Early Fall: ‘Cracking the Closet’ (Editorial)
IN OLDEN TIMES the concept of “the closet” didn’t exist, and the idea of “coming out” had yet to be invented. Nevertheless, starting in the 19th century, a number…More
IN OLDEN TIMES the concept of “the closet” didn’t exist, and the idea of “coming out” had yet to be invented. Nevertheless, starting in the 19th century, a number…More
J.C. LEYENDECKER (1874–1951) was an artist of many firsts. With his illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, he can be said to have invented what the modern magazine cover should look like. He was one of the first popular artists to achieve a kind of greatness, and, as the most widely seen image-maker of his era, he defined the look of the fashionable American male during the first few decades of the 20th century. As a gay man himself, he did all this while introducing a subtly homoerotic subtext into many of his drawings, thereby prying open a crack in the closet door of his era.
MoreCHICAGO’S WRIGHTWOOD 659, a private institution focused on socially engaged art, mounted a landmark exhibition, The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869–1930, last fall. A team of international scholars, led by art historian Jonathan D. Katz, assembled a groundbreaking show with over 100 paintings, prints, photographs, and film clips that reveal how, as Katz notes, “while language narrowed into a simplistic binary of homosexual / heterosexual, art gave form to a nuanced range of sexualities and genders that can best be described as queer.”
MoreBy Ignacio Darnaude
CHICAGO’S WRIGHTWOOD 659, a private institution focused on socially engaged art, is currently showing a landmark exhibition: The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869–1930.
MoreFOR ANY ART LOVER, Florida’s infamous “Don’t say gay” law is a painful reminder of how a similar policy, aimed at erasing queer visibility, has been a mainstay in Western art museums for centuries, all the way to the present time. While there has been significant progress in the last few years, the presence and recognition of LGBT art in major museums is still somewhat tentative and far from secure.
MoreTHE PHRASE “land’s end” has been applied to any number of seaside locales, perhaps most famously to three places in the U.S.: Provincetown, Key West, and San Francisco. The…More
WHEN PAUL CADMUS died … there was barely a ripple in the art world. It’s hard to recall that 65 years earlier he had been the enfant terribleof the art world when his painting of frolicking sailors, The Fleet’s In!, caused an epic scandal.
MoreReaders’ thoughts.
MoreTHE THEME of “Artful Dodges” (with apologies to Dickens) refers to the ways in which artists have set about to circumvent restrictions on the presentation of the human body…More