Do you find Golden Boy — my name for him, not the artist’s — as intriguing and as unforgettable as I do? When I attended this exhibition at the New Museum in New York in 1983, I picked him as star of the show. I ran this feature in Mandate using only commentary from the exhibition catalogue because the curator, I thought, had said it all. I add only the personal note that to me Golden Boy is both sexy and sinister, like a character who pursues you in a disturbing dream…until you wake up wishing he were real. But — he’s not someone to invite home from the bar.
As for the other examples in the show, I find them negligible except for the full-page Convict, another sinister figure. What sets these two men, these art objects, apart from the others? What makes them humanoid and at the same time glaringly artificial? Both suggest that their respective creators acted on artistic impulse rather than whimsy, unlike the four other pieces pictured here. Even Gilbert and George, whose works are often fresh and provocative, seem under par in this instance.