Epic Love Stories

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More About

• Harold Scull
• Clay Greene
• Herb Ritts
• Visual Arts
• Fine Art Photography

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We have ached, as you may have, to hear the horrible story of Clay Greene and Harold Scull, two old husbands in Sonoma County who were forcibly separated when Scull took ill and Greene was put in a nursing home. Their living wills, naming each other executors, were ignored when Scull died alone three months later, and their house was seized by the government and sold with all their belongings in it. (A lawsuit has been filed.) Thus we like all the more an old story about two men together, “Horst P. Horst and George Hoyningen-Huene,” which comes to us in the form of a photography exhibit. Horst, young and gorgeous, met Hoyningen-Huene, an established artist we’re picturing as a devastating silver fox only partly because he was a baron, in Paris in 1930. They fell in love, Hoyningen-Huene mentored Horst, and some of the world’s best and best-loved fashion and art photography ensued, occasionally featuring Horst as a model. Together they developed the high-contrast, high-drama, body-worshipping style later bitten by Herb Ritts. At the show, we can all meditate on how much better the clothes were in their day than his. Probably the primary example of their style is Horst’s The Mainbocher Corset, a print of which is included here; nearly everyone has seen it in a reproduction, but to see the real item is a rare treat. We hope Clay Greene is chauffeured into the city to see this show by a Horst lookalike.
May 6-July 31, 2010