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Previously part of Hide/Seek: Differences in American Portraiture in association with the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery Aristogeiton, the older warrior (left) lunges forward and offers a protective cloak for Harmodius. This may symbolize the warrior’s mutual devotion and platonic love to one another. During his time as a realist, women’s rights movements in the US and across some of Europe were just getting into their places of mobilization. While many men at this time were “distraught”, they were also calmed by art of a voyeuristic nature to that surged at this time as Romantic authors and artists hinted into the “secret” and romantic lives of women. He transcends 'normality' – becoming fetishised by travel, danger, and an all-male environment. The artist Carr was conscious of the sitter's appeal (Easton was specifically chosen by the artist) and his image went on to feature as a poster for a Navy Leagues exhibition in 1946. Consciously or unconsciously, the artist offers us the quintessential gay male fantasy from history. Significance to Queer Art History: Le Sommeil was commissioned by the Turkish Ambassador to Paris for his private collection. This painting was catered to the male gaze in this way and for the fact that men at this time were indeed, interested in looking into the romantic lives of women who loved women for their own pleasure. While this is, one can see that the women’s bodies are realistic and curved instead of (to put this plainly for the times) “photoshopped” into magazine figures. This shows Courbet’s eye for realism. The strewn objects (pearls, hair clips, and blankets) are also in a fashion that shows prior activity and lust after one another between the women.
Queer British Art 1861–1967 explores connections between art and a wide range of sexualities and gender identities in a period of dynamic change. The exhibition begins in 1861 when the death penalty for sodomy was abolished and ends in 1967 with the partial decriminalisation of sex between men. Legal persecution affected many, yet for some, this was a time of liberation – of people finding themselves, identifying each other and building communities. Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was known for his realistic depictions humans and his sometimes even “gritty” depictions of life and the body as seen through the eye. A stereotype too far? Reading artworks from gay male perspectives, however, can risk occupying a two-dimensional or prejudicial view on the gay male experience. That to be gay, or resort to same-sex love or desire while at sea, is some sort of default or secondary option to being heteronormative. A lesser option perhaps, stigmatised in the lusty sailor trope.The death penalty for sodomy was abolished in 1861 but it was still punishable with imprisonment. Sex between women was not illegal and society sometimes tolerated such relationships. Yet for most people, there seems to have been little sense that certain sexual practices or forms of gender expression reflected a core aspect of the self. Instead, this was a world of fluid possibilities.
May life provide all that you desire from three lips: those of your lover, the river, and the cup.” A homoerotic ritual conducted by the two shamans with the lines representing energy and/or male ejaculation at or after puberty.As early as middle school. My father got me a video camera and I started making videos with friends––with cameos from babysitters, teachers, pets. By the time I was in high school, I was editing commercially, running programming for a public television station. It was far from glamorous, but it was like reaching into the world. Do you believe your work responds to—or critiques—ideas of representation and legibility? Cleaning Teeth, Early Evening (10pm) W11, 1962, Oil on canvas, 71 15/16 × 48 1/16 in. (182.7 × 122 cm), Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo, Norway, SL.16.2017.44.1 Presumed or weaponised homoeroticism for comedic effect masks a deeper and more nuanced experience of gay male life that contemporary audiences expect today – one that includes homo-affectionate friendship, romantic connection, and intersectional identity. Both figures are nude. Nudity in Greek sculpture was reserved for gods/ goddesses, warriors, and athletes. Summers, Claude J. “Erotic Miniature Painting.” In The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2004.
James has also contributed interviews with the world's leading actors and filmmakers to outlets such as MTV, Bauer, Global, Marie Claire, Loaded, HeyUGuys.com, Fun Kids, W!zard, ITN Productions, MyMovies, Unilad and Joe.co.uk. Think of the horrible view we have of sex, even though we’re the most overly sexualized country in the world,” Leslie mused. “Scratch the surface and there is this Puritanism that goes on and on and on.” That “American prudishness,” he said, was absent in European culture. He recalled going to a government-sponsored gay bar in Amsterdam: “The first thing you saw when you walked in was this huge, long bar with a gigantic picture of Queen Juliana smiling out at her gay subjects.” Parkinson, R.B. A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World. London: The British Museum Press, 2013, 73.
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We started filming gay bars with a GoPro camera in 2014, with no particular outcome in mind. Before we knew it Candy Bar, the George and Dragon, and Joiners Arms—all busy, successful, and culturally important gay bars in London—had shut their doors followed by a spate of other closures nationally. Between 2006 and 2017, 58 percent of LGBTQ venues closed down; it was an epidemic. Muholi is among many contemporary artists who are creating work that challenges the all-too-narrow, heteronomative, white-dominated depictions of love found across art history. Artists working today, from photographers to figurative painters to sculptors, are shattering the conception that love looks a certain way, and creating greater visibility for the LGBTQ+ community in the process. Their portrayals of love—not just couples, but gatherings of friends and expressions of self-love and desire—are not only historically important, they’re also gestures of support for the many young people who will follow in their footsteps.
Your work often references music videos, magazine spreads, and advertisements. When and why did you begin working this way? A century after his birth, Tom of Finland’s original art also remains provocative and challenging to audiences still catching up with his unabashedly sexual, queer utopian vision. But as his reputation continues to swell it’s hard to deny that he achieved his primary aim: “I want to show that gays can feel happy together – that they have a right to be happy together.” I was developing Untitled (Holding Horizon) over the summer in 2018, in the same space that Kem—the queer and feminist collective that I am part of—was throwing a series of parties called “Dragana Bar.” These nights brought together distinct experimental sets of sounds by Warsaw-based DJs, such as Facheroia, Yana, and JŚA. This experience of running the night with the collective had a direct impact on making Untitled (Holding Horizon). Where can I view this artwork?: The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA (USA) (Museum Council Gallery (Gallery 254))The flourishing of gay life in the 1970s soon gave way to the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s. “The whole decade was like a nightmare,” Leslie recalled with a shudder. “We were endlessly at bedsides and memorials and cremations. You’re always with friends trying to do something and you can’t do anything. Three people died in our house.” Everything closed down: the baths, the bars. Even the gallery had to close: “No one came anymore,” Leslie said; artists stopped bringing work. “It was such a pall over the city.” Still, it was during this decade, in 1987, that Leslie and Lohman created their nonprofit foundation, which was accredited as a museum in 2016. I approach queerness as a process, one through which the choreographic framework fluctuates between structure and contingency. In Untitled (Holding Horizon) the sound and lighting are mixed live, as well as the structures that the performers move through. In this process the performers have the agency to use the qualities that we work with to loosen, expand, and contract the structure. This means that both the choreographic vocabularies and the performers’ subjectivity are both very present in the work. This unpredictability allows for intimacy in the way that the work unfolds; their relations and affects leak out into the room and have the potential to become palpable by an audience. How has LGBTQ nightlife in Warsaw impacted your performances?
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