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
  • Architecture — bridge — Golden Gate Bridge
  • Landscape — California — San Francisco
  • Figure male — full length
  • Landscape — coast
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.