Bernard Perlin: Art and Sex in Mid-Century Manhattan

Lucky author Michael Schreiber was able to spend hours with artist Bernard Perlin when Perlin was in his 90s. After carefully listening to his amazing life story. Schreiber wrote One-Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin (Bruno Gmünder).

Perlin led a fearless and sometimes dangerous life as a full-time artist and man who sought deep connection. As a propaganda artist and war artist-correspondent, he produced many now-iconic images of World War II. His portrait clients included many well-known figures in arts and politics; his most intimate companions were such luminaries as Vincent Price, George Platt Lynes, Glenway Wescott, Paul Cadmus, Leonard Bernstein, and Truman Capote.

Perlin believed that his sexual drive and his artistic drive were linked, and that is quite evident in his art and his daring sexual life in the underground gay bars of Paris and Rome in the 1940s and the gay cruising scene of the 1950s in the bars and bathhouses of New York City’s Greenwich Village.

Perlin was an emancipated man who lived a life against the grain, both in his love and sex life and his figurative art, which defied the juggernaut of abstract expressionism. Schreiber’s book contains a treasure trove of Perlin’s stories as well as a large selection of beautiful plates and never-before-seen photos. 

Perlin’s life serves as an inspiration of sexual bravery and as an art and social history lesson of the times. 

One-Man Show
By Michael Schreiber
Due November 2016 from Bruno Gmünder