Outlooks

Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures

Peter Horne, Reina Lewis, Peter Horne, Reina Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134803071
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Popular Culture in Art

Outlook explores the relationship of lesbian and gay sexualities to visual representation. It reflects the richness of lesbian and gay ways of producing and reading visual cultures, at the same time as it tackles such burning issues as the advantage of adopting a queer perspective on past art, the responses of lesbian and gay artists to the AIDS crisis, and society's attempts to censor homosexual art.
This volume provides a space for lesbian and gay artists to exhibit their work and discuss its relationship to sexuality. It allows for a wide ranging theoretical and historical discussion of the place of lesbian and gay men within visual cultures and shows how much has been missed by a heterosexist approach to art history and the study of culture.
Richly illustrated, this book includes statements by contemporary lesbian and gay artists, photographers and performers as well as articles by art historians, cultural theorists and lesbians and gay activists.

PART I

Queering art history

Chapter One

Queer spectacles

Emmanuel Cooper

Queer art remains a paradox. What it is and what forms it takes virtually defy definition, though its spirit informs work by many young artists, and its existence seems to be as much concerned with lifestyle—evident in street demonstrations, parades and nightclubs—as shown on the walls of art galleries. Queer art is part of a widespread, if often diffuse, reaction to a perceived complacency about art which claims to address issues around gay and lesbian identity, and the way this fails to acknowledge the political shift from art directed at lesbians/gays, to that seeking a wider and more general audience.

The importance of queer, ‘this violent rejection and despoliation of the norm by the exiled’ (Derbyshire 1994:45), and its ability to open up the question of how lesbian and gay identity has been theorized and represented in art, is a vital part of current debates. For not only does queer address the perceived need to bridge the huge gulf that separates ‘the reportedly homosexual from the presumably heterosexual, and the questionably white from the allegedly Black’ (Reid-Pharr 1993:31), but it is part of a widespread continuing debate concerned with individual and collective identity, and the conflict between what concerns us as individuals and what can—and should—be made public. While the assertive, rebarbative and confrontational concept of queer is not intended to offer solutions, it has stimulated productive debate around rapidly changing identities, and raised the question of the degree to which queer takes up and develops existing ideas.

Within this discussion, the death of Francis Bacon in 1992 can be seen as an opportunity to discuss his work as a painter in the light of queer culture. His death marked an end to the old traditional school of politeness, and perhaps the start of something new. Bacon, a latter-day Edwardian gentleman, invariably smartly dressed, wealthy, debonair, bachelor and vaguely aristocratic, fond of booze, food, gambling and sex, led a privileged and, despite massive publicity in recent years, a remarkably private life in which the media, public and friends conspired with the artist to ensure a veil of secrecy was cast over the turbulent events of his life, and on any specific queer reading of his work.

I want to use Bacon’s death as an opportunity for re-appraisal, a moment to examine the concept of queer and the emergence of queer culture in the light of the work of artists who have produced transgressive art in the 1970s and 1980s. The roots of queer culture in the field of visual art, however complex, can be identified in work as diverse as the turbulent paintings of Bacon, the large-scale photographically based screen-prints of Andy Warhol and the sexually explicit photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as in the graphics of Keith Haring and the agit-prop based work of David Wojnarowicz, who were involved in art and direct action around the AIDS epidemic. Such discussion inevitably questions the extent to which queer art is as new, challenging and transgressive as its image may imply, a theme taken up here. The argument put forward is that queer art, though taking particular forms today, is part of a continuing search for a visual language which expresses the hopes, anxieties, desires of queers/gays/lesbians/dykes/bisexuals.

While the notion of queer presents a series of contradictions around issues such as integration/confrontation, and problems around assimilation/opposition, it is also a crucial focus for arguments around the adoption of changing concepts of queer/gay/lesbian/dyke/bisexual identity at a time when who and what we are is under close scrutiny. As AIDS continues to take its toll, the necessary adjustments can never be fully resolved but must be constantly reviewed, throwing into question the aims and intentions of cultural production. AIDS, above all, has heightened awareness of the fragility of life, and the need to assert confidence and affirm identity. The extent of the AIDS epidemic continues to be a significant element in critical definitions of contemporary sexual behaviour, attitudes and sensibilities.

Debates around the concept of queer have been brought sharply into focus as part of a response to a profound questioning of identity, as issues around civil rights and illness are forcing us to look at who and what we are. This chapter attempts both to identify elements of a queer tradition which, though never labelled as such, have been emerging for over 20 years, and to discuss the ways in which artists who are gay have often found challenging, even confrontational, ways of subverting mainstream culture and inserting their own odd, even perverse perspectives on a largely unsuspecting and often unsuspicious public.

What is Queer?

Much, if not all queer culture is concerned with aspects of social transgression, whether involving a variety of same-sex relationship, and/or cultural confrontations. Fundamental to queer culture is the questioning and exploration of desire, investigating how it is shaped and perceived, and in what forms it can be expressed. One of the most disruptive and potentially liberating aspects of queer culture, with its possibilities of participation and activism, has been the rejection of fixed notions of sexuality. This has not only challenged conventional notions around gay/lesbian identity, often perceived as white, materialistic and thirty-something, but has also questioned clear defining lines between the sexually transgressive and the normative concept of straight. In an area which has tended to be seen as essentially objective, that is disembodied and universal rather than personal and specific, queer culture insists that discussion is about the freedom of individuals to choose whatever sexuality they wish.

Despite all the writing on queer culture, no simple definition has emerged which encompasses its breadth or suggests its implications¹. But this absence of a handy definition does not invalidate the significance of queer, nor do the challenges posed by queer culture with its associations of malfeasance, unlimited boundaries and desire for pleasure and play, limit its effect. While many aspects of queer culture are concerned with specific acts of social transgression, such as outing public figures, or highlighting the anti-gay attitude of the church through the disruption of religious services, for many individuals it is in the public expression of same-sex desire that the assertion of queer is most strongly expressed. Much of this centres around fetishism, and the ultimate excesses of bodily sensation and sado-masochism (s/m) with its connotations of deviancy and ‘kinky’ sexuality. In an effort to claim images of their own sexuality ‘lesbians have looked to gay male culture and produced images of a so-called sexual fringe—images of fisting, sex toys, and sadomasochistic scenes that refuse, or at least attempt to refuse, assimilation by mainstream culture’ (Fernandes 1991:38)—a feeling expressed more directly in the effort to select ‘the most frightening, disgusting or unacceptable activities and transmute them into pleasure. We make use of all the forbidden symbols and all the disowned emotions…’ (Califia 1979:19).

The radical status of queer culture as a powerful force for change, with its continuing agenda of challenging and confronting existing modes of representation, has not been unproblematic. Jeffrey Weeks recognized this when he posed the question ‘Does sado-masochism involve a submission in dangerous fantasies of violence, or is it no more than a harmless playing out of eroticised power relations?’ (Weeks 1986:81). While on the one hand queer can be seen as an expression of growing confidence and security, critics within both the lesbian and the gay communities, provoked by the hedonism of the ‘pleasure at any price’ principle, see s/m as replicating and exaggerating traditional heterosexual power relationships, and that rather than opening up new ways of relating, s/m is a denial of feeling.

Lesbian-feminist proponents of s/m argue that while they regard it as a liberating practice, it is so only within a lesbian-feminist context. It can, they argue, ‘equalise a power imbalance in a love relationship, but only between members of the same sexual caste…but it would be extremely self-destructive for any women to play either role, in an s/m relationship with any man’ (Samois 1979:8). They also acknowledge that discussion and consent must always precede ‘the eroticised exchange of power negotiated between two or more sexual partners’ (Samois 1979:2). The law takes a different perspective. The prosecution of consensual gay s/m sex in the Operation Spanner trial in the United Kingdom dramatically brought home the limitations of legal acceptance and the legal limitations placed on the individual to give consent.

Aspects of lesbian/dyke/gay/queer culture around s/m were brought sharply into focus in the United Kingdom with the publication of Della Grace’s book of theatrically staged photographs Love Bites (Schulman 1991), which centres on the idea of lesbians’ ‘pleasuring of their own bodies’ (Fernandes 1991:38). An American artist working in London, Della Grace took debates about lesbians and s/m which had been raging on America’s West Coast since the late 1970s, and presented them in photographic form to a largely unsuspecting audience in Britain. In the United States Gayle Rubin was writing on lesbians and s/m in the late 1970s, while Pat Califia’s Macho Sluts and the regular publication On Our Backs: Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian continued the argument.² Sado-masochists ‘have all argued at various times that they do not lead stunted lives, do not do harm to others, are perfectly capable of healthy relationships, and should not be considered by definition to manifest some defect of personality’ (see Rubin in Samois 1979:29). Later, artist and critic Joyce Fernandes argued that s/m is a means of providing ‘feminists with the most powerful strategy with which to confront a culture still enmeshed in prescriptive images of women as mothers, nurturers, and sexual satisfiers of male desire‘ (Fernandes 1991:35).

Grace’s erotic photographs featured ‘portraits of lesbians from the punk, leather, and s/m and bar communities’ (Schulman 1991:4) involving carefully staged scenarios of women acting out s/m fantasies, many of which parody the dress and stance of gay men and the fantasy leather-gear depicted in the art of Tom of Finland. Items of leather and rubber clothing, caps, vests and suchlike, and emblems of sexual domination such as dog collars, studded belts and chains, together with long black rubber gloves and a range of different-sized dildos, usually associated with men, were here being used—and abused—by women. The book launched a wide-ranging debate in Britain. This not only questioned the success of the images, but raised the wider issue of the appropriation of s/m by dykes.

The book received a mixed reception. Two feminist bookshops in London refused to sell it, either fearing prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act, or because they thought Grace had betrayed the politically correct lesbian consciousness. Supporting sisters and brothers, wearing s/m gear, picketed the shops offering copies of the book for sale. The controversy was fuelled by Paul Burston’s review article ‘Falling from Grace’ in the free weekly London newspaper Capital Gay (21 June 1991). His enthusiasm was met with a storm of protest from outraged lesbians and gay men.

Interviewed by Burston in the article, Della Grace acknowledged that some of her images may be seen by some lesbians as unacceptable, saying:

My purpose is to provide images of my sexuality and the sexuality of the women I identify with, who are part of a community which is considered ‘politically incorrect’. SM dykes have been ostracised, labelled ‘fascists’ or ‘pseudo-men’. The women I photograph are women who want to express who they are. In Britain especially, lesbian sexuality is so invisible. I want women who see my book to recognise that they’re okay, that there’s nothing wrong with them.³

A lively series of letters followed Burston’s article, with readers of Capital Gay expressing a wide range of opinions. Eugenia Oakes (Oakes 1991) found them ‘insulting’. She not only thought Burston’s article a ‘patronising wank’, but she had little time for the photographs saying ‘they are not good, important or ground breaking’, and that they offered ‘no examination of female desire’. Anne Marie Smith, for PUSSY (Perverts Undermining State Scrutiny) and OutRage disagreed in the paper the following week (Smith 1991). The photographs, she wrote, ‘capture the ways that pro-sex lesbians, especially s/m dykes, are playing with gender roles’.

The basis of much of the criticisms of Grace’s photographs was that the images aped the power relationships of men, that the book had been reviewed favourably by a man who was in effect telling lesbians what to do, and, compounding this view, that the book had been published by Gay Men’s Press, a male-dominated publisher.

Many women found the images disturbing. Some sympathetic observers such as Reina Lewis were fi...