What is Queer Art?
My final second year essay. This is intended to serve as an introduction to my dissertation, which I’ll begin researching this year.
Notes on pronouns: Some of the artists referenced in this essay have stipulated publicly that they prefer the use of gender-neutral pronouns, so in these instances I will be using ‘they/their/them’.
In April 2017, Tate Britain opened the first major exhibition dedicated to queer British art. 2017 marks the 50 year anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, and Tate is just one of the many establishments around the country marking this occasion with an exhibition focusing on LGBT themes.
As a self-identified queer artist, I’m often asked, ‘what is queer art?’ The implication being that it is different from just ‘art’. It is this concept of otherness which is integral to understanding its meaning.
In this essay I will be attempting to answer this question, whilst exploring some of the conflicts that exist within queer communities, and how queerness within the arts has historically pushed boundaries and can continue to do so, in a world that is both increasingly accepting but simultaneously divided.
According to Tate glossary, queer art is:
[1]“Art of homosexual or lesbian imagery that is based around the issues that evolved out of the gender and identity politics of the 1980s”
However, simply defining queer art as art made by people who are homosexual or lesbian, is as reductive as defining queer people as those who have same-sex relationships. Whilst love, sex and desire are often themes within queer art, it is problematic to focus merely on this. For further definitions, if we look at ‘queer’ in the dictionary, we see:
adjective, queerer, queerest.
1.
strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different;
As well as being an adjective, it is also increasing used as a verb. I will look at how artists and curators take familiar imagery and ideas and queer them. Given that the word queer has been re-appropriated by those who may previously have experienced the word as an insult, this also separates it as being related to sexuality; it is political.
According to David J. Getsy, in ‘Queer (Documents of Contemporary Art)’:
[2] “Historically, ‘queer’ was the slur used against those who were perceived to be or made to feel abnormal. Beginning in the 1980s, this negative speech act was reappropriated and embraced as a badge of honour. While queer draws its politics and affective force from the history of nonnormative, gay, lesbian and bisexual communities, it is not equivalent to these categories nor is it an identity. Artists who identify their practices as queer today call forth utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships.”
Getsy, David. J, 2016. Queer (Documents of Contemporary Art), Whitechapel Gallery
The origins of what is now known as queer art are somewhat unclear. If, according to the Tate Glossary definition, it evolved from the identity politics of the 80s and 90s, it is interesting to note that the current exhibition at the Tate contains work created much earlier than this (1861–1967).
In ‘Art and Homosexuality- a history of ideas’, Christopher Reed discusses what he calls the ‘open secret’ of the early avant-garde, arguing that:
[3] “[Homosexuality]…was an essential element in creating and sustaining the avant-garde. Important avant-garde alliances…were grounded in the experience of sharing and keeping secrets.”
Reed, C., 2011. Art and homosexuality: A history of ideas. Oxford University Press.
He continues:
“[Homosexuality’s’] status as an ‘open secret’- constantly suspected and hinted at but never frankly acknowledged- is among the defining characteristics of the modernist avant-garde…in a culture that exalts individualism as an ideal for a middle class that, in fact, lives and works largely according to prescribed patterns, engagement with avant-garde art allows audiences to indulge in vicarious individualistic transgression without risking loss of authority.”
Interestingly, one artist for whom the idea of the open secret worked well was Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). As a heterosexual man, Duchamp was perhaps more able to utilise ideas linked to homosexuality to provoke. One of the most influential pieces of modernist art, Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ — a male urinal turned on its side- hints at finding pleasure in public toilets and male urination, whilst subverting a recognisable object. There is growing evidence to suggest that Duchamp took the idea of ‘Fountain’ from the Dadaist poet, artist and supremely queer Baroness Elsa von Freytag- Loringhoven (1874–1927). In ‘Baroness Elsa’, writer Irene Gammel states that:
[4] “The rabble-rousing Baroness may have had a hand in the mysterious Fountain. If this is the case, then this pièce de résistance must surely be seen as one of the most profoundly collaborative works in the annals of New York dada.”
Gammel, I., 2003. Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity — A Cultural Biography. MIT Press
Could we say that Duchamp was a queer artist, or was using queer ideas to shock bourgeois audiences, with the safety net of heterosexual male privilege? Did his privilege make it easier for Duchamp to appear cross-dressed as Rose Selavy? Artists such as both Duchamp and the Baroness, whether or not they collaborated on Fountain, could be said to have been using queer tactics within their work, many decades before we possessed the language to describe it.
Activist art in the AIDS decade
Post gay-liberation, the 1980’s and 90’s saw a new generation of politicised queer artists, angry towards governments and world leaders for ignoring a health epidemic that affected so many.
One of the largest (literally) and most significant political artworks of the 20th Century is the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Stretching over seventeen acres, the quilt documented the names of over 82,000 names of those who lost their lives to AIDS. It is the largest piece of community art in the world, and in 1989, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
[5] “The Quilt has redefined the tradition of quilt-making in response to contemporary circumstances. A memorial, a tool for education and a work of art, the Quilt is a unique creation, an uncommon and uplifting response to the tragic loss of human life.”
(From the AIDS Quilt website.)
It is interesting to note the quilt is similar in its use of materials, execution and social message to that of first-wave feminist art of the 1970’s, i.e. Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party’.
Many contemporary artists continue to respond to this era in their work. In a 2016 New Yorker interview, photographer Nan Goldin discusses ‘survivor’s guilt’:
[6] “For me, “The Ballad [of Sexual Dependency]” is poised at the threshold of doom; it’s a last dance before AIDS swallowed that world. We’re survivors. There’s all this survivor’s guilt. I felt so guilty in ’91, when I tested negative. I was disappointed that I was negative, and most people don’t understand that.”
In 2015, the US-based photographer Tammy Rae Carland released a book of photographs, and historical ephemera of her life in Oakland’s queer community, entitled ‘Some of us did not die.’ In an interview of the same year, she said:
[7] “I became very focused on this idea of an entire part of my generation that didn’t get to make it to fifty. That didn’t get to make it to the other side of young adulthood.”
The impact of this era on the evolution of queer art is huge, and the many artists who’s work has lived on is testament to how powerful it can be for artists to remain visibly queer, in the face of social, personal and political turmoil.
Queer tactics: Queering & Queerating
‘Queering’ is an approach used by artists to reinterpret a cultural work through a queer lens.
Artist Deborah Kass (b. 1952) is known for her appropriations of Andy Warhol’s screen printed portraits, replacing the subjects with her own queer female heroines- Gertrude Stein, lesbian writer and early collector of artists such as Picasso, appears in place of Chairman Mao, and Barbra Streisand takes the place of Warhol’s Elvis. Appearing herself ‘in drag’ as a Jewish, female Warhol, Kass plays with popular imagery and expresses her desire to be represented, as a queer, Jewish woman.
Queering can also be applied to curating. In an intervention at the Walker Art Gallery in 2008, Wolfgang Tillmans placed William Hamo Thornycroft’s 1888–90 sculpture ‘The Mower’ opposite one of the artists’ own photographs of a young punk. The two men gaze at each other, drawing attention to the Mower’s body.
In a recent online article, curator Binghao Wong acknowledges the ‘inescapable complications of queer life’ and proposes the idea of ’queerating’ as a form of collective care:
[8] “If collaboration and collectivity are imperatives that strengthen our chosen queer families, how can we begin to practice togetherness in our cultural work?”
They point out that “mutual sharing of anecdotes, genealogies and desires are essential to processual learning.” Can curating be a way to support and provide visibility, rather than simply to show work with a common theme?
Queer conflicts
There are many conflicts within queer art: problems arise when defining that which cannot, and refuses to be defined. The conflict between wanting to reject heteronormative cultural practices (e.g.: marriage) that exclude, whilst also wanting to ‘fit’ into them.
Whilst the ‘otherness’ that queer people experience can lead to isolation and abuse, in turn this can also create strong, positive bonds within communities. This sense of a shared experience has created a rich and diverse underground culture, which is frequently appropriated by mainstream, heterosexual culture, where the original context is often lost.
Madonna’s 1990 video for ‘Vogue’ contained the eponymous dance style, originated by those in the New York 1980s drag scene, documented in the ground-breaking 1990 film, ‘Paris is Burning’. Many of these drag communities (known as ‘houses’) formed as support networks for young black and Latinx gay men, many of whom lived in poverty.
Madonna is an outspoken figure, with significant queer relevance, who, according to Lisa Henderson in an excerpt from ‘The Madonna Connection’:
[9] “speaks to- if not for- lesbian and gay fans and critics amid the
oppressions and retrenchments of the sexual counterrevolution.“
Schwichtenberg, C., 1993. The Madonna connection: Representational politics, subcultural identities, and cultural theory. Westview Pr.
Henderson goes on to specifically discuss Madonna’s reappropriation of drag culture:
[10]“Her plastic repertoire includes gay cultural forms, yes, but appropriated out of their organic venues (like Harlem drag and voguing balls) and into the high-return indifference of corporate cultural production (like the video Vogue.) Many gay people will recognise the originators, but most of the audience will not, and Madonna has not gone out of her way to credit or (remunerate) her sources.”
In recent years, largely due to the popularity of US reality show, Rupaul’s Drag Race, there has been a large resurgence of interest in drag: large enough to attract the attention of a mainstream audience. Two queens every episode ‘lip-sync for their lives’ for the judges.
No sooner had RuPaul re-popularised the lipsync, it was swiftly repackaged for a mainstream non-queer audience for entertainment purposes, on ‘Lipsync Challenge’. For many, lip-syncing is a powerful and often moving form of gender performance art, originated by drag performers on stages within queer spaces.
The need to protect these ‘safe’ spaces, and the elements of queer culture that they create and nurture, can mean that heterosexual people may experience difficulty when entering these spaces. Whilst this can seem frustrating and problematic, it is understandable in this protected environment. Here, heterosexuals may experience the feeling of otherness that many queer people experience on a daily basis. However, there remain conflicts within these spaces themselves.
Victoria Sin is a contemporary performance artist using drag to highlight misogyny and racism within the queer scene itself. In a recent article on this subject, they write:
[11] “The worlds of drag and feminism do not overlap enough, as it is often forgotten that homophobia and misogyny are deeply intertwined. The subversive potential of drag as a tool for postmodern feminism is huge: the fact that drag separates the gender performance from the body points towards a parodic performance of all gender on different levels.”
Outside of live performance, in photographs Victoria Sin becomes a soft sculpture of what a drag queen ‘should’ look like, rather than an idealised woman, and they pose accordingly, in a satire of contemporary drag’s competitive drive for gendered perfection.
— — — — — — — — — — -
So, once an element of queer culture is reappropriated by mainstream, heteronormative culture, can it remain ‘queer’?
Similarly, once a gallery like Tate Britain is holding an exhibition of Queer British Art, how queer can it really be?
Once a month, National Portrait Gallery resident artist Sadie Lee hosts ‘Queer Perspectives’. Lee invites a guest from the queer art community to give a personal tour of the collection. This idea of queering a space for a short period is more in tune with queer aesthetics than that of a full exhibition. Interruption rather than assimilation, as well as highlighting the conflict between gaining equality and acceptance, whilst retaining ownership and identity.
The sight of a transvestite winning the Turner Prize in 2003 was arguably an important moment for queer art. After the wave of ‘whatever next’ newspaper articles, Grayson Perry fortunately followed through spectacularly, by continuing to create work that is thought-provoking, whilst remaining delightfully transgressive. As well as his writings about masculinity and openness about transvestism, his work utilises queer tactics; the use of traditional crafts to unpick ideas about power structures, sexuality, gender and class. But, like Marcel Duchamp, is it possible that Perry is also able to use queer ideas to shock bourgeois audiences, with the safety net of heterosexual male privilege, as discussed earlier?
Where next? Questioning gender.
It could be claimed that marginalised groups have created some of the most progressive elements of our culture, queer people being no exception.
As issues relating to rights of women, LGBTQ people and racial minorities are more frequently emerging through popular culture, and social media, we are seeing the emergence of language that is allowing many people to identify themselves in new ways.
Artists such as Claude Cahun, or Gluck have frequently been written about as cis-female lesbians, but whilst we develop language that acknowledges possibilities of uncovered trans history, we risk eradicating important elements of feminist lesbian history.
Heather Cassils is a contemporary performance artist who works specifically with the trans-masculine body as a form of sculpture.
‘Becoming an image’ is a 20-minute performance highlighting historical violence towards trans bodies. Cassils uses their body to attack a 2,000 lb. lump of clay before an audience, in a darkened room, lit only by occasional camera flashes. The pummelled clay is then displayed post-performance.
For Cassils, there is a strong link between body and politics:
[12]”Our bodies are sculptures formed by society’s expectations. I am a visual artist, and my body is my medium…the crux of my work is to create something that isn’t so black-and-white [binary].”
This destructive element of contemporary queer art is seen also in the work of the Degenderettes- a group of genderqueer feminists based in San Francisco using visual art, social media and punk tactics to fight transphobic aspects of society worldwide.
At a recent exhibition, the Degenderettes exhibited a pastiche of Duchamp’s’ ‘Fountain’. Whilst acknowledging ‘Fountain’s status as an important piece of modernist art, we also note the urinal itself as a symbol of cis-male privilege, and a potent reminder of the on-going debates surrounding which toilets transgender people use.
At the end of the exhibition opening, Degenderettes founder Scout destroyed the piece with a large, pink mallet, effectively ‘smashing the art patriarchy’.
With celebrated first-wave feminists such as Germaine Greer and Woman’s Hour’s Dame Jenni Murray publicly expressing transphobic TERF views, and with the rise of right-wing politics threatening civil rights, contemporary queer artists are now tearing up the rule book and redefining sexuality, gender and identity on their own terms.
Bibliography
[1] Tate Glossary: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/q/queer-aesthetics
[2] Getsy, David. J, 2016. Queer (Documents of Contemporary Art), Whitechapel Gallery
[3] Reed, C., 2011. Art and homosexuality: A history of ideas. Oxford University Press.
[4] Gammel, I., 2003. Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity — A Cultural Biography. MIT Press
[5] AIDS Memorial Quilt Website: http://www.aidsquilt.org/about/the-aids-memorial-quilt
[6] Nan Goldin interview: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/04/nan-goldins-the-ballad-of-sexual-dependency
[7] Tammy Rae Carland Interview: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/what-was-withheld-tammy-rae-carlands-some-of-us-did-not-die/Content?oid=4544964
[8] Binghao Wong article: http://autoitaliasoutheast.org/news/queerating/
[9] & [10] Schwichtenberg, C., 1993. The Madonna connection: Representational politics, subcultural identities, and cultural theory. Westview Pr.
[11] Victoria Sin article: http://autoitaliasoutheast.org/news/3755/
[12] Heather Cassils interview: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/03/heather-cassils-transgender-bodybuilder-artist
GLOSSARY
LGBTQ: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer. Sometimes included are I & A, which stand for Intersex and Asexual. Sometimes known as the ‘alphabet soup’, it is ever evolving and often subject to discussion and change.
Cis-gender: A cis-gender person is someone whose gender identity matches the one they were assigned at birth. ie cis-male and cis-female.
TERF: Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist. Feminists who do not believe that transwomen can be ‘real’ women.
Non-binary: Those who do not identify as either male or female or who transgress distinctions of gender. Many non-binary people prefer the pronouns ‘they/them’.
