We good to go?
Fabulous.
There's this illustrator called George Quaintance, who
in the mid 1900s was churning out this
amazingly homoerotic work
for pulp magazines like Stolen Sweets
to Tempting Tales.
Playing with and subverting stereotypes
like gay cowboys
and idyllic classical figures.
Looking through this, by contrast,
you realise how rare it is to see such
expressions of queer joy in historical fine art.
Too often we dwell on the negatives
of history's LGBTQ+ artists,
dark stories, pain and repression.
We have like Keith Haring, who sadly died of AIDS,
Basquiat, who died of drug abuse.
Not just in the visual arts
but across different art forms.
But look closer and queer joy can be found,
sometimes explicit, but sometimes in the abstract.
Flowers, landscapes, colours and domestic scenes.
So how do we find and illuminate this work?
And why is it so important that we do?
OK, let's get stuck in.
Let's talk about queer joy.
If there's one recurrent theme in joyful queer art,
it's the subversion of stereotypes.
Let's start by talking about
the sailor.
The all-male societies of the sea,
were an enduring stereotype of gay masculinity,
the swagger and charm of these figures
in their dashing uniforms
can be seen in work from pop artists
like Tom of Finland
or the iconic outfits of the Village People,
to fine artists like Francis Cadell.
Sort of shirtless sailors wearing hats
like really, really camp.
But they both go deeper than stereotype.
Cadell here also showing a more
sensitive individual portrait
of a young sailor in an intimately observed study.
Meanwhile, Valentine Penrose used subversions of
gothic settings to explore celebrations of lesbian love.
Novels with a lot of lesbian themes in them, letters or
poems or snippets of dialogue
from one woman to another.
And they're all like full of love and loss.
Hiding queer narratives in fantastical settings.
Even the word queer is itself a subversion,
a way in which the gay, lesbian,
bi, trans and intersex communities
have reclaimed a derogatory phrase.
These kinds of subversions can be seen
from the mid-20th century onwards.
I thought that was a really catalytic moment.
Where are the artists and where are the activists and
how are those boundaries fudged there?
That was about people trying to fight back.
So the whole idea of like graphic impact -
Guerrilla Girls, Lesbian Avengers.
You're seeing these really playful, really joyful,
really fantastic interventions
into almost the frame of
popular culture, as well as the frame
of fine art representation.
So often, queer joy is about self-expression,
about playing with and taking ownership of
visuals and identity.
I guess it is you call it appropriation.
It is taking things and repurposing them.
Some of my favourite artists are those who do that,
people like Duchamp
or Warhol.
It's the subtle references that are there in people's
ways of presenting themselves to the world.
Equally, though, queer joy can be found
in simple representation
and everyday depictions.
Feeling accepted is the biggest part of it.
Being in control of yourself and not
being under the spotlight in any way.
Artists like Hockney, for example,
spoke about their work,
more about the authenticity,
having an identity and living an identity,
and that having elements of joy is part of it.
Hockney describes his work as
"propaganda for queer love",
but often his paintings take the form of
more domestic everyday scenes,
like his portrait of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
simmering with sexual tension and allusions.
At other times, queer love can be shown
in even less direct ways.
I wouldn't normally be stopped in my tracks by
a portrait of a vase of flowers,
but Gluck's flower paintings and
the story behind those of her relationship
with the florist, Constance Spry,
draws me towards those paintings.
Gluck was a pipe smoking, gender rejecting painter
from the early 1900s who painted coded still lifes
to express the joy of her four year relationship
with a female florist.
I remember going to an exhibition of Gluck's work,
and I couldn't get enough.
I didn't want to leave that room just for the reason that
that art for me had so many stories and layers to it.
Of course, today's artists can afford to be more overt
in depictions of queerness.
Front and centre of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
is Roxana Hall's Portrait of Horse McDonald,
a truly collaborative piece.
This is the part of me I never see.
This is what other people see when I sing.
It's the joy, the excitement, the passion
that comes from inside me, and I've never seen it.
Again queer joy here comes from a place of defiance,
of darkness.
Starting off, it all comes from me
voicing stuff from inside,
which comes from years and years ago of growing up
and being chased by people,
being shouted at, being spat on for being gay.
I was kind of demonstrating my insides, my emotions.
In contemporary art, joyful defiance often comes
from increasing visibility of and
celebrating marginalised subcultures and people.
Anything that is not
societal norm worthy heteronormative,
that's what I would say is the queer.
In looking at the work of Tessa Boffin,
seeing the work of somebody like Olivia Plender,
whose work you can see, there's a beautiful,
joyful sense there of people surviving, people thriving.
Like a queer reading of Raqib Shaw's
erotically charged work,
which depicts fantastical, hedonistic worlds
often populated by mythical creatures.
Increasing the amount of joyous, outwardly queer art
on gallery walls
has a huge effect on individuals, audiences and artists,
because representing queer joy
in the world of art is one step
in increasing queer joy in the world that we live in.
For any minority to see yourself depicted in culture
is so important
and it makes you feel like you exist
and that you matter.
It's imperative that we see people like ourselves
because those things sustain us.
I think it's showing like a full range of emotion.
A broader range of of artists and sitters
gives us a broader range of stories to tell.