‘It will be seen as a political exhibition.’
John R. Killacky interviews the curator of The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869–1939, Jonathan D. Katz.
MoreBrowsing: Art
Blog Posts
Amrita Sher-Gil’s Crossing Worlds
AMRITA SHER-GIL’S striking beauty and moody self-portraits have linked her to Frida Kahlo in the popular imagination. Both are examples of flamboyant painters who were fearlessly bisexual and exploited the medium of self-portraiture to tell the story of their turbulent lives in the male-dominated art world of the prewar years.
More
Queer Modernism in Russia
Diaghilev’s closest collaborators came from his intimate circle. Dmitry Filosofov (1872–1940), later an influential critic, and Konstantin Somov (1869–1939), the son of a Hermitage Museum curator, were among the most prominent. Their artistic and intellectual influences were diverse. Somov was drawn to the sentimentalism of the 18th century—the world of Antoine Watteau and Jean Louis Prévost—while Filosofov engaged with contemporary Symbolist literature and the mystical philosophical ideas that were circulating in Russian intellectual circles.
More
When ‘Homosexuality’ Came to Japan
Queer artists and writers of period like Yoshiya, Kashō, Otake, and Tadaoto sought to make sense of the enormous changes wrought by the Meiji Restoration and its consequences. In the decades preceding them, Japan had gone from a culture with multiple traditions of male-male love to a deeply heteronormative society.
MoreBuenos Aires’ Men in Uniform
Inspired by Demaría’s research into this erased history, in 2019 the photographer Claudio Larrea produced a series that speculatively recreated Ballvé Piñero’s homoerotic snapshots of the early 1940s (Figure 2). Los cuerpos del delito, a double entendre referring to “bodies of the crime” and “bodies of evidence,” insists on the ways that masculine subjects and a desiring gaze, here filtered through the camera’s lens, have been bound up in processes of surveillance and persecution.
More
Reclaiming Canadian Lesbian Art
The Impressionist painter Florence Carlyle (1864–1923) is the first homosexual artist on record in Canadian history. Her œuvre reveals an unrelenting interest in the erotic and emotional lives of women, especially of her lover Judith Hastings. Take, for instance, The Threshold of 1912 (Figure 1), a chef-d’œuvre of Canadian Impressionism.
More
A Painter’s Visual Excursions
DAVID HOCKNEY: Paper Trails Edited by Shai Baitel SKIRA. 221 pages, $65. I WELCOME any chance to see artworks by David Hockney, directly or through printed reproductions; but David…More
The Sex Was Out of This World
LOS ANGELES has always been a destination for eccentrics seeking personal transformation. In what other city could a pioneering rocket scientist lead occult rituals, a satanic Hollywood studio secretary publish one of the first lesbian zines, or a communist musicologist forever transform queer identity? A fascinating exhibition, Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation, celebrates these artifacts of L.A.’s weirdness.
More
Designing Men
WITH A WINK to Oscar Wilde, R. Tripp Evans’ The Importance of Being Furnished celebrates four influential Americans—Charles Leonard Pendleton (1846–1904), Ogden Codman Jr. (1863–1951), Charles Hammond Gibson Jr. (1874–1954), and Henry Davis Sleeper (1878–1934)—whose imaginative houses, now public museums, marked a pivotal shift toward personal expression in home design.
More
Visual Rhythms
KNOWN for her large-scale collage portraits of Black women, the critically acclaimed artist Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971. Introduced to art as a child by her mother, fashion model Sandra Bush, she earned her BFA from New York’s Pratt Institute and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She has accepted various artist residences and received numerous prizes. She now lives and works in Brooklyn with her partner and frequent model Racquel Chevremont.
More