Art Has Yet To Face Up To Homosexuality
via JOCKOHOMO
Philip Kennicott’s superb article in the Washington Post talking about the important new Oxford University Press publication, “Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas,” by Christopher Reed: “There may be a reckoning in the winds. Attitudes about gays and lesbians, and about same-sex marriage in particular, are now changing so fast that American culture is suffering from cognitive dissonance: still prone to habits of homophobia while simultaneously aware that overt bigotry is no longer acceptable in much of the public square…It may prove painful, and chastening, as such institutions come to accept that reality and reflect it in their presentation of art. Whole movements and eras, from the aestheticists of the late 19th century to the abstract expressionists of the mid-20th century, simply don’t have coherence without reference to same-sex desire. As this history is made obvious, even established standards of how we judge art may be shaken. As Reed documents, ideas about abstraction, formalism and individualism in art have dominated criticism, but often at the cost of enforcing heterosexual values and power. Artists who hid their “gay” work (Charles Demuth), or stood to the side of the mainstream art world (Marsden Hartley), or are simply forgotten (a circle of artists in Italy that included Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis and Harriet Hosmer) may deserve new attention and status.”
