Salman Toor
Obsessed with Manet … Toor’s The Bar on East 13th pays tribute to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Photograph: Genevieve Hanson/© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery
Toor’s electrifying pictures have made him a global star – and he’s even painted Zohran Mamdani. As the artist hits London’s prestigious Courtauld Gallery, he talks about Manet, mullahs and the mayor
In Salman Toor’s paintings, queer south Asian men hang out in bars, twerk at trippy gatherings and lose themselves in phone screens. Sometimes they huddle in the back of taxis or pillow-fight on beds. In one portrait, a brown man stares apprehensively while facing customs officials. For the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, it’s crucial that these figures take centre stage, after years of being demonised and erased.
“It excites me that the cuteness and sexiness of brown protagonists can become familiar,” says Toor when we meet at his sun-drenched Brooklyn studio, a few weeks before his first solo show in Europe. “Their stories are not a gay side story in a family saga. It’s the main story. And everyone else is in the background.”
Over the last decade, Toor has been helping to redraw the narratives around immigrants, desire, power and sex. His artwork – rich, figurative oil paintings that echo and subvert European old masters and Indian Mughal miniatures – has confirmed his status as an “international art star” (the New Yorker) and “one of the most fascinating painters of his generation” (the New York Times). Solo museum exhibitions in New York, Baltimore and Beijing have earned universal praise, while in November 2022, his painting Four Friends sold for $1.2m at Sotheby’s. Time recently included him in its most influential art people list.
Read full article at theguardian.com.