Down a nondescript staircase in the bowels of a church on West 13th Street, through a door decorated with a vintage lace panel, lies the “Oscar Wilde Temple”, a strange place of contemplation that is both a living sanctuary and a haunting installation by the artists David McDermott and Peter McGough.
Wilde was a famous polymath—author, playwright, lecturer, bon vivant, hero, and, of course, a prisoner at Reading gaol, incarcerated for a crime that involved “the love that dare not speak its name.” Now, more than 100 years after his death in 1900, we speak its name—we shout it, we yell it, we scream it with power and joy. How proud Oscar would be of the millions who have fought for LGBT rights, a movement that was born right outside these portals. How fitting that the Church of the Village, a place that describes itself as radically inclusive, is the site of this extraordinary chapel.
And who better than McDermott and McGough to create a haven like this? The pair spent years living as if it were the late Victorian era, instead of the late 20th century, wearing top hats and high collars and inhabiting an East Village townhouse deliberately stripped of modern conveniences, including electricity—a literal attempt at time travel.
The installation itself is solemn, but not without flashes of the kind of wit Wilde might have enjoyed. At the foot of the plinth bearing a statue of Wilde is a crate with a label that reads “Fairy Soap”—a popular 19th-century scrub. (The pedestal is inscribed C.3.3., Wilde’s prison number.) A series of paintings illustrating events in Wilde’s life have been rendered in a style borrowed from Victorian tabloids; other works include portraits of figures in the fight for gay liberation—people like Brandon Teena, Marsha P. Johnson, and Alan Turing.
The idea of the temple was 20 years in the making, McGough explained in remarks this morning. But he added that, as it turned out, this is the perfect moment for such a refuge. Referring to the current political situation and quoting Toni Morrison, he stated, “These are the times that artists go to work.”
And of course, that’s true, but let’s let Wilde himself have the last word. He could have been time traveling into the future and thinking of McDermott and McGough when he remarked: “A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”
