Land’s End

Copied Lenore Chinn, Land's End, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 37 1⁄8 × 49 1⁄8 × 1 7⁄8 in. (94.3 × 124.8 × 4.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong Endowment, 2024.4, © 1987, Lenore Chinn

Artwork Details

Title
Land’s End
Artist
Date
1987
Location
Dimensions
37 1⁄8 × 49 1⁄8 × 1 7⁄8 in. (94.3 × 124.8 × 4.8 cm)
Copyright
© 1987, Lenore Chinn
Credit Line
Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong Endowment
Mediums
Mediums Description
acrylic on canvas
Classifications
Subjects
  • Landscape — coast
  • Figure male — full length
  • Landscape — California — San Francisco
  • Architecture — bridge — Golden Gate Bridge
Object Number
2024.4

Artwork Description

Lenore Chinn's art has long focused on queer identity, relationships, and kinship. Painting her gay and lesbian friends, Chinn has over time created a portrait of community against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and the struggle for civil rights.

This work portrays Evelio "Tris" Talavera Jr. posing at Land's End, a spot at the western edge of San Francisco. The public setting, Chinn's clear photorealist style, and the bright sunlight illuminating the scene all carry a message of visibility for marginalized people. The painting is a forthright display of gay identity and male beauty set amid blocks of stone and concrete that, in retrospect, invoke a graveyard. Although healthy at the time of this portrait, Talavera--like many of the friends Chinn painted in the 1980s--was lost to the AIDS epidemic, passing away in 1990.