painter * 1953-92, Acrylic on canvas 40.5 x 54.25", 1980
(c) Douglas Turnbaugh Founder's gift

ROBERT BLISS
Reclining Figure
Oil on board 24 x 36" 1963, Anonymous donor

ROLF KOPPEL
Self Portrait Reclining
American photographer, born in Germany * * 1937 Silver gelatin print
12.75" o
1987
Gift of the artist

FRENCH ACADEMIC DRAWING
Untitled, Charcoal on paper 30 x 25'', 19th Century
Founder's gift

BERNARD SPRONK
Homage to Von Gloeden, Dutch Painter * 1954, Oil on paper 17 x 13", 1998
Gift of the artist

DELMAS HOWE
Picnic in the Grass
American painter * 1935, Oil on canvas 48 x 60", 1979
Gift of Angela Tese-Milner

JOHN BURTON HARTER
Cocktail Party, American painter * 1940-2002, Oil on masonite 28.25 x 33.75", 1994
Gift of the artist

GILBERT LEWIS
Swimmer, American painter * 1945, Gouache on board 63.75 x 44", 1984
Founder's gift

GO HIRANO
Untitled
Japanese painter * ca. 1912 Pencil on paper 10 x 14.25", ca. 1980,
Founder's gift

MARION PINTO
Male Odalisque
American painter * 1935 - 2010, Oil on canvas 78" o, 1974
Estate of the artist

GORDON LYLE POLLACK
Nocturnal Submission, American painter Oil on canvas 16 x 20", 1980
Gift of Leonard Paoletti

DON WIGHT
Untitled
American illustrator & fabric designer * 1924 - 1999, Ink on paper 15 x 17", 1950s
Founder's gift

MEN OF ATHENS
A work by Greek painter Michail Tsakountis, parked in Charles's apartment. It was part of the exhibition "Men of Athens," curated by Charles Leslie in 2014.

The living room of Charles Leslie's apartment in Soho. On the back wall, a double portrait of Charles and his partner, Fritz Lohman, painted by Marion Pinto in 1974.

THE MASTER'S BEDROOM
The walls in Charles's bedroom, showing Gilbert Lewis's painting Resting (1982), of a man sitting on a chair in the nude.

JUVENILE LEAD
Head shot of Charles Leslie taken by Maurice Blackman, a famous theater photographer of the late 1950s.

MEETING THOMAS MANN
The outfit in which Charles met Thomas Mann in 1955 after a performance of Mime Vignettes, in the Green Room of the Kurhaus in Scheveningen. To Charles, it was just a little flirtation that ended with Mann punching him in the butt. Because Mann wrote about the encounter in his diaries, this meeting became immortal. Funnily enough, Charles was reading The Magic Mountain at the time.

A NIGHT ON THE TOWN
Getting cleaned up and ready to seduce his superiors so he would be sent to Europe instead of Korea.

MOROCCAN DRAG
Forget the Red Shadow: Charles in 1956, after he came back from Morocco.

THERE'S NO CURE LIKE TRAVEL
Charles and Fritz, traveling around the world with friends. Here they can be seen in Venice, the Greek island of Delos, camel riding in Egypt, and sitting on the stairs of Taormina, Sicily.

PARTING GLANCES
Charles and Fritz, who suffered terribly from arthritis. The medication was massive doses of cortisone, which made Fritz gain a lot of weight. The last 10 years of his life were difficult. He died at the end of 2009.

CHARLES LESLIE
The art collector sitting amid his private collection in Soho, with Kim David Smith posing as a "classical nude," photographed by Alex Geana. Geana will have his first one-man show at the Prince Street Project Space in 2015.