Pippa Garner, “Future Man! (The New Business Man: Braid Tie + The New Business Man: Fur Tie),” 1987–2026

Dear Bruce, Gallery Weekend Berlin came and went. At one point, I sat outside BQ (Philipp Gufler undertaking the honorable project of reclaiming a queer Bavarian painter of the early 20th century from obscurity) with friends and we were stunned by the art-business-as-usual that played out before our eyes. Crisis? What Crisis? I admit it was nice to get out of the doomy headspace for a while. At Galerie Neu, as part of the group show “Counter City,” curated by Juliette Desorgues, a series of photographs by Pippa Garner made me laugh. I superimposed the neckties with the red enormity swinging from the Stiernacken (bull neck) of not-your-president like a sword dipped in the blood of his victims. May the fox bite his throat and the braid strangle him.

“Each man kills the thing he loves.” My immediate response to you quoting Oscar Wilde is: Each woman nourishes the thing she loves. Be it out of necessity (because who else would do the nourishing?), obligation (Marguerite Duras nourishing Robert Antelme back to life after he’d been released from Dachau, only to divorce him once he was stable enough) or because she’s sick of all the killing, actual and metaphorical, that she’s always only a breath away from being subjected to herself. It’s true that we all live under the boot of patriarchy – yet gay men and women suffer differently. Who has more wiggle space: Gay men or recalcitrant women? But perhaps this is the wrong question to ask altogether, and the key word here is solidarity. You write that gay men of your generation have been introduced to sex via gay porn – I guess the same is true for every young person today. My son regularly receives unwanted (?) clips on his phone now via Snapchat, and my non-representative research into internet pornography shows that in “regular” straight porn, female actors are debased and brutalized in ways that weren’t the norm the last time I checked, twenty-odd years ago. It doesn’t stop at consuming porn – bodies are consumed, and often at a very low price. Patriarchy and capitalism are inseparable, as are sex and exploitation. In a recent conversation, my friend and former colleague Max Grau pointed out to me the LA-based writer Dennis Cooper, 2007 recipient of the Prix Sade. I’ve read what is available on the interwebs and froze at the thought that my son is now the preferred age for gay street hustlers.

Monika Baer, “Schweine Steine Scherben (skinning),” 2025

Apparently, being a mother prevents me from going down certain paths; a whole range of darker desires just isn’t available to me as long as I’m nourishing another human being. The required wholesomeness of parenthood is not so much a conscious decision; one grows into it by dealing with teachers, and, mostly, other parents. It’s a social masquerade that becomes second nature. I’ll find out in a few years if it’s gonna stick. Thinking through my emotional reaction to Richard Hawkins’s work makes me realize the limits of where I’m willing to go regarding the metaphorical mutilation of bodies, playful and – I get your point re Timothée Chalamet – called for as it might be. While I was at the Kunsthalle, a group of high schoolers were guided through the show. I didn’t want to eavesdrop; from what I picked up, there was subdued excitement regarding the sexual explicitness of the work, and of course, the kids pointed out the celebs to each other. I was thinking that if these were art students, they’d be quite indignant that no trigger warning was issued at the entrance. [1] The demand for “safe spaces” as expressed by the next generation of artists, who came of age during the pandemic, is another aspect I’m ambivalent about. After many years of working in higher education, perhaps this, too, has become second nature. Wholesomeness all around, at the expense of the more obscure undercurrents of art history of which Richard’s work is a prime example, as you have brilliantly carved out.

Last night, I saw the purple glow of the jacaranda trees reflected in Monika Baer’s new paintings at the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Underneath the lovely pastel hues, they burst with female rage. xo a

Annette Weisser is an artist and author.

Image credit: 1 Courtesy of the artist estate and photographer; 2 courtesy of Trautwein Herleth and the artist, 1 photos Stefan Korte; 2 photo Mareike Tocha