Three Boys is exemplary of Salman Toor’s sensitive, powerfully poignant paintings that depict scenes of the South Asian queer community in New York and Lahore. Suffused with Toor’s signature emerald hue, the scene at once intimate and theatrical: a kneeling figure, his back dramatically arched, raises both arms to take a smartphone photo of his friends. With their dreamily inebriated faces lit aglow by the light of the phone screen, the standing figures swoon gently into each other, the central figure’s posture reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Dying Slave. As with the very best of Toor’s work, Three Boys combines academic technique and a deep knowledge of art history with a unique fantastical contemporary vision drawn from imagination and lived experience, chronicling narratives of public and private life in the context of queer diasporic identity. Painting gay life and gay subjects loosely inspired by his own experiences, Toor’s process operates between fiction and autobiography, resulting in deeply empathetic, evocative vignettes that “by turns imply vulnerability, intimacy, and the celebration of hard-won liberties” (Deeksha Nath, “I Know a Place: Salman Toor”, Art Asia Pacific).

Born in 1983 and of Pakistani descent, Toor studied painting and drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University and received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Toor has stated of his pursuit of academic painting: “I wanted to be as good as the white old masters” (Ayla Angelos, “I wanted to be as good as the white old masters: meet painter Salman Toor”, It’s Nice That, 7 November 2019). After years “studiously poring over and copying the works of Rococo, Baroque, and Neoclassical-era artists like Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jean-Antoine Watteau” (“The Self as Cipher: Salman Toor’s Narrative Paintings”, Whitney Museum of American Art website), Toor developed his lexicon of broad quick-sketch brushstrokes and semi-cartoonish illustrative tropes that enacts a “complex and respectful (not ironic) conversation with past painting” (Roberta Smith, “Salman Toor, a Painter at Home in Two Worlds”, The New York t.mes s, 23 December 2020). Technology is constantly a prop or indeed a subject in itself in his paintings in the form of smartphones and laptops, demonstrating Toor’s fluency across the archaic and the contemporary, while illustration-like effects situate his work between academic painting and illustration. Peter Plagens observes: “[Toor] includes, for example, the comic-strip visual trope of light lines to show the glow of a computer screen. There’s considerable Daumier […] maybe even a little R. Crumb […]” (Peter Plagens, “Salman Toor: How Will I Know’’ Review, Wall Street Journal, 19 December 2020).

Subverting the racism, colonization and slavery associated with the history of painting, Toor depicts queer brown bodies in familiar environments, shaping a new narrative and “reclaiming an aesthetic language that recalls the whitewashed tradition of Western art history” (Isabel Ling, “Salman Toor’s Dreamy Scenes Imagine the Queer, South Asian Everyday”, Hyperallergic, 1 December 2020). His scenes are private, tender and deeply empathetic, yet never idealistic; Roberta Smith observes that Toor “places his protagonists squarely in a real world that’s not always welcoming. This gives his paintings a reportorial edge, quashing any inclination to see them as sent.mes ntal or nostalgic” (Smith, “Salman Toor, a Painter at Home in Two Worlds”, Ibid). Maintaining a frank, dignified and considered portrayal of his subjects, Toor’s deft thick brushwork embodies attention, compassion, and empathy, exerting an “emotional pull that is rare, even in a t.mes of outstanding figurative painting in which style and substance, motivated by issues of identity, regularly go hand in hand” (Smith, Ibid).

薩爾曼・圖爾擅長以充滿感染力的細膩手法，記錄美國紐約和巴基斯坦拉合爾南亞同志社群的溫柔日常，這幅以三個少年為主角的作品堪稱箇中典範。畫面輕染著一層圖爾喜用的淡青綠色，描繪出一個既親密又富戲劇氛圍的室內場景——單膝跪地的少年上身向後仰，背部彎成一個誇張的弧度，雙手舉起智能電話為朋友拍照；電話螢光映照出另外兩個少年醉生夢死般的表情，他們站在牆邊，彼此輕輕依偎，其中打扮嫵媚的高挑少年醺醺欲倒，身姿有如米開朗基羅的《垂死的奴隸》。三人沉浸在縱情烏托邦的一隅，縈繞身旁的柔光彷彿是文藝復興畫作中環繞聖三位一體的光環。一如圖爾的代表佳作，此畫糅合精湛技巧與淵博的藝術史知識，再加上啟發自想像和現實生活的當代視野，梳理出關於同志離散身份的大眾及個人敘事脈絡。圖爾對同志生活和同志社群的刻畫部分來自一己見聞，為半虛構半自傳式，情感深刻、充沛，他筆下的片段「時常流露出脆弱感和親密感，也是對來之不易的自由的謳歌」（狄克莎・娜絲，〈有個地方：薩爾曼・圖爾〉，《亞太藝術》）。

圖爾在1983年生於一個巴基斯坦裔家庭，他在俄亥俄州衛斯理公會大學（Ohio Wesleyan University）修讀繪畫及素描，後於布魯克林的普拉特藝術學院（Pratt Institute）取得藝術碩士學位。他曾經表示，自己在繪畫方面的學術追求是「希望可以媲美白人古典西洋大師」（艾拉・安吉洛斯，〈我曾希望可以媲美白人古典西洋大師：認識畫家薩爾曼・圖爾〉，《這樣很好》，2019年11月7日）。他潛心修習，年復一年「持之以恆地鑽研和臨摹卡拉瓦喬、魯本斯、凡戴克、華托等洛可可、巴洛克及新古典主義時期名家的作品」（〈自我的密碼：薩爾曼・圖爾的敘事畫〉，惠特尼美國藝術博物館網站），熔煉出一套獨特的藝術語彙，寬闊的速寫筆觸配合半卡通式的插畫風格，引申出「與古典油畫之間複雜而充滿敬意（非反諷式）的對話」（蘿伯塔・史密斯，〈薩爾曼・圖爾，身處兩個世界的畫家〉，《紐約時報》，2020年12月23日）。智能電話和手提電腦等現代科技產物是圖爾在作品中慣用的道具或題材，可見他在古典和現代世界之間遊走自如。另外，插圖般的作畫效果使其作品徘徊於嚴肅繪畫與插畫之間。彼得・普拉根斯形容：「（圖爾）將例如連環漫畫中常見的光線表現手法用於描繪電腦螢幕發出的光線。很明顯受到杜米埃的影響（……）可能還有一點羅伯特・克朗姆（……）」（彼得・普拉根斯，〈「薩爾曼・圖爾：我會怎麼知道」展覽評論〉，《華爾街日報》，2020年12月19日）。

圖爾一反以往的藝術家對種族主義、殖民及奴隸制度的演繹，他將棕色皮膚的同志社群置於隨處可見的環境中，塑造出嶄新的敘事形態，「收復由白人文化主宰的西方藝術史美學語彙」（Isabel Ling，〈薩爾曼・圖爾筆下南亞同志社群的夢幻日常〉，《Hyperallergic》，2020年12月1日）。其作品內容親密、溫柔，令人感同身受，卻從來不流於空想；蘿伯塔・史密斯認為圖爾「將人物安置於一個並非總是招人待見的真實世界裡。這種手法賦予他的作品一股客觀描寫式的鋒芒，並把最後一絲多愁善感和傷春悲秋抹得乾乾淨淨」（史密斯，〈薩爾曼・圖爾，身處兩個世界的畫家〉，同上）。圖爾對人物的刻畫坦率直白，體面而且細緻，他把關懷、憐愛和同理心融入到靈活豐潤的筆觸裡，「即使是人物畫在身份認同驅使下、以出色的外在風格和內在本質遍地開花的當今世代」，也能衍生出一股「罕見的情感牽引力」（史密斯，同上）。