Craig Seligman

Oct 1, 2023 | artforum.com | Kay Gabriel |Daniel Marcus |Sasha Frere-Jones |Craig Seligman

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Mar 23, 2023 | time.com | Craig Seligman

In 1987, Doris Fish, at that time San Francisco’s reigning drag queen, had accumulated enough notoriety for a Pittsburgh TV station to fly him east for an interview on its daytime talk show Pittsburgh 2Day. The studio audience was wide-eyed, and for good reason: Doris walked on in a red-fringed halter top, purple skirt, cobalt-blue opera-length gloves, gold platforms, and grapefruit-size earrings under a teased blonde wig.

Mar 3, 2023 | lithub.com | Craig Seligman

Doris was by no means the first person to call Sydney, as he described it to me, the drag capital of the world. Yet for a long time the city’s rich tradition of cross-dressing flourished in the midst of a deep-rooted homophobia. Robert Hughes, in The Fatal Shore, his magisterial chronicle of Australia’s penal origins, links this prejudice explicitly with the nation’s historical shame.

Feb 28, 2023 | powells.com | Craig Seligman

by Craig Seligman Release Date: 3/30/2023  Upcoming EventIn the 1970s, gay men and lesbians were openly despised and drag queens scared the public. Yet that was the era when Doris Fish (born Philip Mills in 1952) painted and padded his way to stardom. He was a leader of the generation that prepared the world not just for drag queens on TV but for a society that welcomes and even celebrates queer people. How did we get from there to here?

Feb 20, 2023 | datebook.sfchronicle.com | Craig Seligman |Mick LaSalle

Doris Fish, a.k.a. Phillip Mills (left), helped transform Mick LaSalle on Jan. 22, 1990. Photo: Amy FreedMany years ago, the talk-show host Jenny Jones was coming through town with a stand-up act, and because I used to sometimes review comedy, my editor, Bob Graham, assigned me to cover it. However, when I called to get tickets, I found out it was a “women only” event — men would be turned away at the door.