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Art and homosexuality may seem like a strange combination, but both phenomena have been part of human history from the beginning of time, or at least from the beginning of recorded civilisation. Bringing together two large concepts – art and homosexuality – is nevertheless difficult and challenging. Both categories raise a host of conceptual problems and pose a series of unresolved nagging questions.

The primary question, “What is art and what purpose does it serve?”, has preoccupied humankind for centuries and has yet to find a definitive answer. There exists as many views and definitions about what art is (and is not) and its significance as there are individuals in the world. In the context of Gay Art, I am using the term “art” in a broad sense as human creation and communication within a visual field. Although the majority of the images here were produced in traditional media such as painting, sculpture, graphics, and photography, art would also include images and forms of production associated with, for example, popular culture, advertising, film, performance, conceptualism, or computer-generated imagery. Ultimately, it is up to the reader of this book to decide what to accept or reject as art.

Unlike “art,” the other term in this book’s title, “homosexuality,” can be defined more specifically. Homosexuality and its emotional aspects have existed in all cultures and in all time periods long before the invention of the term. It is and always has been one aspect of the very complex domain of human sexuality. The way homosexual love and sensibilities are visually expressed is often a reflection of the status of homosexuals themselves within their particular cultures. These images are an indication of either the degree of tolerance in those societies, or the sign of an increasingly restrictive prejudice fostered by traditions and religion.

Before 1869, the words “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” did not exist. The former was coined and first put into use by the German-Hungarian writer and translator Karl Maria Kertbeny (1824–82). He also invented the latter term in 1880. Kertbeny’s purpose for using the word “homosexuality” was in response to an article of the Prussian penal code that criminalised sexual relations between men. Kertbeny wanted the article omitted, but was unsuccessful. The code became part of Prussian law in 1871 and was upheld and then strengthened by the Nazis in 1935, and retained by West Germany until 1969 (Haggerty, p.451). Kertbeny had his own specific views on human sexuality. Although there may never have been a coherent theory of homosexuality for him, he did divide homosexuals into specific categories: those who are “active,” “passive,” and “Platonists,” or those who love the company of their own sex without wanting to have sex with them. The designation “homosexuality,” then, started out as a term of sympathy and political activism to change a repressive law. However, over the years the word evolved into a concept that came to describe an individual’s sexual preference. The word and its evolving concept took some time to enter into European languages and thought patterns.

In the 1880s, Kertbeny’s catchy new term attracted the attention of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a noted sexologist who used the word in his vastly popular 1886–87 Psychopathia Sexualis, a massive encyclopaedia of sexual deviance. It was through this and subsequent works by noted sexologists of the late nineteenth century that the term “homosexuality” acquired its medical and clinical connotations. Sexology refers to the study of human sexual behaviour before the codifications of modern psychology and psychoanalysis generated by the thoughts and writings of Sigmund Freud (see Gregory W. Bredbeck, “Sexology,” in Haggerty, p.794). It was not until the 1950s that “homosexuality” entered popular English and American usage, largely as a result of the Kinsey reports of 1948. Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) was an American sex researcher whose scientific data on human sexuality challenged the prevailing notion that homosexuality was a mental illness.

As a concept, “homosexuality” encompasses a variety of conflicting ideas about gender and same-sex sexual attraction. Its broad range of possible meanings is what makes it such an irresistible, powerful, and ambiguous term nowadays. In its modern sense, “homosexuality is at once a psychological condition, an erotic desire, and a sexual practice” (David Halperin, “Homosexuality,” in Haggerty, p.452). All three senses can and are expressed in artistic or aestheticised form. Homosexuality or, to employ a term of more recent invention, the “homoerotic,” can be understood as an actual or potential element in everyone’s experience, whatever the sexual orientation of the individual. The homosexual and the homoerotic frequently overlap but are not necessarily the same. Many of the images in this book might be classified as homoerotic rather than homosexual. “Homosexual” and “homoerotic” differ only in the root meanings of the terms “sexual” and “erotic”. Whereas “sexual” encompasses the physical act of sex, “erotic” is a concept that incorporates a range of ideas and feelings around same-sex wants, needs, and desires. It does not always culminate in the sexual act. The homoerotic, unlike the homosexual, legitimates erotic desire between members of the same sex by placing that sentiment in a context which rationalises it – such as in classicism, military battle, or athletic activities. Thus, in many situations the homoerotic is veiled and perceived as non-transgressive behaviour. Whereas all homosexuals experience homoerotic desire, not all who experience and, indeed, appreciate homoerotic desire are necessarily homosexuals. The homoerotic can sometimes be a frightening prospect for some heterosexuals to such a degree that it sometimes incites virulent homophobic responses. The “homoerotic” is also linked to the more recent idea of the “homosocial”. Male homosociality refers to all-male groups or environments, and is a means by which men construct their identities and consolidate their privilege and social power as males usually through and at the expense of women (see Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, New York, Columbia University Press, 1985). Indeed, female homosociality also exists, but the dynamics of it in relation to patriarchal culture are quite different.

Although male and female homosexuality are often treated separately, both are considered in this book. Throughout, the term “homosexuality” refers to male homosexuality unless “female” is specified. This is so because most societies are male-dominated and male-oriented, giving primacy to the sexual activities and development of men over women. In relationship to art about and by homosexual men, the “scarcity of art about or by lesbians reflects male domination of the cultural record” (Saslow, p.7). All of the art and literary evidence we have was the work of males and bear mostly on male activities.

The definition of homosexuality is further complicated by the differences between modern and pre-modern notions of the concept. There is considerable disagreement in contemporary literature on homosexuality over use of the word “homosexual” for same-sex relationships in non-Western, pre-modern and ancient periods. The word “homosexuality” is relatively young. Like the word “sexuality” itself, it describes a culturally determined and culturally constructed concept born of recent Western society. Thus, applying the concept “homosexuality” to history is bound to force modern and Western concepts of self and other onto the ancient and pre-modern world. In most pre-modern and ancient cultures, there is no word to denote a state of being homosexual or to describe a homosexual act.

02. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait or Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, 1493.

Oil on parchment mounted on canvas, 56.5 × 44.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

03. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Ecstasy of Saint Francis, c. 1594–1595.

Oil on canvas, 92.5 × 128 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (Connecticut).

Any attempt to fit male representations in ancient art or texts with the status or practices of modern-day homosexuals would be anachronistic. Also, the modern notion of “homosexuality” is loaded with a negative moral stigma that clouds any positive or pleasurable appreciation of male-male or female-female sexual culture in pre-modern societies. However, even though the ancients may not have had in mind the modern concept of “homosexual” and “homosexuality,” this does not negate the fact that homosexuality and indeed homophobia did exist.

In the modern West, homosexuality is often thought about in binary notions of sex and gender. The very notion of homosexuality in the West implies that same-sex feeling and expression, in all the many different sexual and erotic forms they take, constitute a single thing, an integrated phenomenon called ‘homosexuality’, which is distinct and separate from heterosexuality. However, in the ancient, pre-modern, and non-Western societies presented in this book, the sameness or difference of the sexes of the persons who engaged in a sexual act was less important than the extent to which sexual acts either violated or conformed to the rules of religion or to the norms of conduct or tradition deemed appropriate to an individual’s gender, age, and social status. For this reason, discourses of pederasty (from the Greek meaning “love of boys”) and sodomy (anal sex) as these related to class, age, and social status were more significant than the fact that the two partners were of the same sex. Concerns over the morality of homosexuality or sexual inversion are typical of modern rather than pre-modern approaches. What we call homosexual behaviour was not frowned upon, for example, in ancient Greece. However, there were strict social rules that governed such behaviour. In ancient Athens, a homosexual relationship between a teenage boy and a mature man was generally regarded as a positive phase of a young man’s educational and social development. Indeed, such relationships were celebrated in the various dialogues of Plato, in vase and wall paintings, and in lyric poetry. At a certain point in his development, however, the adolescent was expected to marry and father children. What was frowned upon in such intergenerational sexual relationships was passivity and eager compliance in anal copulation. It should be stressed, however, that for the ancient Greeks, there was no underlying moral, religious, or social basis for censuring the erotic relationship between males that conformed to the expected hierarchical arrangement involving an adult male and an adolescent boy.

Homosexuality in the art of the non-Western world operated along the same lines as in ancient Western cultures. However, it was due to territorial expansion and campaigns of conquest beginning in the sixteenth century that Westerners forged contacts with previously unknown peoples and cultures in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Arab world. The moral values of the West were soon imposed upon those who were conquered. Cultures that had celebrated homosexuality in their past art, rituals, and native traditions, were soon forced not only to abandon them, but to perceive them as evil and morally reprehensible (see Saslow, p.109–11).

04. Thomas Eakins, The Wrestlers, 1899.

Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

05. Gustav Klimt, Friends (detail), 1916–1917.

Oil on canvas. Destroyed in the Immendorf Castle fire in 1945.

The complex historical and social development of homosexuality in the Western world indicates that it is more than simply a conscious sexual and erotic same-sex preference. It has evolved into a new system of sexuality which functions as a means of defining the individual’s sexual orientation and a sexual identity. Homosexuality came to be associated with how individuals identify themselves. As such, it has “introduced a novel element into social organisation, into human difference, into the social production of desire, and ultimately into the social construction of the self.” (David Halperin, “Homosexuality,” in Haggerty, 454–55).

One significant aspect of the history of homosexuality is that of language and labelling. It was the change from the use of the word “homosexual” to “gay” that best exemplified the importance of the political dimensions of individuality and identity as important components in how homosexuals viewed themselves.

In the 1960s and 1970s, ‘gay’ replaced ‘homosexual’ as the word of choice because many gay activists felt that ‘homosexual’ was too clinical and associated with medical pathology. By the time of the Stonewall riots in 1969, ‘gay’ was the dominant term of expressing sexual identity for a group of younger, more overtly political homosexual activists. In contrast to ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’ was thought to express the growing political consciousness of the gay liberation movement. ‘Gay’, like ‘homosexual’ can refer to both men and women. However, some women have taken issue with their implied exclusion from the category ‘gay’ and have preferred the designation ‘lesbian’. This haggling over names and labels is a very significant part of the history of homosexuality. The ‘lesbian’ over ‘gay’ debate reveals that the relation between homosexual identity and gender identity has always been vexed. In this book, I refrain from using the word ‘gay’ until after 1969 and the rise in political awareness over these terms.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the use of the word ‘gay’ increased. Almost every political and social organisation that had anything to do with the gay liberation movement used the word ‘gay’, or a variation thereof, in their organisation’s title. In recent years, some members of the gay community have rejected the designation ‘gay’ in favour of ‘queer’ – a term of inclusivity that refers to all non-heterosexual persons and categories. [For a history of change in name designation from ‘homosexual’ to ‘queer’, see Haggerty, pp.362–63; for summary of the word ‘queer’, see Daniel F. Pigg, ‘Queer’, in Haggerty, pp.723–24]. The word ‘queer’ had existed and had been used as a term of ostracism and pathology against homosexual men since the 1910s. It was during the 1990s that ‘queer’ was appropriated by some gay men who wanted to set themselves apart from a gay culture that they believed had sold out to the status quo and had become accommodationist.

Now that I have familiarised the reader with certain definitions, terms, and concepts associated with homosexuality, some other important and difficult questions relevant specifically to homosexuality in art still remain. For instance, on what basis do we decide that a work of art is about homosexuality? For example, is an image of two male nudes or two female nudes standing in close proximity to one another about homosexuality? Is it necessary that works of art exhibit overt or explicit homosexual themes to be about homosexuality? Is it the subject matter or is it the sexual orientation or identity of the artist that is crucial to an understanding of his or her art? What is the role of the viewer in determining if a work of art has a homosexual theme? What is the significance and underlying ‘message’ of homosexuality in art across cultures and across centuries? Does homosexuality confer upon artists a different vision of the world, perhaps with its own sensibilities? Although these questions are important, it is unwise to seek a single definitive response to them, for homosexuality as both label and idea is much too diverse, complex and varied to be reduced to one answer. Homosexuality “crosses all borders and is included in a range of visual and physical objects that symbolise and communicate feelings and values” (Saslow, p.2). Homosexuality is a diverse concept that refers to a range of feelings and emotions. Its meaning will vary for different people at different times and in different cultures. What is clear is that homosexuality can not and should not be minimised or limited to sexual behaviour alone.

Although there are many images in this book of men and women engaged in explicit same-sex acts, it is not intended simply as a picture-book of sexual activities. Indeed, the complexity of homosexuality as a term and concept reveals that it is more than purely the physical sex act. Gay Art ventures beyond images of sex. It is simultaneously centred on the multitude of emotional and psychological feelings, needs, and desires between members of the same sex. As art historian James Saslow has noted, “homosexuality” is as ambiguous and flexible as the term “love” (Saslow, p.7). The images in this book expose some of the ways that these acts, feelings, needs, and desires are manifested visually.

Because of the breadth of cultures and art represented here as well as the cultural and social complexities associated with homosexuality as label and concept, Gay Art is only able to give a broad overview of homosexuality in visual culture and an impressionistic sweep of images across centuries and regions. It is not intended as a comprehensive written or visual text on the topic. However, even cursory treatment of the subject should interest anyone and everyone who cares to delve into the complicated and inextricably linked worlds of human sexuality and human creativity.

06. George Platt Lynes, Nicholas Magallanas andFrancisco Moncion in Poses from Orpheus, 1948.

Photograph. Ballet Society.

07. Euaion Painter, Erastes and a Young Musician, c. 460 BC.

Red figure dish. Musée du Louvre, Paris.