Larry Anderson

Larry Anderson, currently an Atlanta resident, spent the first years of his life in a small town in Kansas with his twin brother and the rest of his family.  From an early age, Anderson and his twin were aware of an indefinable difference between themselves and the rest of the young boys in his town.  After moving away to college, Anderson and his brother both realized that the differences they had felt growing up were due to their homosexuality.  Anderson’s artwork has been greatly influenced by both his childhood and his sexuality. 

While on a four day road trip with his twin brother, sick with AIDS at the time, from California to Kansas, the two began discussing their past, in particular how their sexuality influenced their early childhood.  From these conversations, Anderson began solidifying ideas he had been formulating for a group of works dealing with pre-pubescent sexuality.  After stumbling across an image of Dick from the story books Dick and Jane at a flea market, Anderson began his Dick series.  Using this archetypal figure of a young, all-American boy, Anderson began creating images commenting on stereotypical and derogatory social conceptions of homosexual males, pitting the conventional male child to the “unconventional” nature of homosexuality. 

In each piece, Anderson creates a background of a seemingly unassuming and innocent image of fruits, cakes, flowers, etc., and then superimposes over them the image of Dick waving to the viewer.  Only when the title is read, do the images assume their derogatory essence.  In each image, Anderson accentuates the notion of hiding and covering up ones sexuality through obscuring the figure of Dick.  This appears most evidently in his Faggot piece.  Here, Anderson places a light, barely visible image of Dick over a bundle of wood, playing on the notion of fagot in both a literal and a derogatorily colloquial sense.  In hardly being able to recognize Dick within the wood, Anderson emphasizes this idea of hiding as well as being nearly inseparable from the labels associated with homosexuality. 

Anderson’s works are strikingly humorous while slightly unsettling as the viewer begins to understand more clearly what it is that they laugh at.  Although these works deal with very serious issues and ones that strike very close to the artist’s heart, Anderson’s choice to translate his concerns in a jovial and light-hearted manner forces the viewer to find entertainment in his images, letting their guard down long enough to consider the reality of the negativity that still very much exists towards, in this case, homosexual men.

—Beth Sandy ‘07

Click on the thumbnails to open larger images in a new window.

What is a fruit?
1998
Mixed media on paper
42" x 34.5"

What is a faggot?
1998
Mixed media on paper
42" x 31.5"

___as a $3 bill
2006
Mixed media on paper
42" x 31.5"

Fruitcake
2006
Mixed media on paper
42" x 31.5"

Big Pansy
1998
Mixed media on paper
42" x 31.5"

Learn to draw
2000
Mixed media on paper
42" x 30"

Big Pussy
1999
Mixed media on paper
42" x 34.5"

All works courtesy of Solomon Projects.