Talk Art

We meet Arthur Lambert from the Estate of artist LARRY STANTON (1947-1984).

Larry Stanton was a Manhattan-based portrait artist whose work was championed by David Hockney, Henry Geldzahler, Ellsworth Kelly and others. He was a gay man who lived in Greenwich Village in New York City. Stanton produced a significant body of work—mostly drawings and paintings—in the four years leading up to his death from AIDS-related complications. Stanton drew portraits of the young men he slept with, as well as his friends and family. Many of Stanton’s subjects were other gay men who died in the 80s from AIDS, and his brightly colored faces sketched quickly in crayon and colored pencil stand as an archive of lives lost. Lambert inherited all of Stanton’s work after he died.

We discuss the new book, edited by Italian theatre director Fabio Cherstich and Stanton's lover Arthur Lambert titled Larry Stanton: Think of Me When It Thunders. A tribute to yet another artist that died before they could leave their mark and is the definitive publication on Stanton’s art and life to date. It includes 139 artworks, many of them portraits of the boys he met on nightly outings, as well as friends and family and a large collection of self- portraits, plus previously unpublished archive imagery of Stanton’s circle. With texts by Cherstich, Lambert, Hockney, Geldzahler, and more, it’s part artbook, part personal history, a round-up of the faces and names that formed Stanton’s world.

Since meeting Cherstich, the two have founded the Estate of Larry Stanton to bring renewed attention to Stanton’s art. A collection was recently on display at Daniel Cooney Gallery, while Acne Studios has presented an exhibition of works and objects featuring Stanton’s drawings in Milan, Seoul, Tokyo and New York in Feb 2023.

‘The portraitist is an observer of people; his attitudes and feelings will be reflected in his observations, and usually the interest in personality makes one study faces. Other aspects of personality show in the body—posture, ways of moving, etc.—but most is revealed in the face. People make their own faces, and Larry knew this instinctively’.

—David Hockney

'Larry Stanton lived and painted in Manhattan until he died of AIDS at the age of 37. In Greenwich Village, he was a familiar sight, starting his practice every day in the early afternoon, drinking coffee at the same spot while balancing his sketchbook and drawing someone who caught his eye. His studio developed into a gathering place for artists and writers and they became subjects for his portraits.

In the late '70s and early '80s, NYC was a magnet for boys who were escaping from homes and places where being gay was not accepted. Many of these boys became models for Larry. His work provides a telling picture of faces from a segment of NYC life which shortly disappeared with the advent of AIDS, an epidemic that annihilated so many of these faces, including Larry's own.' Text by Visual AIDS.

Follow @Larry_Stanton_Art, @DanielCooneyFineArt and @ApalazzoGallery

View the Acne Studios recent collaboration: https://www.acnestudios.com/eu/en/man/larry-stanton/