Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas

298 Pages·2011·14.86 MB·English

by  Christopher Reed

A R T A N D H O M O S E X U A L I T Y
Panel from the AIDS Project Memorial Quilt, discussed in chapter 7. Photograph courtesy of Doug and Martha Puryear.
C H R I S T O P H E R R E E D
A R T
A N D
H O M O
S E X U A L
I T Y
A H I S TO RY O F I D E A S
1
2011
1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reed, Christopher, 1961–
Art and homosexuality : a history of ideas / Christopher Reed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and Index
ISBN 978-0-19-539907-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Homosexuality
and the arts. I. Title. II. Title: History of ideas.
NX180.H6R44 2001
700.86’64—dc22
2010017792
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
In memory of Tee Corinne, Nikos Stangos,
and all those who made the history this book tries to tell.
This page intentionally left blank
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Art and Homosexuality: An Overview 1
CHAPTER 1
VARIETIES OF “HOMOSEXUALITY,” VARIETIES OF
“ART” 11
Initiatory Homosexuality: The “Sambia” of New Guinea and the Ancient
Greeks and Romans 12
Gender-Transcendent Homosexuality: Polynesia and North America 19
Performative Homosexuality: Tokugawa Japan 28
CHAPTER 2
BEFORE MODERNISM 3 7
Early Christian and Medieval Europe 38
The Renaissance 42
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe 54
CHAPTER 3
INVENTING THE MODERN: ART AND SEXUAL IDENTITY
IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 6 9
Imagery at Mid-Century 73
Inventing the “Avant-Garde” 76
Artists at Mid-Century 79
The Modern Artist as Homosexual 93
Aesthetes and Art Journals 97
vii
CHAPTER 4
SECRETS AND SUBCULTURES, 1900–1940 1 05
Echoes of Aestheticism 106
Avant-Garde Contingents 110
Sexuality and Race 121
Strategies of Coding: Abstraction and Symbols 126
The Limits of the Avant-Garde 132
The Avant-Garde and the Open Secret 136
The Open Secret and Mass Culture 142
CHAPTER 5
THE SHORT TRIUMPH OF THE MODERN, 1940–65 1 49
Expression and Repression in Postwar Art 152
Popular Imagery, Pop Art, and the Origins of Postmodernism 159
Camp and Criticism 176
CHAPTER 6
THE AVANT-GARDE AND ACTIVISM, 1965–82 1 79
Art and Politics 179
Feminists, Lesbians, and Female Sensibility 186
Identity and Sensibility 197
CHAPTER 7
THE AIDS DECADE, 1982–92 207
AIDS and the Avant-Garde 208
AIDS, Activism, and Visual Culture 215
Homophobia and Visual Culture 221
CHAPTER 8
QUEER AND BEYOND 2 29
Queer 231
Fragmentation from Within 240
Pressure from Without 243
Working through Difference: The Black Male Nude 248
Bibliography and Notes 257
Index 281
viii CONTENTS
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
THIS BOOK HAD three inspirations. The fi rst, quite literal, inspiration
was Nikos Stangos, who asked me to write it. For reasons outlined in the
introduction, Nikos had trouble fi nding an established art historian to
write this book, which he passionately believed was needed. It has taken
over ten years to produce, with the happy result that I think I now may
be the more established scholar that Nikos initially wanted. The far more
unhappy result is that Nikos died without seeing it. I hope he would be
proud of it. I hope even more that the book will have the effect on
readers he imagined.
The second inspiration for this book has been my students. As I have
taught courses dealing with sexuality, gender identity, and art over the
last (almost) two decades, I have been struck by their desire for a text
that offers a history of these issues, which are so often unhelpfully framed
as either timeless or as fl eeting controversies of the moment. In recent
years, I have tried out segments of this book on these classes, benefi ted
from their suggestions, and been inspired by their enthusiasm.
The third inspiration for this book has been my colleagues. A work
with this historical scope necessarily relies on the research of other
scholars, who are acknowledged in the notes. I want to thank, in
particular, for their scholarly and collegial example, encouragement, and
suggestions, Tee Corinne, Harmony Hammond, Carolyn Kastner,
Jonathan Katz, Tirza Latimer, Richard Meyer, Jim Saslow, and Kenneth
Silver. For their suggestions and information, I also wish to thank Libby
ix