Portrait shot from slightly below, looking up at doll Divine wearing a red dress and feather boa, widely smiling, c.1987Courtesy of The Greer Lankton Collection
The BitterSweet Review magazine explores the inherent comedy of queer life
The second issue of the publication centres the humour in queer culture, featuring work from Chris Kraus, Greer Lankton, David Hoyle, Amrou Al-Kadhi, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane and Donna Marcus Duke
It’s not many places you’ll find a treatise on the life of cult artist Greer Lankton, an interview with legendary performer David Hoyle, a short story called Cool Dad’s Guide to Fisting, and previously unpublished writing by Chris Kraus from the 1990s. But that’s because The BitterSweet Review isn’t like most places. Styled as a “literary magazine for queers and their friends”, the publication launched at the end of 2022, featuring an array of artists, photographers, writers and makers at the cutting edge of queer culture. Now, a year later, The BitterSweet Review has just launched its second physical edition, and the whole thing is a right laugh.
“We were interested to explore the relationship between queerness and humour,” says Benoît Loiseau, one of the founding editors of the magazine, of their second outing. “As a strategy, but also a general attitude”. Inspired by a 2017 essay called Humorlessness (Three Monologues and a Hairpiece) by the late feminist scholar Lauren Berlant, BitterSweet volume two aims to explore if there’s anything inherently funny about queerness, or, conversely, if humour itself is intrinsically queer. At the same time, Loiseau and his co-editors were also interested in exploring Berlant’s idea of humourlessness, something that they describe in the magazine’s opening note as “the art of confusion with no resolution”, something that does not “differentiate between comedy and misery”.
The echoes of this sentiment are reflected in the artists who occupy the magazine. An interview with the Mexican artist and designer Bárbara Sánchez-Kane is accompanied by images of her beguiling work, like a chrome stripper shoe with a Tabasco bottle-heel, or gold statuettes in military uniform and red lingerie, stacked on top of each other Human Centipede style. Elsewhere, drag performer Amrou Al-Kadhi interviews renowned “anti-drag” performer David Hoyle, while the writer Donna Marcus Duke offers a story of an evening at London club night Mums Against Donk.
De Por Vida, 2021Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto
“We wanted to create a balance between emerging and established writers and artists, some of whom are friends, mentors or idols,” says Loiseau of curating the issue’s line-up. One of the more well-known artists featured in the magazine is Greer Lankton, a legend of the 1980s New York art scene. Known for her uncanny, hand-sewn dolls, Lankton’s work fits perfectly with the issue’s theme. Inside, BitterSweet has managed to pull off quite the coup, featuring a series of rarely seen photographs from Lankton’s archive. “My co-editor Louis Shankar had been talking to the Greer Lankton Archives Museum, which is managed by Lankton’s former partner Paul Monroe,” says Loiseau. “Monroe gave us access to an incredible selection of photographs, many of which are digitised contact sheets, and we really wanted to celebrate her work by printing a full-colour photo gallery.”
Grandma Tillie in the swimming pool with a lobster, 1980sCourtesy of The Greer Lankton Collection
Click through the gallery above to browse the full series of Lankton’s images, plus additional work by Bárbara Sánchez-Kane.
The BitterSweet Review is available to purchase at the magazine's online shop, where you’ll find limited edition works by a selection of their featured artists.