Report from Florence
Summer 2002
by Jim Saslow
Remember that old chestnut of essay topics, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation”? This year, a quick work-related jaunt to Florence provided some insight into the current state of acceptance of gay/lesbian issues abroad.
On the encouraging side, I was invited to Italy to be filmed for a British-made documentary on that prototypical Renaissance man, “The Machines of Leonardo” -- debuting next year on Channel 4 in the UK. The producers of the program, which is primarily themed around reconstructing the artist’s sketches of technological inventions, wanted a historian of art and sex on the set to provide a complementary “take” on Leonardo’s personality, explicitly including his homosexuality. File under: The Brits do this better and more intelligently; maybe we’ll learn something when the show is broadcast here on PBS later in 2003. By the way, so do the French. James Smalls, a panelist at the June symposium on “The Forbidden Eakins,” reported that he had been invited to speak at the Musée d’Orsay on race and homosexuality in Eakins’s work, an indication that Paris also beats New York and LA in accepting the queer angle on artists.
The Italians themselves, by contrast, are not always so quick on the uptake about queer issues. While at liberty from the cameras in the cradle of the Renaissance, I visited the Casa Buonarroti, Michelangelo’s family palazzo, now a museum dedicated to his memory. The current exhibition (to September 30) is “The Myth of Ganymede, Before and After Michelangelo,” a jewelbox of a show featuring a small but select group of images of the gayest of classical characters. Ranging from red-figure vases to the fake antique fresco foisted off on Johann Winckelmann around 1760, the objects testify to the enduring appeal of the most beautiful of boys -- the only mortal to be brought into Olympus as Jupiter’s beloved. Centerpieces of the series are Michelangelo’s twin illustrations of Ganymede and Tityos, presentation drawings for his young innamorato Tommaso de’ Cavalieri sent as testimonies to the Jove-like master’s conflicted love for his own fair Ganymede. To view the two most famous gay visual love-notes together again after so many years, surrounded by the autograph letters and poems that passed between the smitten artist and his handsome aristocratic friend, was to come as close to that legendary love affair as possible. It was one of those epiphanies we visual folks all have at times, when an image is so right, so beautiful, and so special that you break out in a grin and hold your breath for a moment. Sigh....
Alas, the moderate-sized catalogue for the show’s 41 items didn’t quite put it that way -- about Michelangelo’s works or any others. You won’t find out here that Anton Mengs faked the Neoclassical fresco as a practical joke on the famous homosexual archeologist, who was growing frustrated when the ruins around Rome and Pompeii did not produce the evidence of gay ancestors he was hoping to unearth. The discussion of Michelangelo’s gifts does at least admit that yours truly is one of several scholars who have focused on the myth’s erotic and personal meanings, but sniffs that “this hypothetical reading has been carried to the greatest extremes” by us “psychoanalytic” types. Hmph.
Note from San Diego, May 2002
by Sherman Clarke
When I was in San Diego in May, an exhibition of photos by gay Israeli photographer Adi Nes was showing at the downtown branch of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. Alas, I visited on Wednesday, not realizing that the galleries were closed that day. The shop was open (!?) and I bought a small catalog from last year, published by Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv. Nes’s images are a real emotional conflict for me: I am an ardent pacifist and Nes’s photos of soldiers are as beautiful as the soldiers. The iconic “Untitled” of 1996, showing a barechested soldier flexing his right arm outside a military tent, was used by the Jewish Museum (New York) for a recent exhibition of Israeli art. Perhaps the irony of the sexy men and the military gear is part of the appeal. Or maybe it’s just the uniform thing.
“The forbidden Eakins: the sexual politics of Thomas Eakins and his circle”
symposium in New York
report by Sherman Clarke
This symposium was sponsored by SUNY Stony Brook and held at its Manhattan Center on 24 June 2002. Jonathan Katz introduced the topic and symposium which was held on the occasion of the Thomas Eakins exhibition at the Metropolitan. The official exhibition literature, including the catalog, did not significantly address the homoerotic content in the work of Eakins.
Jennifer Doyle was the first speaker and set the critical stage for the rest of the speakers. Martin Berger talked about the homoeroticism in Eakins which seems obvious to our 21st century eyes. He talked about art as evidence and getting beyond the biography of the artist. Deborah Bright then spoke on “The Agnew Clinic” and her work, on the physical in Eakins. James Smalls spoke on the hostile response to mixing race and sexuality, followed by Michael Moon who addressed the questionable practice of illustrating Walt Whitman with Eakins. Jonathan Weinberg discussed some of his recent paintings which have used Eakins as one source for dealing with male sexuality. Michael Hatt described his use of Eakins to discuss sexaulity, utopia and freedom and also talked about the reactions of his students at the University of Nottingham.
The discussion following the presentations was lively, with much said about the role of biography in interpreting art and the role of art in interpreting biography, the use of terminology to engage and provoke the reader/listener, the prevalance of butts in Eakins (turning the figure around), and the intersection of race and sexuality (the “other” in general).
See also comments in the co-chairs’ letter.
“Exposed: the Victorian nude”
at the Brooklyn Museum
6 September 2002-5 Janury 2003
reviewed by Sherman Clarke
The thought of naked bodies drew me to Brooklyn for the “Exposed” show which originated at the Tate in London last year. I was not disappointed. A number of artists in the homosexual pantheon -- Henry Scott Tuke, John Singer Sargent, Frederic Leighton, Simeon Solomon, Baron von Gloeden -- are represented and the gallery labels are fairly overt in discussing homoerotic imagery. The catalog index even has about a dozen entries under “homosexual and homoerotic imagery” though I could have marked quite a few more.. Alas, those in the pantheon and the index entries are all male. I’m sure there were women same-sex lovers and artists in Victorian Britain but they are not present here. The curators clearly had a good time hanging the show, as female and male poses are juxtaposed, as gestures are repeated in proximate works.