‘Landscapes’: Andy Warhol and Victor Hugo’s collaborations in gay sex and art

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2014, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University received 3600 contact sheets from Andy Warhol’s Minox 35EL camera, charting the full range of his black-and-white photography from 1976 until his death in 1987. A remarkable subset of the sheets capture explicit gay sexual activity, most shot for Warhol’s late-1970s Torsos and Sex Parts series. I provide a history and visual analysis of these pornographic images, many of which star Warhol’s friend, artist Victor Hugo. Warhol had been interested in ‘sex parts’ since the 1950s, but in Hugo he found his ideal muse and sexual performer. As Warhol’s paid collaborator, Hugo procured men whom Warhol and his studio assistants photographed nude and engaged in sex with Hugo. Scrutinizing gestures visible in the contact sheets, I argue that Hugo was engaged in a competition for artistic authorship and control in these photo shoots: the ‘art’ of gay sex was where Hugo could outshine Warhol.