In this series, Obsessions, writers select a treasured cultural artifact and hold it up to the light, reflecting on the revelations it has sparked, the nostalgia it conjures, and the deep-seated urges it articulates.
I'm not quite sure if it's an obsession—I reserve that honorific for more personal matters—but I have a sculpture by the brilliant Jared Buckhiester that I wouldn't part with for the world. It makes me think about so much: not only form, but history and the queer mind, too.
The piece is about a foot high; not terribly big, but big enough. It shows a figure—a male figure—riding backward on a horse. The horse is bucking; you can see its goofy teeth. There is no danger here: the male figure is bending backward to accommodate the action of the horse. Both man and beast are having fun.
Sometimes, when I’m just sitting around, I look at this wonderful object and laugh. It’s like a still from a particularly surreal and amusing silent movie. Though the piece is based on [Marlon Brando playing Emiliano Zapata]—a key figure and general in the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—it is not a monument. Jared has made him a living figure, fist in the air.
I first saw the 46-year-old artist’s work many years ago, when I hired him to help me with a project. His eye and sensibility remain important to my understanding of art, particularly in a marketplace that's defined at present less by surprise than by the acquisition of comforting narratives about someone else's oppression.
Buckhiester's power is his imagination, and it's a beautiful, refreshingly reckless one. Always at the center of his work is some kind of reference to queerness in all senses of the word—his cowboys and military guys are given a garment, or a gesture, that calls attention to standard “manly” attire and affect while breaking free of it. His work makes me rethink all the hang-ups that go into so-called masculinity—the joy to be found in turning all that on its head.
For more Obsessions, read J Wortham's reflection on the film Past Lives and Nicolaia Rips on Groucho Marx.
