Gay Art History Tours Homoerotilly Rethk the Metropolan Mm’s Artwork

Contents:

• GAY RIGHTS
• WHAT TOOK TO CREATE THE WORLD’S FIRST GAY ART MM
• HIDN PLA SIGHT: HOW GAY ARTISTS EXPRSED FORBIDN SIRE
• GAY ART HISTORY TOURS HOMOEROTILLY RETHK THE METROPOLAN MM’S ARTWORK
• THE GAY FIGURE ARTISTS ARE REIMAGG THE MALE GAZE

GAY RIGHTS

In an UK Gay News op-ed piece, Baker wrote: “In my view the rabow flag is unfished, as the movement reprents, an arc that begs well before me, s breadth far broar than all of our experienc put together, reachg the fartht rners of the world wh a msage of solidary and a bean of hope for those who follow our footsteps. They are perhaps most famo for their image of three terracial upl (straight, gay and lbian) kissg above the ptn “Kissg Don’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do, ” as well as their work at the 1990 Venice Biennale where they juxtaposed two billboards: the image of the Pope wh a text about the church’s anti-safe-sex rhetoric; the other a two-foot-high erect penis wh texts about women and ndom e. Summary of Queer ArtAny art that n be nsired "queer" refers to the re-appropriatn of the term the 1980s, when was snatched back om the homophob and opprsors to bee a powerful polil and celebratory term to scribe the experience of gay, lbian, bisexual, transgenr, and tersex people.

Key Ias & Acplishments Bee of the early crimalizatn of homosexual acts and the social stigma nnected to homosexualy, much Queer Art employs d visual language that would not aroe spicn among the general public but would allow those faiar wh the trop of the subculture to glean the hidn the rise of activism the wake of the Civil Rights protts and the AIDS epimic, Queer Art beme more ank and polil s subject matter, forcg the viewers to regnize queer culture and to unrsre the stutnal equi and hypocrisy that fueled Inty Polics surroundg Queer Art has sparked much bate, wh some artists embracg Inty Polics and other chewg as not important for their work. Mapplethorpe's photography pictg still lif of flowers, celebry and Royal Fay portraure, and pictur of children are well-loved, but his powerful and subversive imag of homoerotic subjects are most notable their power to dramatilly alter perceptns and ph boundari. "A discsn of the queer experience relatn to art history n beg 1870 when for the first time a paper by German psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Otto Wtphal nsired the experience of "ntrary sexual feelg" which two people were alg wh what would later e to be known as homosexualy.

He wrote the History of Sexualy (1976), "The sodome had been a temporary aberratn; the homosexual was now a speci, " htg at a future where the queer experience would bee an important branch of Inty s later, 1895, the Brish thor and playwright Osr Wil was sent to prison for two years after he was nvicted of sodomy, and the trials helped shape an emergent inty of the homosexual artist.

WHAT TOOK TO CREATE THE WORLD’S FIRST GAY ART MM

"Murals, Graffi, and the Public Space Sculpture provid a way for the queer experience to be lerally brought out of the closet and to the street, as the work of Gee Segal's Gay Liberatn, which was stalled across the street om the old Stonewall Inn Greenwich Village.

HIDN PLA SIGHT: HOW GAY ARTISTS EXPRSED FORBIDN SIRE

Today, more than 48, 000 people have add panels honorg the nam of their lost iends, and has germated to different rnatns around the world, won a Nobel Peace Prize nomatn, and raised $3 ln for AIDS service the face of centuri of reprsn, the public space beme an important new venue for gay artists to display their work. It did not stop the great paters of the Renaissance, many of whom are today acknowledged as gay, om portrayg the sexual allure of famoly, the var versns of St Sebastian’s martyrdom, showg a spicly mcular torso punctured by arrows, achieved inic stat among homosexual admirers who rpond not only to his physil bety, but also to his plight as a tortured, yet steadfast, martyr.

ESTIMATE: £3, 000–5, the ol gaze of Andy Warhol, meanwhile, the cliched hyper-masculy of gay p-ups was gently ironised: his starkly-l, tightly-cropped Body Builr of 1982 is absurdly out of proportn, an afont to classil ials of manly 21st century has seen a growg acceptance of homosexualy, but only up to a pot.

GAY ART HISTORY TOURS HOMOEROTILLY RETHK THE METROPOLAN MM’S ARTWORK

Artists ntue to challenge those who would ny their right to exprs and mentate on their own sexual orientatn, most recently 2010’s "Hi/Seek: Difference and Dire Amerin Portraure” exhibn at the Smhsonian’s Natnal Portra Gallery Washgton DC, which provoked lls for a ngrsnal review of the Smhsonian’s the subject of homoeroticism ntu to make s prence felt the cultural mastream: wns the Brish Mm’s A Ltle Gay History gui, explicly drawg attentn to objects wh homosexual them the llectn. Queer is a reclaimed pejorative for people who sire someone of the same sex, is pansexual, bisexual, or any other sexualy that is not lbian or gay, while transgenr refers to a person whose self-inty do not nform unambiguoly to nventnal notns of male or female genr. Ernment signated Gerber’s Chigo hoe a Natnal Historic Pk TriangleCorbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, gay rights movement stagnated for the next few s, though LGBT dividuals around the world did e to the spotlight a few example, English poet and thor Radclyffe Hall stirred up ntroversy 1928 when she published her lbian-themed novel, The Well of Lonels.

Addnally, 1948, his book Sexual Behavr the Human Male, Aled Ksey proposed that male sexual orientatn li on a ntuum between exclively homosexual to exclively Homophile Years In 1950, Harry Hay found the Mattache Foundatn, one of the natn’s first gay rights group. ”Though started off small, the foundatn, which sought to improve the liv of gay men through discsn groups and related activi, expand after foundg member Dale Jenngs was arrted 1952 for solicatn and then later set ee due to a adlocked the end of the year, Jenngs formed another anizatn lled One, Inc., which weled women and published ONE, the untry’s first pro-gay magaze.

Post Office, which 1954 clared the magaze “obscene” and refed to liver Mattache Society Mattache Foundatn members rtctured the anizatn to form the Mattache Society, which had lol chapters other parts of the untry and 1955 began publishg the untry’s send gay publitn, The Mattache Review.

THE GAY FIGURE ARTISTS ARE REIMAGG THE MALE GAZE

That same year, four lbian upl San Francis found an anizatn lled the Dghters of Bilis, which soon began publishg a newsletter lled The Ladr, the first lbian publitn of any early years of the movement also faced some notable setbacks: the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn listed homosexualy as a form of mental disorr followg year, Print Dwight D. ”In fear of beg shut down by thori, bartenrs would ny drks to patrons spected of beg gay or kick them out altogether; others would serve them drks but force them to s facg away om other ctomers to prevent them om 1966, members of the Mattache Society New York Cy staged a “sip-”—a twist on the “s-” protts of the 1960s— which they vised taverns, clared themselv gay, and waed to be turned away so they uld sue.

They were nied service at the Greenwich Village tavern Juli, rultg much publicy and the quick reversal of the anti-gay liquor Stonewall Inn A few years later, 1969, a now-famo event talyzed the gay rights movement: The Stonewall clanste gay club Stonewall Inn was an stutn Greenwich Village bee was large, cheap, allowed dancg and weled drag queens and homels the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York Cy police raid the Stonewall Inn. 1 / 12: NY Daily News Archive/Getty ImagChristopher Street Liberatn Day Shortly after the Stonewall uprisg, members of the Mattache Society spl off to form the Gay Liberatn Front, a radil group that lnched public monstratns, protts and nontatns wh polil officials. Addnally, several openly LGBTQ dividuals secured public office posns: Kathy Kozachenko won a seat to the Ann Harbor, Michigan, Cy Council 1974, beg the first out Amerin to be elected to public Milk, who mpaigned on a pro-gay rights platform, beme the San Francis cy supervisor 1978, beg the first openly gay man elected to a polil office asked Gilbert Baker, an artist and gay rights activist, to create an emblem that reprents the movement and would be seen as a symbol of pri.

In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventn published a report about five prevly healthy homosexual men beg fected wh a rare type of 1984, rearchers had intified the e of AIDS—the human immunoficiency vis, or HIV—and the Food and Dg Admistratn licensed the first mercial blood tt for HIV 1985. But after failg to garner enough support for such an open policy, Print Clton 1993 passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which allowed gay men and women to serve the ary as long as they kept their sexualy a rights advot cried the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, as did ltle to stop people om beg discharged on the grounds of their 2011, Print Obama fulfilled a mpaign promise to repeal DADT; by that time, more than 12, 000 officers had been discharged om the ary unr DADT for refg to hi their sexualy. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was officially repealed on September 20, Marriage and Beyond In 1992, the District of Columbia passed a law that allowed gay and lbian upl to register as domtic partners, grantg them some of the rights of marriage (the cy of San Francis passed a siar ordance three years prr and California would later extend those rights to the entire state 1999) 1993, the hight urt  Hawaii led that a ban on gay marriage may go agast the state’s nstutn.

In 1994, a new anti-hate-crime law allowed judg to impose harsher sentenc if a crime was motivated by a victim’s sexual Matthew Shepard ActCourty of the Matthew Shepard FoundatnMatthew Shepard, who was btally killed a hate crime 2003, gay rights proponents had another b of happy news: the U. Gay rights proponents mt also ntent wh an creasg number of “relig liberty” state laws, which allow bs to ny service to LGBTQ dividuals due to relig beliefs, as well as “bathroom laws” that prevent transgenr dividuals om g public bathrooms that don’t rrpond to their sex at birth.

Hujar: © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkIn amassg work ma by the mostly overlooked gay artists who lived and died durg the crisis, a global group of llectors is refg what the Wtern non looks llector, who wish to rema anonymo, keeps some of his more explic art the bathroom of his Connecticut home, cludg (middle, om top) McDermott & McGough’s “The Spir of the Htler” (2003) and “Uny Repeated” (1993). He rejected that part of himself, attemptg to cure, or at least curb, his gayns through therapy and an outsir, Baer entered middle age as a happily married straight man wh a quirky reer path that ma him popular at dner parti: In addn to beg a Harvard-ted doctor, he also wrote and produced h TV shows such as “ER” and “Law & Orr: SVU. Enavorg to make up for lost time, Baer, who had been a sual art llector, started buyg work solely by gay artists, begng wh a lorful 1990 acrylic on paper portra by Don Bachardy of the wrer Pl Mote, whose 1992 g-out memoir, “Beg a Man: Half a Life Story, ” helped Baer do the same.

“I don’t know that the world n change for the better except wh stori, ” says Baer, 67, om the apartment he shar wh his hband, the 37-year-old psychologist Brandon Weiss, which overlooks a seclud tangle of gkgo, ailanth and rk tre Central Park known as the Ramble, where gay men have gone cisg sce at least the 1920s. Much of Baer’s llectn clus subject matter he’d long nsired taboo — maybe distasteful — and which he now displays throughout his home on Manhattan’s Upper Wt Si for the same reason gay bars screen vtage porn: as a way to rve out a space for himself and others like him where tolerance, even acceptance, of queerns isn’t enough.

In the rooms, gayns is worshiped, champned, fend and DavisBaer’s tert queer art spans genr and sexual inti, but there’s an emphasis on work by gay men om the early days of the AIDS epimic the 1980s and ’90s, many of whom created relative obscury and have often been fotten, only to be reclaimed recent years by a new generatn of llectors. Has arranged the works wh a curator’s eye, pickg up mon threads among the artists: Wojnarowicz’s and Wong’s tratn over feelgs of isolatn and nfement; how Steers and Hujar uld make even an ailg gay man — pecially an ailg gay man — look like a kg; the special cursy and re wh which othered people saw one another and, one another, themselv.

Through programmg and acquisns, art stutns and blue-chip galleri have the power to anot new stars (like the Pakistani-born gay Amerin pater Salman Toor, 39, whose first major exhibn was at New York’s Whney Mm of Amerin Art 2020) and to remd dienc about tablished on (like the Amerin portraist Alice Neel, whose retrospective at New York’s Metropolan Mm of Art last year revigorated her cultural chet nearly four s after her ath). Elsewhere his 18th-century untry home Connecticut are patgs by the English terdisciplary filmmaker Derek Jarman; a bedsi portra of Hler and the nam of gay men he persecuted durg the Holot by McDermott & McGough, an art duo who lived and drsed throughout much of the 1980s as if were the Victorian Age; and his latt acquisn: a $125, 000 st plaster head by DavisIt’s probably easier to spend so much time the pany of such sad, often nontatnal work — to look at a mournful slow dance between wasted bodi, or a sailor lyg unnsc on a rtroom floor, scen that are reprented the Steers patgs he owns — when you know how much ’s worth.