‘Not your grandma’s Henry Faulkner.’ New film dives deep on renowned Lexington artist | Opinion
It’s still the 100th birthday year of Lexington artist Henry Faulkner, and he’s already been celebrated with a big exhibit at the Headley Whitney and a KET film about him.
Now there’s a new documentary four years in the making that aims to get at the deepest truths about Faulkner’s life: “Under the Southern Cross: The Art and Legacy of Henry Faulkner,” which will premiere at the Kentucky Theatre on May 30.
“He’s often portrayed as this eccentric gay butterfly, but he was not,” said filmmaker Jean Donahue.
“He had a much more grounded experience in society and what it meant to live in society as a gay man. He wasn’t just a silly artist that many think he was. He was a radical homosexual, and he was very clear about what he was doing.”
From Clay County orphan to a renowned painter and writer who lived in New York, Los Angeles and Key West, Faulkner was beloved for his frequently whimsical paintings and his animals, including Alice, the goat who lived with him on Third Street.
But the true story is darker, deeper and more complicated..
“Henry was a radical thinker —he was espousing naturopathic medicine and organic gardening and left-wing politics. He would have loved to have been thought of as a poet even more than a painter,” said Bob Morgan, an artist and protege of Faulkner’s who with Jonathan Coleman created the Faulkner Morgan Archive to detail Kentucky’s LGBTQ history.
“He was friends with Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, he had been taken in by Bertolt Brecht and his wife. He was well-traveled and well-versed in the outlaw literary world.”
The film grew out of one of Donohue’s earlier films, “The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies,” a meditation on Lexington’s underground gay community centered on such iconic figures as Sweet Evening Breeze, a transgender Black Lexingtonian who is now commemorated with a huge mural on North Lime.
Donohue, Coleman, Morgan kept talking about Faulkner, and so Coleman, an academic who now heads up the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation, started doing more research.
He found a dramatic coming of age story among the literati of post-World War II New York City. His poetry and nonfiction never quite took hold. He went to Berea to work with a writing professor but was kicked out for being gay.
“If you already know about Henry, if you appreciate his art, this film will give you a deeper understanding,” Coleman said. “This is not your grandma’s Henry Faulkner — an impish figure who paints goats — he had a serious worldview that was international.
“This isn’t just a Kentucky story, it’s an international one and it’s time we better appreciate the artistic breadth and the artistic life he lived.”
“Under the Southern Cross: The Art and Legacy of Henry Faulkner” will show at the Kentucky Theatre at 7:15 p.m. on May 30 as part of the Kentucky’s Art on Screen series. Tickets are on sale at kentuckytheatre.org. There will be a brief Q & A will filmmaker Jean Donohue after the movie. Then organizers will go to the nearby Bar Complex for a fundraiser event for the Faulkner Morgan Archive.
