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etween overwrought re-presentations and tacky theatricalglamour. The exhibit created an ecclesiastical demimonde.Some works probed the poetics of the ornamentationof desire. Lollipop Knick Knack (Let's Talk About You)(1968–1969) turns a reclining nude male figure into aconversation piece. This freestanding tabletop sculpturereframes the male body as a site of aesthetic contemplation⎯inother words, a place of worship. The pole thatrises from the figure’s genital region (which is covered bya star) ends with an orb of glittering light. To place thiswork in a site of discussion (knickknacks were conversationpieces in well-tended homes) is to place the notionof a radiant male sexuality in the trope of domesticspace. Again, the refused image (gay male sexuality) iscoupled with the refused material. The affirmation comesfrom embracing, reconfiguring, and (re)presenting thenegations and thus making them impossible to ignore. Inaddition, to imbue such images with spiritual and celestialtropes of the cosmos is to make them emblematic ofthe divine, even when that divinity⎯in fact, humanity⎯isdenied to the holder of that sexuality.Loving the gay male body is a fraught experience.Instead of venerating or adoring it, many see this body asa promiscuous carrier of disease. Lanigan-Schmidt’sdevotional engagement makes this suspect body asurface for decoration, for honor, and for gilding, just asSassetta uses the intricacies of egg tempera to touch thedivine image of the Virgin. Lanigan-Schmidt encrustsimages, books, and objects until they embody the visualweight of devotion. The results are visionary experiencesof the body’s image. These visions can incorporate boththe culture of the gay male body (muscle culture, dragculture) and religious culture, as in his The Infant ofPrague as a Personification of Liberation Theology(1986). Accessing both spaces allows Lanigan-Schmidtto align ideas about adoration of the body. The kneeler isin the chapel and the tearoom (a site for sexual encounters).Glory is an idea and also the hole through whichsexual congress can happen. And all of it is blessed andsanctified by the radiant energy that is the heart of thiswork. “Tender love among the junk” can describe themen meeting on the trash-strewn piers of old Chelsea orin the littered reeds of the Ramble. These places areholy, sanctified by the presence of the body.Lanigan-Schmidt links performative religious spacewith that of the theatrical⎯the space of layering andpersonae. Transformation as a tool is used by the psychein drag. Putting on the clothes is part of the transformation,which is completed by assuming a name andpersona. The artist’s work manifests new saints for a newfaith and homes for a new royalty. The Gilded SummerPalace of Czarina Tatlina (1969–1970) embodies all ofthis transformative energy. Part set for a drag show andpart childhood play palace, the work is imagined andrendered with such commitment and force that it is hardto maintain that the material it is made from is garbage.The tendrils and garlands of translucent strips of fabricin the installation glitter, shimmer, and wave like royalstandards in an audience room. This installation in theexhibit took complete advantage of the vaulted brick ceilingsand the chair rail of the venue. The gossamer andgold are seductive. Moving in and through the work overstimulatesthe senses. You lose yourself in it. It is an invitationto dream. Upon closer inspection it dislocates.What was sublime at a distance reveals its mundanenature up close and as this happens, the level of craftand engagement with these base materials returns theoriginal sense of wonder. I kept asking, who would dothis? Who is this for?There’s an exchange between a man with AIDS (Prior)and a drug-addicted Mormon housewife (Harper) inTony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part One: MillenniumApproaches:Harper: I'm a Mormon.Prior: I'm a homosexual.Harper: Oh! In my church we don't believe inhomosexuals.Prior: In my church we don't believe in Mormons. 1Lanigan-Schmidt takes us to church. It is not a popculture stereotype of a gay church (one cannot imagine afabulous event taking place); rather, it is a church wherethe gay tropes of Catholicism, a religion that is about thetransformed body, are revealed. There is transformationand ornamentation and mortification of the body. There isthe transformation of the bodily into the spiritual throughornament. There is the fantastic body of the angel withthe head surrounded by divine light and grace. There areplaces to kneel to reveal the glory of God. And some ofthe kneeling places have holes where that glory cancome through.Catholicism features a body stripped and mortified,turned abject, and through this debasement, the body isrevealed to be something divine. This basic metaphor ofbringing the sacred out of the profane is key in the work.The materials Lanigan-Schmidt uses aren’t justhumble⎯they are trash, discarded, ruled no longeruseful. One can easily connect the redemption of thesematerials to the redemption promised in the Catholicchurch, a redemption denied gay people who act accordingto their nature.So while Lanigan-Schmidt takes us to church, hetakes us to his church. He also takes us to the Ramble inCentral Park, to a Russian Orthodox church, to a smallneighborhood church, to an overdecorated apartment, to“dirty bookstores,” and to cathedrals. He uses all of theforms and figures of religious art not to degrade them orto remove their power. On the contrary, because they arethe forms through which we understand power, glory,divinity, lamentation, and loss, he remakes them in hisown image. His work reveals the sacred that comes fromthe discarded, the refused, the denied, and theexcluded.—Steve LockeNOTE1. Tony Kushner, Angels In America, Part One: MillenniumApproaches. (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1993), 30.ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, The Gilded Summer Palace of Czarina Tatlina, 1969–1970/2012, mixed media [image courtesy of the artist and Pavel Zoubok Gallery];Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, installation view of Tender Love Among the Junk at MoMA PS1, 2013 [image courtesy of MoMA]the editor’s picks of notable showsARTPAPERS.ORG 55