Theatre of the Ridiculous Oil on cotton canvas in artist's original hand-painted frame. 1822x1574mm; 71¾x62 inches. Circa 1980s.
Provenance: Commission by the artist (1980s); the Estate of Michael Feingold (2022).
Commissioned by consummate theatre critic and translator Michael Feingold, Theatre of the Ridiculous is a life-sized genre painting by Mark Beard. Featured on the canvas are gay theatre figures Ethyl Eichelberger (1945-1990), Everett Quinton (1952-2023), Lola Pashalinski, and Charles Ludlam (1943-1987).
The genre was founded and coined in 1965 by actor and director Ronald Tavel who brought elements of queer and camp performance to experimental theater. Cross-gender casting was common, as was casting non-professional actors were standard. Founded by John Vaccaro in the mid-1960s, the Play-House of the Ridiculous and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company acted as satirical parodies or adaptations of popular culture, used as vehicles for social commentary and humor.
Born in Salt Lake City, Mark Beard uses multiple aliases to create various styles and methods of expression. Bruce Sargeant, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon, and Brechtoldt Streeuwitz are three alter egos that allow him to produce different genres of painting. Sargeant, a fictional 20th-century British painter, creates homoerotic works that venerate the male physique. In addition to painting, he is a noted stage set designer, having designed more than 20 theatrical sets in New York, London, Cologne, Vienna, and Frankfurt.
