‘To speak of masculinities is to speak about gender relations. Masculinities are not equivalent to men; they concern the position of men in a gender order.’¹
As expounded by R.W. Connell, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’, in the study of social theories of gender, is the underlying concept defining a practice that legitimises the dominance of a culturally idealised and normative form of manhood, based on an exclusive hierarchy of privilege and power, which conversely justifies the subordination of the common male, woman, and other marginalised ways of being a man. Instead, in the recognition of multiple masculinities and their internal contradictions, a critical reformulation of the constructed and ultimately unattainable concept/perception is suggested.
Founded during the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, the concepts of power and difference in ‘the oppression of men as well as oppression by men’,² were just beginning to contest the dominant discourse around masculinity which has set heteronormativity as its standard — thus, to be a ‘real man’, in Western society, is to be a heterosexual man. For gay men, masculinity is not a realm they are entirely excluded from but rather a site where conflicts between their sexual identity and social presence as men are persistently being negotiated. This essay intends to examine the ways these anxieties and concerns have been contested and further transcended by the artists, David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe, who in their respective works, have subversively undermined hierarchical values and insistently asserted a subjugated form of sexuality. Through the eroticisation and objectification of the male body, queer desire as visually represented by these artists, therefore, takes on a paradoxical nature as they hoist both fear and fantasy publicly onto the overtly private and guarded space of the domestic and critically reveal the contradictory relationship that queerness and homosexuality has with masculinity.
David Hockney (1937- ) is a widely recognised and well-regarded British artist, best known for his tranquil yet provocative large-scale paintings of Californian swimming pools.³ Homosexuality and desire have long been themes that Hockney has explored in his artworks, even while he was still a student at the Royal College of Arts in London, where he came out as gay in the earlier half of the decade. In a disdainful response to the college’s academic requirements then, Hockney in Life Painting for a Diploma (Fig. 01) from 1962, painted an almost nude male figure, copied from the cover of an American physique magazine, and mockingly stuck on an early anatomical drawing of a skeleton beside it. Recalling the cheekiness that led to this work in a later interview with Niko Stangos, the artist commented that any ‘great painter of the nude has always painted nudes that he liked; … He was sexually attracted to them and through they were beautiful, so he painted them’.⁴ Tracing the historical precedent of artistic subjectivity in the examples of Renoir’s plump girls and Michelangelo’s muscular young men, this statement by David Hockney brings to significance the homoeroticism that the artist was knowingly engaging with, especially in his focus on the male body. Hockney was not simply using these images and cultural material as visual references for his artistic practice, they were also an articulation of more personal interests.
Hockney’s sexual preference can be closely linked to his affinity for American physique magazines, in which shots of male ‘beefcake’ models are presented as objects of desire or in suggestive proximity with each other. These publications would intentionally utilise bodybuilding culture to avoid charges of obscenity in their production of thinly veiled homoerotic images, presenting an instance whereby there is an active partaking in hyper-masculine presentation while simultaneously unsettling it. As Lynne Segal has observed in her analysis of masculinities, ‘homosexual subcultures have a tantalizing relationship with the masculine ideal — part challenge, part endorsement’.⁵ Although these images obscure the framework around heteronormativity by imbuing a sense of eroticism onto the figure of a typically domineering male type, there are still poignantly lingering adherences to the customary values defining masculinity. David Hockney employs a display that reiterates the ideal desirable and attractive male body as one connected to athleticism and sports- a notion that distinctively calls back to heralded connotations of accomplishment, dedication, and strength. Subsequently, these visual and cultural materials, produced in Los Angeles, captivated and substantially informed the artist’s long-lasting overtly queer and sexual understanding of California.
In the early 1960s, David Hockney was living and working from a small flat in Notting Hill- a district largely made up of racial minorities and migrants, described by Frank Mort as ‘radically exotic’ and an area which ‘provided access to a range of experimental lifestyles’.⁶ It was from this apparently transgressive part of London, where illicit sexual liaisons and tense interracial encounters were taking place, that the artist would paint his diagrammatic double portraits of couples in domestic interiors. Depicting two male figures together, are the paintings Domestic Scene, Notting Hill (Fig. 02), ‘in which Hockney’s close friends Ossie Clark and Mo McDermott pose’ and Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (Fig. 03), ‘based on a shot of two men found in the magazine Physique Pictorial’.⁷ In these assembled images, Hockney would draw upon aspects from his real life in Notting Hill, a rudimentary impression of Los Angeles from the materials he consumed, and delve into his imagination as a source to conjure up a vision that explored the dynamics and potential of a homosexual relationship. By reimagining a familiar and mundane site, David Hockney is perhaps attempting to piece together a pictorial space where, as Gregory Salter would describe, ‘queer undertones vie with the everyday’.⁸ Still, with large areas of canvas left unpainted and little effort put into achieving a likeness, the abstracted and sparsely filled presentation in both Domestic Scene(s), therefore, demonstrates a naïve and incomplete interplay between reality and fantasy.
The walls and floors are notably absent from these imaginings and only certain decorative elements, such as the armchair, lampshade, and vases of flowers, have been included to slightly indicate the private and domestic nature of the settings. The male bodies also appear to take on an empirical relation with one another- an effect extended to the figures’ orientation within the space they occupy. David Hockney in an account regarding these paintings has explained, that when ‘you walk into a room you don’t notice everything at once, and depending on your taste there is a descending order in which you observe things’.⁹ The artist has deliberately chosen to exclusively depict what he personally considered important and arranged them in a way reminiscent of a theatre stage- a visual metaphor further emphasised by the large red curtain hovering over the seated figure of Ossie Clark in Notting Hill. Similarly, in Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, Hockney’s schematised composition centers around two bathing figures decidedly extracted from a physique magazine, the very premise of which is rooted in exaggeration and display. The performativity and selectivity inherent in the construction of these two fictitious images point to a rather polemic intent as the artist challenges and diverts from heteronormative standards in an attempt to seek out and negotiate an alternative mode of masculinity.
When both Domestic Scene(s) are analysed in dialogue with one another, a juxtaposition is revealed in the relationship between the two figures which seems detached and almost solemn in one, while a moment where physical touch has been initiated is featured in the other. This contrast is even repeated in the way that the male bodies have been rendered. Notably, in Notting Hill, the seated figure is sombrely dressed in all-black and the standing nude is listlessly grey; whereas in Los Angeles, the flesh of the two male bodies is vividly flushed and exuding virility. Additionally, the white socks worn by the male figure donning an apron in Los Angeles, doubly alludes to a desire referencing an athleticism rooted in the everyday and presents a repeat of the boundaries between challenging and cohering to an ideal masculinity being tested. David Hockney’ fascination with Los Angeles and the eroticism of the male body also finds a merging point in his depiction of men taking showers in full view, a motif that appears in Domestic Scene, Los Angeles. The artist has once noted on the subject matter, ‘Americans take showers all the time … For an artist the interest of showers is obvious: the whole body is always in view and in movement, usually graceful, as the bather is caressing his own body’.¹⁰ A difference is being established by the artist, and in Hockney’s mind, Los Angeles symbolised a freedom and openness that was not available to him in England; it was to be the place where he could casually admire the bodies of other men in his day-to-day life.
Moreover, in his article, Paul Melia has situated David Hockney within a historical tradition of exiled English homosexuals who have had to journey overseas for a destination that would ‘support a culture hospitable to their desires’.¹¹ Hockney, in this trajectory, has envisioned California as a gay utopia where his desire can, literally and metaphorically, shred off its clothing and be expressed candidly. Although the couple in Los Angeles is depicted in a setting that is seemingly private and banal, sharing similar repeated visual elements from Notting Hill such as the armchair and vase of flowers, which were respectively painted from life and an illustration in a woman’s magazine- it is notable that the artist has willingly and cautiously inserted a floating red telephone, an object from his immediate surroundings in Notting Hill, into the right edge of the canvas in Domestic Scene, Los Angeles. The presence of a communications device might in this case, as argued by Melia, ’suggest a network of friends and even, perhaps that Hockney’s imaginary couple belong to Los Angeles’ gay subculture which has developed rapidly since the early fifties’.¹² Specific allusions are being made to a possible wider and more accepting queer community the artist is hoping to find when he arrives in California. Consequently, it can be inferred that David Hockney might be putting forward a notion of masculinity that, unlike the prevalent individualistic male trope, seeks camaraderie and kinship.
Reflecting in hindsight on the increasingly visible references to homosexuality that were being made in his earlier works, David Hockney has personally acknowledged that, ‘they were partly propaganda of something I felt hadn’t been propagandised, especially among students, as a subject: homosexuality. I felt it should be done. Nobody else would use it as a subject, but because it was a part of me it was a subject that I could treat humorously’.¹³ Indeed, these early 1960s paintings are intuitively autobiographical despite not having the artist visually represented or present. The constructively fragmentary formation of these images has been arrived at by a young gay male artist who has taken cues from his lived observations and, with an elevated imagination, visualised a temporary yet explorative space for his burgeoning queer sexuality to express itself. Nevertheless, there is still a persisting sense of ambiguity and uncertainty that is apparent in these visual assemblages which were notably produced before the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britian and before the 1969 Stonewall Riots in the United States. Hockney’s queer desire was, therefore, a challenge to the heteronormative institution as the artist was seemingly bargaining for a way of life that was largely subjugated and deemed socially and legally unacceptable. Through these visual representations of male couples in an apparently normative setting, David Hockney is effectively destablising prevalent notions that equate masculinity with heterosexuality and making known a version of masculinity that is disparate and inconclusive.
About a decade later, Robert Mapplethorpe (1956–1989) was an American photographer, based in New York, who worked extensively in black-and-white and produced an impressive output of powerful and provocative images that predominantly featured ‘faces, flowers, and fetishes’.¹⁴ Remarkable for their technical command and formal aesthetic, Mapplethorpe’s photography is undoubtedly accomplished and has established him as one of the most noteworthy artists of the twentieth century.¹⁵ Even so, the artist‘s enduring choice of subversive subjects has consistently managed to incite mixed responses from audiences, ranging from perceptive understanding, distant ambivalence, to even moral disapproval. Alona Prado has posited that for queer artists rising into prominence following the Stonewall riots, like Robert Mapplethorpe, ’their intention was not only to problematise the heterosexual gender binary discourse and shatter heterosexual stereotypes but to revel in their queerness as a natural state of being and consequently affirm their rights’.¹⁶ In his now infamous 1979 X-Portfolio, Mapplethorpe dealt directly with an erotic subculture, largely regarded as illicit and highly controversial by the prevailing masses, as his interest in documenting and examining the gay male S&M scene of the mid- to late 1970s in New York City developed. Members were photographed in attire and defiantly posed, in Kobena Mercer’s words, it was ‘a subcultural sexuality that consists of “doing” something’.¹⁷ Alongside its shock factor and frisson, this cataloguing of the homosexual S&M subculture forthrightly presents a recording of one manifestation of queer desire while, simultaneously- maintaining the bold insistence of a marginal community’s actuality.
Sadomasochism features erotic practices that involve the mutual reciprocity of sadism, often referred to as the ‘master’, and masochism, generally designated as the counterpart ‘slave’- it is also further characterised by its stereotypical association with leather and bondage. In a homosexual context, both sides are enacted by men who, in the process of reproducing certain rehearsed and agreed-upon behaviours, are adopting an alternative self and offering a doubly transgressive manner for masculine identities to present. The willing submission of a male body in exchange for sexual pleasure, realised by the ‘slave’ in this dynamic, undermines traditionally upheld traits of hegemonic masculinity, such as assertiveness, dominance, and invulnerability; conversely, homosexuality, which has been systematically deemed effeminate by a masculinity tied to heteronormative values, challenges these emasculating deductions with the command that the ‘master’ holds over another man. This pervasive blurring of the line between sexual gratification and violence thus illustrates an enigma that Richard Meyer has classified in the possibility for the gay male body to be ‘as much invitation as intimidation, as much erotic as dominating subject, as much psychic “bottom” as penetrating “top”’.¹⁸ Mapplethorpe’s photographic matter entirely forgoes the option of pacifying its transgression through assimilation or suppression, and instead draws upon its deviant forces to forcefully make seen and valid the homoerotic desires of a largely dismissed subculture. Due to their inherently complex and paradoxical quality, Robert Mapplethorpe’s representative content depicting men performing acts of desire whilst embodying extremely opposing positions, has consequently been reflective of a masculinity that is always in flux, undecided, and adaptable.
Denouncing the term ‘shocking’, Robert Mapplethorpe has proclaimed his motivations as not being driven by the need to expose or reaffirm assumptions being made about the S&M scene- the artist told ARTnews in 1988, ‘I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before… I was in a position to take these pictures. I felt an obligation to do them’.¹⁹ Mapplethorpe’s unique identification with being a part of this marginal community suggests a sense of investment as a participatory observer in his pursuit of capturing and making public the relatively hidden and private realm of the S&M subgroup. Although his choice of subject matter is notoriously explicit, it is not its perceptively offensive nature that the artist is trying to encapsulate, but rather he was returning a means of authorial control back to a cast-off subgroup, pushed into the periphery for being deemed outside the norms of acceptable behaviour. As Arthur C. Danto has recognised in his assessment of the sadomasochistic presence in these images, ’they could display their leather gear and shiny chains with pride. They trusted the artist not to make them look like fools, to show them as they would wish to be shown’.²⁰ This personal and respectful connection that the artist had with the selected featured members can also be gathered from the disclosed names in the titles of the photographic images- a gesture that is concurrently authoritative and vulnerable.
In the square-format double portrait from 1979, two leather-clad men identified in the title Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter (Fig. 04), in the middle of a living room with their gazes intensely fixed on the camera. Seated in the armchair is Brian Ridley, who has chains fastened around his ankles and wrists while his collar is shackled and attached to Lyle Heeter, standing to the left and holding in his hands a riding crop pointing down into the centre of the image. The backdrop they are situated in is cluttered with ornate furnishings comprising of several antiques, floor-length curtains, an oriental carpet, and a glass tabletop ostentatiously balancing upon stag antlers. This decorative staging suggests that this homely living room is where the couple ordinarily resides- however, the presumed normality of this setting markedly contrasts with the imposing men in the foreground, fully clothed in leather jackets, trousers, and boots. This is not a neutral site- the props and apparatuses embellishing the figures determine them as participants of the sadomasochistic subculture and the resulting scene is a stage that either anticipates or signifies the enactment of a sexual ritual taking place. An element of theatricality has been harnessed and the characters are engaged in a display of sorts as they adopt a sense of relaxed formality, in a similar manner to what might be assumed by a heterosexual pair when posing for a couple portrait or photograph. The parallel being put forward ironically highlights the commonality between the two representations and critically acknowledges the subjugation and subservience implicated in the performativity of binary roles, both normative and transgressive.
Neither the sexually explicit nor spontaneous depiction that is to be expected for images of sexual deviancy; Mapplethorpe, instead, emphasises the confrontational stance and unwavering look in the models and calls attention to the authoritative sense of preparedness inherent in the couple’s command of gesture and costume. In their refusal to be portrayed as ‘shocking’ objects for visual consumption, a hint of assertion over their own image is reclaimed and a limited access is given to the spectating of their lifestyle. As Richard Meyers insists, ‘Mapplethorpe’s work announces the impossibility of ever knowing, or fully entering, the site of gay sadomasochism through photography’.²¹ Holding some sense of domination over its viewers, Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter is an impenetrable image, forceful in its resistance to being classified, and, thus, decidedly functions as a recognition and maintenance of subversive valence. Despite that, many of the other images in the X-Portfolio are overtly erotic and explicitly showcase male bodies- Helmut and Brooks, N.Y.C. (Fig. 05),²² which pictures anal penetration in a shot of a male’s hand and forearm being actively inserted into the rectum of another man’s behind, is one of such photographs from the series that was soon deemed criminally prosecutable for obscenity in the culture wars of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Abandoning covertness and unsparingly confrontational in its homoerotic matter, Mapplethorpe’s visual constructions are notably carefully considered and indicative of the artist’s meticulous and intentional approach. The controlled juxtaposition and precise styling in Helmut and Brooks, N.Y.C. allow figures to dominate the picture plane and create a focal point accentuating the physicality of the male bodies. Disembodied by the tight cropping and dramatised by stark lighting, the buttocks of the bottoming male figure collapses into the forearm emerging form it, much like the stem of a flower- Calla Lily (Fig. 06), from 1988, and daringly divides the composition in a manner that affirms its concern for balance and harmony. As Richard Marshell expounds, Robert Mapplethorpe ‘maintains a desire to make beautiful objects with printed photographic images’.²³ All these elements add up masterly to convey the artist’s relentless pursuit of beauty as he sought to recreate in his photographs the found ideal that he saw in his chosen subject matter. Focusing on the formalist aspects, Mapplethorpe’s presence takes on a detached attitude and imbues a sense of reverence for the visual object which effectively serves to subdue the friction generated against heterosexual norms. The X-Portfolio photographs, therefore, were less of a plea to normalise relegated homosexual S&M practices and more of an effort to bridge the gap between provocation and beauty in art through the elevation of a facet of the gay male experience and incorporating them into the realm of masculinity by appropriating and aesthetically objectifying erotic sadomasochistic imagery.
The socially and culturally pervasive ideology around masculinity has historically depended on the adamant denial and control over any alternative forms of otherness- or queerness- to centre itself as the stable, dominant, and hegemonic model. The fallacy in this edifice inevitably unravels itself when challenged, as gay male artists- David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe- have sardonically insisted on, in their representations of male couples in domestic spaces, a subversion of traditional notions of masculinity and heteronormative ideals. Hockney’s assembled images blend the real and imaginative to construct a vision of the possibilities of a queer relationship while Mapplethorpe’s photographs affrontingly document and validate the homoerotic desires of a largely dismissed and hidden subculture. Suffused with an element of pleasure, these visual depictions not only celebrate the diversity and complexity of the queer experience, but also oppose the authoritative and individualistic machismo heralded by dominant narratives of what it means to be masculine. In both artistic portrayals, seen in Hockney’s hint at an outer network and Mapplethorpe’s involvement with the sadomasochistic scene, there is a prevailing underlying advocation for a masculinity that relies on a sense of community, a belonging to a wider group of like-minded people. Queer desire and identities, therefore, hold the potential to denaturalise the ideal heteronormativity by revealing its inherent fragility and dependence on the denouncement of what it is not; instead, it contributes to a broader and more inclusive pluralising to suggest the existence of multiple viable options for performing masculinities.
¹R.W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd Edition, (University of California Press, 2005)
²R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, in Gender & Society, Vol. 19.6, (2005), pp, 829–859
³David Hockney, Tate Britain,
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/david-hockney
⁴Niko Stangos, David Hockney by David Hockney: My Early Years, (1988), pp, 88
⁵Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, (1990), pp, 145
⁶Frank Mort, ‘The Profumo Affair’, in Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society, (Yale University Press, 2010), pp, 282–90
⁷The David Hockney Foundation, 1963, https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1963
⁸Gregory Salter, ‘David Hockney and Queer History in the 1960s’, in David Hockney: Moving Focus, (Tate Publishing, 2021), pp, 29
⁹Niko Stangos, pp, 92
¹⁰Niko Stangos, pp, 99
¹¹Paul Melia, ‘Showers, pools and power’, in David Hockney, (Manchester University Press, 1995), pp, 52
¹²Paul Melia, pp, 55
¹³Niko Stangos, pp, 68
¹⁴Jack Fritscher, ‘He was a sexual outlaw’: my love affair with Robert Mapplethorpe, in The Guardian, (2016), article
¹⁵The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, Tate: Look Closer, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/robert-mapplethorpe-11413/photographs-robert-mapplethorpe
¹⁶Alona Prado, ‘Performing Masculinities’, in Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, (2020), pp, 14
¹⁷Kobena Mercer, ‘Looking for Trouble, in Transition, №51, (1991), pp, 187
¹⁸Richard Meyer, ‘Imagining Sadomasochism: Robert Mapplethorpe and the Masquerade of Photography’, in Qui Parle, Vol. 4, №1, (1990), pp, 67
¹⁹Biography, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, https://www.mapplethorpe.org/biography
²⁰Arthur C. Danto, Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe, (Yale University Press, 1996), pp, 42
²¹Richard Meyer, pp, 65
²²Louis Shankar, ’A queerer perspective; Leather, latex, and Robert Mapplethorpe’, in Varsity, (2016), article
²³Richard Marshell, ’Mapplethorpe’s Vision’, in Robert Mapplethorpe, (Secker & Warburg, London: 1991), pp, 14
