About this Event
East End Books Ptown presents: Artists Larry Collins "The Sacred Band" & Christopher Sousa in Conversation - 10/2 at 5:30 pm.
The Sacred Band is a newly self-published book of drawings by Provincetown artist Larry R. Collins that is available at East End Books Ptown and the Alden Gallery, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and East End Books Ptown, as well as Mott NYC in Manhattan. It features 100 drawings by Collins: most of them in charcoal, some in graphite; most on letter-sized paper, some larger; all undated; from sketchbooks over the years. They are all drawn from nude male models, and the vast majority are close-ups of the models’ genitalia. All of the drawings to be exhibited at the Alden Gallery show are in the book.
***The book is available in store and at the event.
The inspiration for the book is the legendary Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of 300 men, 150 pairs of male lovers, from the ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, dating back to the 4th century B.C. The idea behind this army of lovers, as chronicled by Plato and other historical sources, was to motivate the courage of the soldiers through their devotion to one another. (Homoerotic attraction was commonly accepted and even venerated in the city-states of ancient Greece.) The Sacred Band was an invincible force that defended Thebes until it was finally defeated and wiped out — the soldiers refused to surrender — by Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great, at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C. Excavations at that site in the late 1800s revealed 254 skeletons buried in pairs, each holding hands. This confirmed the existence and demise of the Sacred Band, as well as the extraordinary respect given to them by their Macedonian victors.
The other inspiration for the book is a rejection of censorship and homophobia. The fetishizing and celebration of male genitalia is common in ancient art, but has been largely suppressed during the Christian era, famously with the “fig leaf campaign” after the Council of Trent in the 16th century that targeted Renaissance works such as Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Even in the 20th century (until the 1970s), male nudes were largely ignored by the art establishment. Collins believes that male genitalia are a legitimate subject for art. He embraces both their eroticism and their aesthetic validity.
Larry R. Collins was born in Spokane, Washington in 1945 and raised in Del City, Oklahoma. His career began at age 17, when Dorothy Miller, former curator of collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, selected one of his paintings for an important regional exhibition at the Oklahoma Art Center. After graduating with a BFA from the University of Oklahoma in 1967, Collins was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam. During the war, he served as an infantryman and combat illustrator. In the years since, Collins has had a celebrated career as an artist, art historian, gallerist, and art teacher. His paintings, drawings, and photographs (from his time in Vietnam) have been exhibited internationally and are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the International Center of Photography; the New York Public Library; and the Wadsworth Atheneum. He has lived in Provincetown for the last 30 years and joined the Alden Gallery in 2023.
Christopher Sousa has lived and worked in Provincetown, MA since 2003. His curious figures and portraits explore themes of isolation and alienation, longing and desire. He counts Lucien Freud, Paul Cadmus, Jenny Saville and Euan Uglow among his influences. Sousa has studied at the Art Students League in New York, NY and with Larry Collins and Donald Beal in Provincetown.
Sousa has exhibited in group exhibitions at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum and Larry Collins Fine Art in Provincetown, The Leslie/Lohman Museum in New York, NY, Reynolds Fine Art in New Haven, CT and the URI Feinstein Providence Campus Gallery in Providence, RI. Sousa's work has been the subject of articles in Provincetown Arts, the Provincetown Banner, In Newsweekly, Provincetown Magazine, The Art of Man, OCHO and the online publications TOH, Qind, The Portuguese American Journal, Homodesiribus and the Advocate.
Event venue & nearby stays
East End Books Ptown, 389 Commercial Street, Provincetown, United States
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