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Art and Queer Culture

Basia Sliwinska
Published online: 05 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: Basia Sliwinska (2013) Art and Queer Culture, Third Text, 27:6, 808-810, DOI:
10.1080/09528822.2013.860794
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.860794

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808

earlier acclaimed film installation, Western Deep

(2002), Gravesend is an impressionistic film that
traces the devastating effects of global trade particularly the exploitative relations between Europe
and Africa. Demos notes McQueens visual referencing and metaphorical allusions to nineteenthcentury colonialism through Joseph Conrads 1899
novella Heart of Darkness. His complex imagery is
visually compelling, but the film-makers affective
representations of black bodies represent what
Demos has noted is an important political choice.
McQueen, like many of the other artists discussed
in The Migrant Image, produces uncomfortable
works of art that exacerbate tensions around arts
loyalty to the laws of form and the imperative to
make meta-commentaries on global systems of
power.
Demoss critical project should be commended
for reigniting a discussion that powerfully explores
the ongoing impasse between aesthetic and political
affect in the arts. As the books premise suggests,

Art and Queer

Culture
A Peephole into Anything
Else You Want to Be
Basia Sliwinska
The Preface of Art and Queer Culture starts with a
quote, I am your worst fear. I am your best fantasy,
which also features on a cardboard sign held by a
woman pictured on the accompanying page. In
2008 American artist and activist Sharon Hayes
invited members drawn from the Denver and Saint
Paul gay, lesbian and transgendered communities to
read texts she had written. She wanted to have
them read at the sites of the Republican and Democratic national conventions where they could reach
mainstream America. The performances of Revolutionary Love: I am Your Worst Fear, I am Your
Best Fantasy (2008) were intended to appeal to a
basic human desire for belonging, acceptance and
unity beyond political divides. Those staged performances with balloons re-enacted the spectacular nature

artworks concerned with the migrant condition

advance critical and aesthetic imperatives that are
not contingent upon rootedness to outmoded
notions of place, identity and nationhood. And the
global cosmopolitan artists, many of whom are
living in diaspora, bring a new set of concerns to
the table. Demos rightly argues that these artists
have reinvented documentary practices through
their imaging of migrants and the politically dispossessed and by extension have opened up new possibilities in the artistic domain for the exploration of
social justice and inequality.
T J Demos, The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of
Documentary during Global Crisis, Duke University
Press, Durham, 2013

# Derek Conrad Murray, 2013

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.835093

of the national conventions, addressing the power

structures and the polarization of attitudes against
non-normative sexualities. The text read:
We are looking for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals,
transmen, transwomen, queers, fags, dykes, muff
divers, bull daggers, queens, drama queens,
flaming queens, trannies, fairies, gym boys, boxing
boys, boxing girls, pitchers, catchers, butches,
bois, FtoMs, MtoFs, old maids, Miss Kittens,
Dear Johns, inverts, perverts, girlfriends, drag
kings, prom queens, happy people, alien sexualities
and anything else you want to be or are and wish to
bring out for the event.

Hayess work deals with gender, language and identity politics in specific, transient, cultural moments.
The title of the performances, Revolutionary Love:
I am Your Worst Fear, I am Your Best Fantasy
became a gay liberation slogan, encapsulating the
duality and ambiguity of queer identity in the visual
arts and art historical discourses. It also serves as
the opening phrase for Art and Queer Culture. The
performance gave rise to a different form of activism
that can now spark theoretical debate around multiple representations of queer identities in art. The
slogan might also be the best description of Hayess
contribution to the book, which manifests both
anxiety and fascination embedded in attitudes
against non-normative sexualities that are no longer

Downloaded by [University Of Pittsburgh] at 00:02 27 November 2014

809

marginalized. The book includes essays written by

Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer who selected
the accompanying images of artworks and texts.
The written and visual materials contest versatile perspectives on alternative sexualities, and engage in discussions on different identities, meanings and
negotiations of sexualities. They trace the invention
of the word homosexuality in the late nineteenth
century, the sexual categorizations and various designations in clinical, cultural and social discourses, the
meanings imposed on homosexuality, and the pivotal
moments of queer visual culture over the last 125
years that enabled the shifting of sexual identities
and shaped codes and cultures of non-normative
sexualities.
Even though queer culture is entwined with art
and visual culture, there exist only a few publications
on queer art, sexual cultures and performing subjects.
In Art and Queer Culture, Catherine Lord, a lesbian
artist and critic, and Richard Meyer, a gay critic, lay
claim to the first book to focus on the criticism and
theory regarding queer visual art, as stated on the
sticker on the front cover. It is not the first such
text. There are other publications tracing the influence of queer sexuality on visual culture, such as
The Queer Art of Failure (2011) by Judith Halberstam or The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts
(2004) edited by Claude J Summers. However, Art
and Queer Culture offers an unquestionably wide
visual landscape of artistic practices and, what is
more interesting, references documents that can be
followed for further research. It takes a leap further
than other available publications and investigates a
genealogy of queer sexuality in art from 1885 until
today. It does not rehearse but contests queer narratives that offer chronological but not progressive
accounts.
Originally proposed as a museum exhibition, Art
and Queer Culture aims to reach a global market as
an academic resource but, perhaps most importantly,
also as a coffee-table publication appealing to readers
outside academia. The book is divided into three
parts, starting from Survey, in which Meyer and
Lord discuss histories attached to queer culture,
their affinity with pop culture and mixing high and
low cultures, performative aspects of identity and
adopting mythic references to explain camouflage as
a tactic of avoiding social repercussions for sexual
preference. Meyers essay, looking at the early twentieth century, traces the campaigns for homosexual
rights, from the Stonewall riots of June 1969
marking the birth of queer art and activist culture
linked with radical social movements of the time,

the womens liberation movement, anti-war movements and Black Power to post-1970s activist
groups. He mobilizes the representations of preStonewall queer culture which are less familiar to
informed readers. Meyer traces what were often considered phobic queer representations, looking at Hal
Fischers Gay Semiotics (1977), a project detailing
the visual and sartorial codes of gay sex culture,
and exploring the circulation of visual images fuelling
resistance to the framing of homosexual subjects as
outlaws, perverts or security threats.
In the second essay, Lord focuses on the body
politics from 1980s onward, starting with Susan
Sontag, the Butchest One of All.1 Sontags multiple
selves portray the insufficiency of language to encompass other sexuality. Queer functions as an opposition to norm, resistance towards the mainstream,
gendered as heterosexual and raced as white. Lord
explores these complex meanings which intersect
with class, race and nationality. She investigates the
time of the gay flu, gay cancer or Gay Related
Immune Deficiency Syndrome, later called AIDS,
equated in the media with the lifestyle of gay men.
She meticulously paints a picture of a time when
artists started complicating the images of their own
bodies and imposing them on a society that was
ignoring the issue and negating the need to speak
up about AIDS. The body became a site of political
struggle and of gender performance. Lord tracks the
politics of sexuality and illness in art from the
1980s, the time of sex wars, designating the
debates concerning female objectification and
sexual violence, but also sexual freedom. She then
offers an insight into artistic practices of recent
years that affirm difference but also negate categories
based on identity in art. The essays give a fascinating
overview of artists questioning and experimenting
with alternative genders in cross-cultural contexts,
but these contexts are not explored in depth.
The next part of the book includes visual
examples of artworks from over 220 artists. It is
almost a peek-a-boo game in which looking at the
pages mimics what the reader discovers about the
repercussions, social stigma or even imprisonment
faced by homosexuals. These quick references to
alternative genders and sexualities and their disappearance when the page is turned over are first
merely interesting, but then bring awareness of the
limits of identity politics and unstable definitions,
and signal that queer does not necessarily encompass
all cultural practices. It opposes normative heterosexuality and troubles the conventions of gender
and sexuality. The editors decided to include only

Downloaded by [University Of Pittsburgh] at 00:02 27 November 2014

810

one work per artist, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, to highlight the global dimensions of
visual art and the increasing visibility of queer
culture, but also to emphasize the wide spectrum of
histories, identities and practices. Turning each
page reveals what was hidden and how visual codes
were deployed to signal sexual difference and the
alignment of queer first with crime and sin, then
with identity and then with going beyond the sexual
binary of homo- or heterosexuality. Not all choices
of artists are obvious and some pages offer surprising,
less familiar examples of artistic practices that negotiate visual framings of homosexuality as a sickness,
sin or crime, subvert homophobic attitudes and
beliefs or use allegorical and symbolic codes to represent it. This part of the book, entitled Works, is
subdivided into the following sections: thresholds
between 1885 and 1909, stepping out (1910
1929), case studies (19301949), closet organizers
(1950 1964), into the streets (1965 1979), sex
wars (1980 1994) and queer worlds (1995
present), and provides a useful chronology to track
the changes in the representation of queer subjects.
The final part, Documents, is organized in the
same way and features over one hundred pages containing artists statements, manifestos and critical
essays discussing alternative forms of gender, sexuality and identity. This is a really valuable contribution to the publication, highlighting the activism
and politicization of queer culture. It includes Oscar
Wildes witty Testimony on Cross Examination,
3 April (1885), Magnus Hirschfelds The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1913), passages
from Jean Cocteaus The White Book (1928),
Sigmund Freuds 1935 letter to an American mother
reassuring her that homosexuality is not a pathology,
Norman Mailers The Homosexual Villain (1955)
and Valerie Solanass S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1967),
among others. The inclusion of these texts highlights
the importance of theoretical underpinnings to the
understanding of art and queer culture.
Art and Queer Culture recognizes the importance
of queer sexuality in art and accentuates the subversive
dimensions of non-normative identities. It explores the
burgeoning field of queer culture and its impact on
visual culture today and in the past. It is a solid

resource for anyone interested in gender and sexuality

studies and their reverberations with visual culture,
paving the way for future projects addressing the dialogue between art, queer culture and aesthetics. The
book highlights the asymmetries in thinking about
art where heteronormative discourses are enforced
and the queer is still often marked with shame, oppression and secrecy. Even though Lord and Meyer admit
the limitations of the project, which is restricted to
Western perspectives, the current discourses around
globalization and cosmopolitanism make it impossible
to talk about queer art history without looking at
wider cultural, geopolitical and national contexts.
Without this transnational and intercultural reach,
the traditional art historical categories, approaches
and methodologies are not subverted and challenged
but remain powerfully oppressive and, in a way,
enforced. Art and Queer Culture is nevertheless a
good start. It is a peephole through which one may
look from a secure outside place marked by
normativity and West-centricism into a world where
otherness is not stigmatized but contested, challenged
and embraced. As Judith Butler says in one of the
documents included in the book:
At stake is no less than a reconfigured world, one
which contests the strict distinctions between
inner and outer life, and which suggests that the
pain that is suffered through pathologization is
also the resource from which angry poems are
crafted, ones that take public form, and that
demand a new public capacity to hear.2

Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer, Art and Queer

Culture, Phaidon, 2013

NOTES
1.

Terry Castle in Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer, Art and

Queer Culture, Phaidon, London, 2013, p 29

2.

Judith Butler in ibid, p 363

# Basia Sliwinska, 2013

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.860794