Springtime: “The Age of Innocence”
BY “The Age of Innocence” I have in mind the cultural period just before the medicalization of homosexuality in the early 20th century, when it was still possible to…More
Blog Posts
Don Gorton, Boston Activist and G&LR Mainstay
DON ELDRIDGE GORTON III (1960–2022) was a longtime activist for LGBT causes in Massachusetts who was also an integral part of this magazine for many years. Born in Mississippi,…More
Letters to the Editor
Readers’ Thoughts
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The Inscrutable John Singer Sargent
The Grand Affair is not reductive; it’s a full-scale, fascinating story of an exceptional artist, informed by the new freedom to discuss homosexuality in a way that was not possible before. And it makes a persuasive case that Sargent, whether or not he acted on his feelings, was drawn to other men.
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Jean Lorrain, Ambassador from Sodom
Detested by most of his contemporaries and undervalued by his immediate posterity, [Jean] Lorrain’s amalgam of lowlife culture and preciosity, of exhibitionist journalism and artistic aspirations, has come to be seen as forerunners of Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. His musky writing may be an acquired taste, but, then, so is caviar.
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Joining the Rosa Bonheur Revival
Bonheur painted herself into The Horse Fair as a participant, dressed in the standard attire of the other (all male) riders.
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The Warren Cup and Me
Ned would undoubtedly have preferred Pollini’s interpretation. He wrote a book titled A Defence of Uranian Love that was published under a pseudonym after his death. In it, he makes an argument for same-sex relationships based on those prevalent in Ancient Greece, in which an older male mentors a younger one and may or may not have sexual relations with him. It is easy to understand how the Warren Cup was his “Holy Grail,” as he called it.
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The Sublime Sewer Club
The Benedick opened its doors in the autumn of 1879. It offered 33 apartments for unmarried men and included on the top floor four artists’ studios available for rent, studios that were accessible via that sine qua non of New York sophistication: an elevator.
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Gustave Courtois in the Paris Salon
Gustave Courtois was born in 1852 in the tiny town of Pusey in eastern France, about 35 miles north of Besançon. He was raised by his single mother, Jeanne Jobard, a laundress who hardly made enough money to pay the bills. Thanks to his remarkable artistic talent, he received a scholarship in the spring of 1869 to join the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a renowned Orientalist painter and professor at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
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