Art And Sex - An Exploration Of Gay Erotica

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The raw expression invited by the medium of painting has allowed portraiture to become a space for the queer artist to explore notions of love and sexuality. These societal standards and perceptions are the backdrop to his evocative work depicting femme men, androgyny, gender identities, and sexuality. The subject provided a perfect disguise for the sexual act, allowing the queer experience a respectable critical interpretation at the time. The roaring twenties saw speakeasies open in Harlem and Greenwich Village that welcomed gay and lesbian clients.

The shifting nature of identities in particular and changing contexts has induced much questioning in queer communities and produced a myriad of answers.

As Bao explores in the article cited below, Xiyadie’s work also blurs categories of ‘craft’ and ‘art,’ which in itself might be read as a queer defiance of categories. Though Cahun's literary works and surrealist constructions are impressive, the artist's cult following is a response to the extraordinary self-portraits in which genders are swapped and mixed. Artists had to limit their artistic license to homoerotic hints in history (the figure of Ganymede) or religious painting (the recurring motif of Saint Sebastian), and with, usually underground, distribution of prints. The power of movement is emphasized by the minimal black background, and the dynamic brushwork around the faces distorts the men's expressions, leaving it hard to tell whether their faces are twisted in expressions of pain, anguish, or rapture.

In Gaydar (2014), Ferris offers no visual clues as to her sexuality, but the title acts as a rejoinder to society's fascination with her identity.

A discussion of the queer experience in relation to art history can begin in 1870 when for the first time a paper by German psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal considered the experience of "contrary sexual feeling" in which two people were dealing with what would later come to be known as homosexuality. By invoking the classical tradition of same-sex love, artists could paint Sappho embracing Erinna and David strumming Jonathan's harp and speak surreptitiously to particular viewers.