Left: In the Dull Village, 1966, by David Hockney. “They made some references in their work, but they were closeted because they wanted success,” says Brian Paul Clamp, of the New York gallery ClampArt. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg understood this as they ascended the avant-garde ranks in New York City. These were essential strategies if an artist wanted to make it into mainstream museums or galleries. And who is the dapper civilian man with wavy blond hair, wearing a suit and tie? “There are coded symbols in the way the man is dressed: The red tie, the slicked-back hair and the transactional exchange of a cigarette - these are indications that this man is soliciting sex,” says Moynihan.Įxperimenting with modernist tactics, Marsden Hartley used abstracted symbols to convey his queerness, while Charles Demuth kept his watercolor depictions of gay subculture in the 1930s private. In his 1934 painting The Fleet’s In, for instance, Paul Cadmus caused a national scandal with his depiction of drunken sailors carousing with women, but that hetero action is, in effect, a clever distraction from the homoerotic innuendo of the sailors’ buttock-clinging pants. The long history of homophobia in the Western world didn’t keep homosexuality out of art, necessarily, but it did drive artists to conceal their sexual preferences behind visual codes. The Fleet’s In, 1934, by PAUL CADMUS Pre-Stonewall: Communicating by Code, Flouting Convention or Hiding from Public View Here, Introspective takes a look at some of the most impactful examples of LGBTQ art making, from before Stonewall to today.
To commemorate Pride Month and the work of LGBTQ artists, 1stDibs is donating to the nonprofit arts organization Queer|Art 15 percent of proceeds from sales of the artworks in our PRIDE COLLECTION. The queer art that has since evolved ranges from unflinching agitprop to intimate, personal reflections. So, insisting on pride and LGBTQ visibility was a way to reverse that,” says Conor Moynihan, a curatorial fellow at the RISD Museum, who explains that the term queer, once a derogatory label, has been reclaimed as an umbrella phrase implying a resistance to the heteronormative status quo.Īfter Stonewall, from the 1970s on, art became a safe space where overtly gay, lesbian, trans, queer and nonconforming ideas, subjects and images could be freely explored. “Pride was a reversal of shame, and there was long shame around being gay or gender-nonconforming. The Stonewall rebellion, commemorated every June since 1970, ushered in an era of pride and openness, which gained traction and visibility, in part, through art and visual culture. Their efforts quickly drew allies, and five days of heated protests ensued. Fed up with decades of discrimination and emboldened by civil rights gains made by other marginalized communities, the Stonewall’s customers resisted arrest and began rioting in the streets. The well-documented tipping point was June 1969, when a routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn - a bar in Greenwich Village known for drawing a gay, lesbian and transgender crowd - unwittingly gave rise to an ongoing groundswell of LGBTQ activism.Īt the time, homosexuality was illegal in 49 states, gays and lesbians were barred from working for the federal government, and police treated cross-dressing as a punishable crime. June 20, 2021Homosexuality and gender fluidity have appeared as subjects in art for millennia, but for modern Western cultures, it wasn’t until the late 20th century that artists could treat such themes overtly, without fear of censorship, ostracism or even arrest. Photo courtesy of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, Peter Hujar Archive, LLC Top: Gay Liberation Front Poster, 1970, by Peter Hujar. Study for Portrait of John Edwards 1986, 1987, by Francis Bacon.