David Leddick’s life makes most normal citizens look terribly lazy by comparison.
The out author, playwright and actor has 22 books published: many photography books about the male nude, including one of Taschen’s top-10 best-sellers, “The Male Nude,” as well as six novels and a biography of gay-art figures from the 1930s -’40s.
Moreover, he began his writing career at 65.
Theoretically, he could have started earlier, but Leddick has been working his derriere off creatively since long before many PGN readers were born. Born in 1930, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and was present at Bikini Atoll during the hydrogen bomb testing. Then Leddick moved to New York in the 1950s and was a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera’s ballet corps. He also worked in advertising as the worldwide creative director for Revlon in New York City, and as international creative director for L’Oreal in Paris through the 1970s and ’80s.
Leddick resumed his theater career at age 70, writing scripts and lyrics for a number of musicals and plays and performing throughout the U.S., Europe and South America.
Now in his 80s and living in Miami Beach, Leddick wants to write about what he calls the “uncharted territory of aging.”
“I always say, ‘You can never be said to have ruined your reputation after 70,’” the author said about embarking on so many creative ventures at an age when most slow down. “You’re free to write what you want to write. In my generation, a lot of gay men still are very edgy about coming out. I have a blog called ‘David’s Gay Dish’ and on Fridays I have a mini-show called ‘Come On Out.’ The people I’m interviewing are younger people. The older ones don’t want to be on the show. They have a reluctance to speak up, and I feel I must do it.”
That’s right: Leddick is 80-something — and acting, blogging and writing.
His latest book finds him covering familiar territory: “Gorgeous Gallery” is a collection of works published by Bruno Gmunder, exploring what is considered both popular sexual art and fine art.
“It’s my 23rd book and I’ve done a lot of compilations of photography and art,” Leddick said. “I kind of know the history, plus I wanted to investigate who was new and who was working in new ways. We divided the book into three parts: the classic part, mostly people who are gone; the contemporary, people that we all know about; and then the avant-garde, which are the younger people who are working with the male nude in art.”
Leddick added that “Gorgeous Gallery” is different from other photography and art books he’s done.
“I would say it’s far more sexual than my previous books. This is a unique book. It’s much more out there than anything I’ve done in the past because now they allow penetration. The subject matter is much sexier than anything I’ve done in the past. I’m very interested in finding new people. I try to not repeat more than a quarter of the artists from previous books. There are a lot of new artists coming up all the time and we try to vary the subject. This book is all art — no photography — and I’ve got the point of view that art and pornography and sexuality can exist is the same arch. For our puritanical repressive culture, that is an idea that has never been expressed before.”
Leddick also said he found that there we some iconic figures in the art world whose lesser-known works fit within the scope of “Gorgeous Gallery.”
“I found out that a lot of big names like Andy Warhol, there’s a lot of their work that has never been in a book because it was considered too sexy. The one rule we had is that it had to be art because there’s a lot of porn that is cartoonish that I don’t consider fine art. There’s nothing in this book that if you looked at it you’d say, ‘This guy is not a good artist.’ Everyone in it is really a good artist.” n
“Gorgeous Gallery” is available at Giovanni’s Room and other retailers. For more information on “Gorgeous Gallery” or David Leddick, visit www.brunogmuender.com or davidsgaydish.blogspot.com.