The wisest among us would agree that art has the power to change the present and the future, but if the artist is skilled enough, and obsessed enough, art can also change the past. Such is the revisionist magic that Michael Broderick conjures with his renderings of erotically-inclined gentlemen. With work that manages to be both nostalgic and entirely of-the-immediate-moment, referencing iconic themes of the past with a scintillating gay sensibility of the present and future, Broderick bridges what has been with what might be, infusing a history of oppression with cleverly-rewritten twists of fabulous celebration.
With a bit of influence from the palette of Maxfield Parrish, Broderick’s subjects run the gamut from aloof to regal to slightly tragic – all maintaining a mesmerizing grace. These are gods, and what is an artist’s calling other than to get us closer to the divine?
Masterfully utilizing an angular art-deco brilliance, saturated with stunning shades and bursting with dreamy color, Broderick conjures a world of fantasy and pleasure, both hedonistic and haunting. His roots in upstate New York were parched for color and flavor and verve, and as soon as he escaped our doldrums, he came into his own, creating the indelible world of which you see just the smallest glimpse here. Visit his website to see more of his magnificence, and prepare to enter the way life should have been.
