Partner Alan Blair
Queer Places:
Parsons School of Design, 66 5th Ave, New York, NY 10011
310 W 14th St apt 5e, New York, NY 10010
Cedar Park Cemetery
Hudson, Columbia County, New York, USA
James Alan Bidgood (March 28, 1933 – January 31, 2022) was an American filmmaker, photographer and visual and performance artist, known for his highly stylized and homoerotic works.
The death of Bidgood’s partner, Alan Blair in 1985 rocked Bidgood’s world and left him “a bit lost”.
Bidgood describes how he met Alan in 1975, and what it felt like to lose him in 1985, in Out Exclusives, “The Secret Garden”: “I was inconsolable for years. I loved that man so much. People would call years later and find out he was gone, and they would say such wonderful things because he was a special human being. Everyone who ever met him knew that. This was to the bone. We fit together. We were one unit. It’s something you don’t experience with just anybody. I had the 10 best years of my life with that man.” Bidgood lived
until death in the same building and remained single since Alan died. The roof garden
aka the Secret Garden was torn down in the 1980s for code violations.
The work of Broadway's gay and lesbian artistic community went on
display in 2007 when the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation Gallery
presents "StageStruck: The Magic of Theatre Design." The exhibit was
conceived to highlight the achievements of gay and lesbian designers who
work in conjunction with fellow gay and lesbian playwrights, directors,
choreographers and composers. Original sketches, props, set pieces and
models — some from private collections — represent the work of over 60
designers, including Jim Bidgood.
James Alan Bidgood was born in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin.[1] He moved to New York City in 1951.[2] His artistic output embraced a number of media and disciplines, including music, set and window design, and drag performance. In time, his interests led him to photography and film and it is for this work that he is most widely known. Highly recognizable, his photographs are distinguished by an aesthetic of high fantasy and camp. His work which was inspired by an early interest in Florenz Ziegfeld, Folies Bergère, and
George Quaintance has, in turn, served as important inspiration for a slew of artists including Pierre et Gilles and
David LaChapelle. In the late 1950s, Bidgood attended Parsons The New School for Design.[1]
In 1975 Bidgood met his partner Alan Blair. "I met him in 1975 at an old movie theater called the Metropolitan on East 14th Street in New York. It showed straight films, but it was a gay suck-off palace. There should be a plaque on the sidewalk because it was incredible. Hundreds of fairies would have sex in the balconies -- the first floor was mostly old winos passed out. But the rest of the place was solid fruit, and they were all a-suckin' and a-carrying on. I was blowing somebody in the first row and also taking drugs. I had my little metal box out and was selecting which acid and what pills to take and smoking a joint. And this silhouette went by to the door to the alley.
There was something about that silhouette. I put my tin box away and went to the alley, which was pitch dark unless someone lit a joint. In the darkness I reached out and touched him, and the electricity was incredible.
In the theater, we did it in the toilet and behind the movie screen. Several people would join in and we had mini orgies all over and some very nasty things took place. He insisted on not getting a cab. He said, "If you don't come with me on the bus, it means you don't want me." I was tripping on 18 kinds of acid with my eyes rolling in my head. You know the fluorescents on the bus? Rays were coming off of me. I was stinking and my God, my eyes. In those days, no one turned his head. It was after the hippies. We took it for granted. You could walk down the street naked with a roaring hard-on. Going on the bus was traumatic for me because I wasn't used to it, but no one noticed. Alan had an act that usually caused people to run. He had rings in the ceiling and a trapeze and would hang by his balls. He said, "Do you mind if I go into the other room? I'd like to change into something you might enjoy." And he left the room. The lighting changed so there was only light coming through the incense and pot smoke. And Donna Summer started singing. Suddenly, this leather fishman stepped in. Anyone else would have been terrified. And he pumped, so he had enormous private parts coming out of this brown leather costume. It was thousands of grommets and lace. And he had a staff with two big balls on it. I whispered, "I'm King Farouk. I'm the sultan." I couldn't have been closer to heaven. I was blown away -- this god in leather, this sexual fantasy, stepped out of my head. It turned out he had a brain! And that we loved the same things. He turned out to be the nicest guy and we both had cats. I had seven; he had two. We built a garden on the roof. It was better than the botanical garden in Brooklyn. The entire roof of two buildings was covered in potted plants. I had 80 dahlias, 120 rose bushes. We had willow trees. We were on the fifth floor, so it was one flight up to the roof. And there was a garden bench and a cherub on one wall with foxgloves growing around it. Couples were married in that garden. People would pick flowers for their kitchen.
Alan was an actor in Jesus Christ Superstar. We toured together. The straight guys had wives with them. I was his wife. Then we became bed stylists. When you see a catalog shot, there are beds in it, and they never look how beds actually look. It's like when they photograph soup, they put marbles in the bottom to push the thick stuff to the top. We made those beds look like they had the thickest comforters. He pressed and prepped everything, and I did the styling. We had one hell of a life when it was good. And the sex. We had marathon sex for days. It was all sex costumes, sex clubs, and going to the theater. This was the days of the Mineshaft and those nasty clubs in the Village. And now it's all gone, including Alan. Alan had a terrible headache on Christmas day. The next morning, he was in a coma, and I couldn't wake him. They were going to cut a hole in his head to let the blood out, but they said the stroke was so severe it was useless. He died of a brain hemorrhage in 1985. It was New Year's Eve."
Bidgood released the film Pink Narcissus in 1971, after filming in his small apartment from 1963 to 1970. The film is a dialogue-free fantasy centered around a young and often naked man. The film took seven years to make, and Bidgood built all the sets and filmed the entire piece in his tiny apartment. He later removed his name from the film because he felt editors had changed his original vision. Consequently, the identity of the film's creator was only a matter of speculation for nearly three decades after its release, with
Andy Warhol frequently floated as a candidate.[2] It was not until 1998 that writer Bruce Benderson decided to investigate the matter, and eventually traced them to Bidgood, then living on 14th Street in Manhattan.[2] Through a friend who was an agent, Benderson arranged publication of Bidgood's output under his own name for the first time and also wrote the first complete monograph on Bidgood, which was published by Taschen. Bidgood's film Pink Narcissus was re-released in 2003 by Strand Releasing.[3]
Bidgood's work is characterized by a heavy reliance on invention. His photographs feature elaborate sets built ground up from the materials of the theatre, fashion, design, and fine art.
Many contemporary themes are found even in the earliest of Bidgood's work. Camp, identity, erotica, desire, marginality, and performance all figure heavily in his portraits of nude men. Bidgood's complex references to the theatre and performance seem to presage Queer articulations of Performance. His techniques, working processes, and masterful use of illusionistic color indicate both a mature understanding of his influences and goals and an important contrast to the art movements of the time the work was first created. In 1999, the art book publisher Taschen published a monograph of his work including biographical images and stills from his film. In 2005, Bidgood was honored with a Creative Capital grant which facilitated a return to art photography after a hiatus of nearly 40 years. His later projects include work for Christian Louboutin and Out magazine. In 2008, Taschen included an interview with Bidgood in its publication The Big Penis Book, and published his monograph in 2009. Bidgood's more recent work was featured in Out in February 2009. Bidgood was represented by ClampArt in New York City, as well as Larry Collins Fine Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Bidgood died from complications of COVID-19 at a Manhattan hospital on January 31, 2022, aged 88.[2][3]
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