In 1910, Emma Goldman, a determined anarchist activist, started advocating
for homosexual rights for men, women and non-binary people. She wrote:
“It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world
which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent
to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”
That was a remarkably contentious opinion a century ago, and we could even say that it still
is today. Goldman was accustomed to being this controversial: She was an atheist and a feminist;
she fought her whole life against the State and capitalism and she gave lectures about
all these things all across North America and Europe. She was even called the “most
dangerous woman in America” by no other than the FBI’s director: J. Edgar Hoover.
Her trailblazing ideas were even supported by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld who wrote:
“She was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American,
to take up the defence of homosexual love before the general public.”
Hirschfeld was also a staunch defender of homosexual rights and, in 1914,
he’d publish The Homosexuality of Men and Women.
7 years later, in 1921, the British Parliament tries to criminalize lesbianism. Surprisingly,
they failed and it wasn’t because it would be harmful to criminalize lesbians; after all,
homosexuality between men was already illegal: Oscar Wilde,
who spent 2 years in prison for being gay, was a famous victim of
that law. The reason why lesbianism wasn’t outlawed was because the policy-makers were
afraid that making such a law would publicize homosexuality and entice women to try it out.
It’s with this same mindset that, in 1928, the editor of the Sunday Express, James Douglas,
led a campaign against Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness. The book
was about a sexually inverted woman, sexual inversion being the term for homosexuality
at the time. The book wasn’t explicit aside from this very harmless passage:
“[...] she kissed her full on the lips, as a lover.”
This passage was deemed obscene. In the article A Book That Should be Suppressed, Douglas wrote:
“I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic
acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.”
The book was censored in the UK until 1959.
The reason why I’m giving you these facts about the politics of lesbianism in the
20th century is because, to understand the artwork we’ll be looking at in this video,
we really have to fathom how socially and morally condemned homosexuality was at that time.
Another passage in The Well of Loneliness goes as follows:
“[...] and that night, they were not divided.”
The theme of two women in love, fused together; refusing to be separated in
a world unbelievably hostile to their union, was also depicted in a painting made in 1936:
Medallion or, as its author called it, the YouWe picture.
Before jumping into this painting, I’d just like to specify that, from now on,
for the sake of simplicity, I will use the term queer as an umbrella term for non-heterosexual.
Every source I’ve encountered labelled the artist as a woman, which would make her relationships
with other women lesbian, but the painter often refused the label of woman during their life. For
that reason, I will use the gender-neutral pronouns they/them to refer to the artist.
So, as I said, the artist refused to be labelled a woman. When they’d send prints
of their paintings to advertise, they’d write in the back of them:
“Please return in good condition to Gluck, no prefix, suffix, or quotes.”
Gluck, born Hannah Gluckstein, was born in London in 1895 in an extremely wealthy
family. This financial comfort allowed them to pursue a career as a painter while being
independent from men, which, at that time, was an immense privilege. They would later
adopt the gender-neutral name Gluck, which officially became their artist’s signature,
but they also had different names to different people.
For example, to Romaine Brooks, their name would be Peter. Brooks was,
just like Gluck, a queer artist who’d wear male clothes and, between 1923 and 1924,
they’d paint a portrait of Gluck: Peter (A Young English Girl).
But, other than Gluck and Peter, they’d also go by the name Tim to Nesta Obermer. Near
the end of their life, Gluck stated that they had only truly fallen in love once,
with their beloved Nesta. Daughter of a diplomat, Nesta had married the wealthy
American businessman Seymour Obermer and lived an incredibly extravagant life; consisting of
mostly partying and travelling; hobbies which were enabled due to her husband’s great wealth.
When the two lovers met, both were already in relationships;
Nesta was married to her husband Seymour, while Gluck was in a relationship with the
florist Constance Spry who would greatly inspire the artist. Spry would quickly
get out of the picture though as Nesta would occupy Gluck’s mind. There is no way to better
demonstrate Gluck’s love than by reading an excerpt of one of their love letters:
“My own darling wife. I have just driven back in
a sudden almost tropical downpour in keeping with my feelings at leaving you – my divine sweetheart,
my love, my life. I felt so much I could hardly be said to feel at
all – almost numb and yet every nerve ready to jump into sudden life. I made
straight for the studio and tried to be busy and have more or less succeeded,
except that everything seems so utterly unimportant that isn’t us or connected with us.”
Gluck called Nesta their wife. To them, they were unofficially married and Gluck was the husband:
“Darling Heart, we are not an “affair” are we – We are husband and wife.”
This finally brings us to Gluck’s 1936 painting Medallion, or the YouWe picture.
It’s the profile of both Nesta, in the back and Gluck in the foreground. Nesta is looking up,
almost heroically. Her eyes catches light; light which gently falls on her face as if the heavens
were summoning her. Gluck, on the other hand, is looking straight ahead. The artist represents
themself encompassed by their lover; they are completely absorbed. Gluck doesn’t share the
same light features as Nesta and the pose isn’t as picturesque, but it definitely shows strength.
This picture was made after the couple went to see a Mozart concert on the 23rd of June 1936.
They were sitting in the 3rd row and, struck by the intensity of the music,
they felt like it had fused the lovers together. The couple was one.
This painting’s oneness was so apparent that, for a large part of its lifetime,
the YouWe picture was believed by many to be the representation of Gluck and an alter ego.
Aside from Gluck’s entourage, people didn’t assume that this depicted lovers. In fact,
as I stated earlier, queer relationships were invisible and rarely spoken of. The rare times
they did get some attention through, for example, a book; they’d get silenced. The love emanating
from this picture was only accessible to the public much later in this painting’s existence.
Unfortunately, the love story didn’t end very well. Gluck was never able to win Nesta’s heart
entirely. Nesta wouldn’t leave her husband and the extravagant life she was living with him. This,
therefore, made it impossible for the couple to live their lives together. In 1944,
the couple would break up. Just two years prior to the separation, in 1942,
Gluck painted this self-portrait. In it, many see the artist’s pain,
anger and perhaps a glimpse of sadness as they’re anticipating the lost of their one true love.
The YouWe picture is poignant; it’s the illustration of an
impossible love. On top of that, it depicts a queer relationship.
But this isn’t the first time such relationship had been depicted,
especially not during Gluck’s time.
We can go all the way back to around 500 BCE
to see this kind of relationship on a Greek ceramic vase made by Apollodoros.
Many Japanese woodblock prints would show lesbian relationships,
depicting them very explicitly; sometimes even showing them using sex toys.
In modern Europe, many artists chose lesbianism as a theme. For example,
the abrasive Gustave Courbet would paint two nude women embracing each other in Le Sommeil
made in 1866 for a wealthy Turkish patron. The painting would be forbidden from being
publicly exhibited until 1988, over a century after its making.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, in 1893, painted a series of artworks showing lesbian women
in bed. Franz von Bayros, an Austrian painter part of the Decadent movement,
published a very provocative series titled Tales at the Dressing Table in 1911. In it,
you see images of lesbian sexual intercourse, but also bestiality. And finally, of course,
there’s Egon Schiele who also portrayed the sensuality of two women embracing.
This brief overview of the depiction of queer relationships in art history
is very telling. Lesbianism, or queer relationships in general,
have more often than not been extremely sexualized throughout art history. This
eroticisation of lesbians is still, to this day, very widespread and problematic.
Gluck’s representation of a non-heterosexual relationship
differs from the ones made in the past and this is really how this painting, to me,
stands out. Gluck presented queer love as love, not as sexual perversion or depravity,
but for what it truly was to them, genuine and passionate love.
Thank you for watching! If you made it all the way to the end of this video,
maybe consider subscribing. And as always I’d like to thank Isaac and all of the Canvas’ patrons
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