Eileen Myles & Jeremy Sigler Face O'Hara Nude With Boots

In a little ditty for the Paris Review Daily, Eileen Myles and Jeremy Sigler go to see art! "Earlier this fall," writes Nicole Rudick, "Tibor de Nagy Gallery opened a small survey of [Larry] Rivers’s work, including the [Frank] O’Hara painting—an opportunity, in other words, for Myles and Sigler to continue [their 2009 Brooklyn Rail] conversation, wherever it may lead." Here's some of where it led:

MYLES: But look where we are. One, two, three, four, five—five chicks, five ladies, and this is the only male nude. There is something feminine about it, too. The face seems to me very androgynous, but when I say androgynous, I’m used to saying androgynous when I mean “a woman who looks masculine.” But this is about a man who looks feminine—he could be a lady at the court.

SIGLER: He seems to understand the psychology of being naked.

MYLES: “He” being Larry?

SIGLER: Larry, yeah. Well, both. It’s an exhibitionistic painting—Frank obviously knew what he was getting into here.

MYLES: He agreed. It was hanging in MoMA originally, right?

SIGLER: I don’t know.

MYLES: I think so. I think there was a bit of a scandale, because you couldn’t have somebody who was working at the museum have a nude portrait of themselves.

SIGLER: Conflict of interest.

MYLES: This could be fake history, but I seem to remember this.

SIGLER: I mean, think about today, how politically correct you have to be in an office situation. If you’re not allowed to tell a joke—

MYLES: Well, that’s the story, but it seems to me that we’re constantly encountering contradictions. The whole Harvey Weinstein thing—like, how many guys just routinely invite females into corners and jerk off? And then years pass.

SIGLER: This “massage me” thing, “come over and give me a massage.”

MYLES: Well, that’s even further down the road. Most recently she was just in a little cul de sac and then he started jerking off.

SIGLER: Really?

MYLES: Yeah. That was his thing. But let’s not give him so much time. The thing that’s outrageous about this, continually, is that O’Hara’s male. That’s the thing that’s completely unique about that.

SIGLER: I mean, it has to be the greatest nude male portrait. I can’t think of anything that rivals it.

Read it all at the Paris Review Daily.