The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts

The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts

Claude J. Summers

Editor

Copyright © 2004 by glbtq, Inc.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc.,

P.O. Box 14684, San Francisco, California 94114.

Printed in the United States.

Cover design: Scott Idleman

Cover photograph: Photograph of Andy Warhol by Ed Kashi / CORBIS

© 2004 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Book design: Karen Quigg

Cleis Press logo art: Juana Alicia

First Edition.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Archives, libraries, service bureaus, and individuals have been indispensable in providing access to the images that illustrate The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts. These organizations and individuals deserve particular thanks. Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft, Berlin for providing access to the image on page 58. J. Peter Benet for creating and granting permission to use the image on page 283. Cleis Press for providing and granting permission to use the image on page 266. Clipart.com for providing access to its copyrighted material (Copyright © 2003-2004 Clipart.com) and granting permission to use the images on pages 51, 60, 150, 161, 170, 224, 291, and 297. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division for providing access to and duplicating the images on pages 39, 66, 143, 167, 177, 194, 197, 198, 207 (lower left), 215, 227, 289, 330, 330, 341, and 347. McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University for providing access to the images on pages 46, 48, 49, 102, and 245. The Naval Historical Foundation for access to and duplication of the image on page 320. Northwestern University Library for providing access to the wealth of material contained in its open stacks. Northwestern University Library Art Collection for access to the images on pages 1, 3, 57, 65, 71, 95, 108, 122, 124, 129, 130, 144 (top right and bottom left), 169, 195, 207 (upper right), 212, 219, 230, 243, 263, 279, 286, 291, 292, 301, 303, 306, 318, and 322.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

The queer encyclopedia of the visual arts / Claude J. Summers, editor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-57344-191-0 (pbk.)

1. Homosexuality and art—Encyclopedias. 2. Art—Encyclopedias.

I. Summers, Claude J.

N72.H64Q44 2004

704'.08664'03—dc22

2004004263

eISBN: 978-1-57344-874-1

For Ted, again;

and for Wik, the onlie begetter;

and for Linda Rapp, Robert Herndon, and Tim Flemming

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A collaborative project of the scope of The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts necessarily depends on the kindness and cooperation of numerous individuals, including especially the authors of the articles.

I owe most to Andrew Wik Wikholm, President of glbtq, Inc., whose vision and commitment and enthusiasm have made this book possible. Ted-Larry Pebworth has been a supportive partner and collaborator in many ways beyond the indexing and copyediting skills that he has deployed in this project. Linda Rapp, friend and assistant, has generously contributed her time, energy, and expertise.

I am grateful to all those who offered advice and made suggestions, especially as to topics and contributors. Tee Corinne, Patricia Simons, and Patricia Juliana Smith have been especially helpful as members of the www.glbtq.com advisory board. Michael Tanimura, production manager at glbtq, discovered a number of inconsistencies and errors and knew how to correct them. Betsy Greco, glbtq project administrator, has been unfailingly efficient and cheerful.

Work on this project has been sustained by the support of numerous friends, including Diana and Peter Benet, Helen Brooks, Neil Flax, John Edward and Willene Hardy, Raymond Frontain, Robert Herndon and Tim Flemming, George Koschel, and Gary and Mary Ann Stringer.

Finally, we are also grateful to the following: Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft, Berlin; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University; National Archives and Records Administration; Northwestern University Library Art Collection.

Introduction

THE QUEER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE VISUAL ARTS surveys and introduces a remarkable cultural achievement, one that includes both the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people to the visual arts and their representation in the visual arts. That is, this work is interested in glbtq individuals not only as makers of art, but also as subjects and objects of art.

Presenting nearly 200 articles on individuals, artistic movements, periods, nations, and topics such as AIDS activism and censorship, The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts offers a revisionist art history, one that places the achievements of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer artists in historical contexts and that privileges the representation of subjects that have traditionally been censored or marginalized.

Celebrating the richness and variety of queer contributions to the visual arts, this book presents that achievement as a significant cultural legacy. This legacy includes accomplishments as diverse as the homoerotic images on Greek vase paintings and the sometimes graphic depictions in ancient Indian temple sculpture; the works of Michelangelo and Caravaggio; the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo and the screaming popes of Francis Bacon; the architecture of Julia Morgan and Philip Johnson; the photography of Claude Cahun, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Tee Corinne; the Pop Art of Andy Warhol and the narrative paintings of George Dureau; and the contemporary art of Bhupen Khakhar, David Hockney, Félix González-Torres, and Janet Cooling. It encompasses the religious expressions of El Greco and the pornographic fantasies of Tom of Finland, no less than the naturalism of Winslow Homer, the Art Deco nudes of Tamara de Lempicka, and the anthropomorphic graffiti drawings of Keith Haring.

The queer presence in the visual arts is so various and pervasive that it resists neat summary. Indeed, it is an

integral part of humanity’s artistic expression, and as diverse as humanity itself. It can scarcely be divorced from mainstream art, for so many of the world’s most prominent artists have in fact been of alternate sexualities. Yet there is real value in seeing queer art in its own terms as an expression of a queer artistic impulse and as a documentation of queer experience.

Queer art has so often been denigrated, suppressed, or robbed of its specificity and roots in efforts to render it universal that it has very infrequently been seen whole and in the contexts that gave it life. The aim of The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts is to help remedy the effects of an old but still active, homophobic project of exclusion and denial, by in fact presenting queer art whole and in the multiple contexts that helped shape it. Doing so yields new insight into the creation of art and increases our understanding of a wide range of artistic achievements.

Recovering and Reclaiming Our Artistic Heritage

Recovering our cultural heritage is a crucially important endeavor for everyone, but it is especially significant for gay men, lesbians, and others who have grown up in families and societies in which their sexual identities have been ignored, concealed, or condemned. They often come to a realization of their difference with little or no understanding of alternate sexualities beyond the negative stereotypes that pervade contemporary society, and they usually feel isolated and frightened at the very time they most need reassurance and encouragement.

Not surprisingly, a staple of the gay and lesbian coming out story is the trip to the local library, where the young homosexual, desperate for the most basic information, is usually utterly confused or bitterly disappointed by what he or she discovers, for even now our society does not make it easy for young people to find accurate information about alternate sexualities. Only later is the radical loneliness of young people who have accepted their sexual identity assuaged by the discovery of a large and varied cultural heritage, one that speaks directly to the experience of contemporary men and women in the West but that also reflects other forms of same-sex love and desire in different times and places.

This volume is at once a documentation and reclamation of that cultural legacy and also a contribution to it. It participates in a long endeavor by queer men and women to recover a social and cultural history that has frequently been deliberately distorted and censored.

For centuries, educated and literate homosexuals living in eras that condemned homosexuality have looked to other ages and other societies in order to find cultural permission for homosexual behavior, to experience some relief from the incessant attacks on their self-esteem, and to penetrate the barriers of censorship that precluded open discussion of the love that dared not speak its name. Such attempts range from the ubiquitous lists of famous homosexuals in history to more elaborate and sophisticated historical research, such as that of Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century and of Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as the recurrent attempts by gay and lesbian artists and writers to discover traditions and languages through which to express themselves.

Too often, however, attempts to document the gay and lesbian cultural legacy paid little attention to historical differences and tended to make few distinctions between different kinds of homosexualities, equating the emergent homosexual of the nineteenth century with the ancient Greek pederast, the medieval sodomite, and the Native North American berdache, for example, as though all four phenomena were merely minor variations on the same pattern.

The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts is motivated by the same impulse to understand the past and to recover the (often suppressed or disguised) artistic expressions of same-sex love that propelled earlier projects. But as the beneficiary of a more open climate and a recent explosion of knowledge about homosexuality in history, it is in a far better position than they were to discover a usable past. The new understanding of sexuality in history and culture that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s has in fact enabled this particular enterprise. Without the gay, lesbian, and queer studies movement, this volume would not have been possible.

Gay, Lesbian, Queer Studies Movement

In entering the academic mainstream, gay, lesbian, and queer studies have enlarged our understanding of the meaning of sexual identities, both in our own culture and in other times and places. They have challenged naive, uninformed, and prejudiced views, and, perhaps most important, have discovered and recovered significant artifacts and neglected artists.

Queer studies in the visual arts have also reclaimed established and celebrated artists, revealing the pertinence and centrality of (frequently disguised or previously misinterpreted) same-sex relationships and queer experience to understanding canonical works. They have viewed celebrated achievements through a queer lens, in the process discovering aspects of the world’s artistic heritage that either had not been noticed or had been suppressed.

But although gay, lesbian, and queer studies have enriched the academic study of history and art, they still tend to be ghettoized in elite universities, often in women’s studies programs that are themselves frequently isolated. Meanwhile, standard art histories continue all too often to omit or discount gay and lesbian representations, fail to supply relevant biographical information about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender artists, and foster the grievously mistaken impression that the world’s artistic traditions are almost exclusively heterosexual.

The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts aims to redress these deficiencies. It seeks to place portrayals of same-sex desire in historical context, to provide accurate biographical information about artists who have contributed to queer artistic traditions, and to explore important questions about the presence of homoeroticism in the world’s artistic legacy.

How does the homosexuality of an artist affect his or her work even when that work has nothing specifically to do with homosexuality? How does one decipher the coding of artworks in which the homosexual import is disguised? Is there such a thing as a gay sensibility? Are some artistic movements more amenable to homoeroticism than others? Is there an iconography of queer art? Why is St. Sebastian an icon of gay male artists? These are some of the questions asked and variously answered in this book.

Theoretical Issues

The study of the representation of alternate sexualities in art must inevitably confront a variety of vexed issues, including basic conceptual questions of definition and identity. Who, exactly, is a homosexual? What constitutes sexual identity? To what extent is sexuality the product of broadly defined social forces? To what degree do sexual object-choices manifest a biological or psychological essence within the desiring individual? These questions not only are problematic for the historical study of homosexuality and of queer art, but also reflect current controversies about contemporary and historical sexual roles and categories, and they resist glib answers.

Although contemporary North Americans and western Europeans typically think in terms of a dichotomy between homosexuality and heterosexuality, and between the homosexual and the heterosexual, with vague compartments for bisexuality and bisexuals, such a conception is a historically contingent cultural construct, more revealing of our own age’s sexual ideology than of actual erotic practices even today. The range of human sexual response is considerably less restricted than these artifi-cial classifications suggest, and different ages and cultures have interpreted (and regulated) sexual behavior differently.

Because human sexual behavior and emotions are fluid and various rather than static or exclusive, the sex-ologist Alfred Kinsey and others have argued that the terms homosexual and heterosexual should more properly be used as adjectives rather than nouns, referring to acts and emotions but not to people. Moreover, the conception of homosexuality and heterosexuality as essential and exclusive categories has historically operated as a form of social control, defining the person who responds erotically to individuals of his or her own sex as the Other, or, more particularly, as queer or unnatural. But though it may be tempting to conclude that there are no such entities as homosexuals or heterosexuals or bisexuals, this view, which so attractively stresses the commonality of human beings and minimizes the significance of sexual object-choices, poses its own dangers. Human sexuality is simply not as plastic as some theorists assert, and to deny the existence of homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals—or the pertinence of such categories—is to deny the genuineness of the personal identities and forms of erotic life that exist today. It is, indeed, to engage in a process of denial and erasure, rendering invisible a group that has had to struggle for recognition and visibility.

For most people, sexual orientation is not merely a matter of choice or preference but a classification that reflects a deep-seated internal, as well as social, reality. However arbitrary, subjective, inexact, and culture-bound the labels may be, they are impossible to escape and they affect individuals—especially those in the minority categories—in profound and manifold ways.

The most painful and destructive injustice visited upon people of alternative sexuality has been their separation from the normal and the natural, their stigmatization as queer. Yet the internalization of this stigma has also been their greatest strength and, indeed, the core of their identity in societies that regularly assign individuals to ostensibly exclusive categories of sexual desire. The consciousness of difference both spurred and made possible the recent creation of a homosexual minority—a gay and lesbian community—in the Western democracies, a process that involved transforming the conception of

homosexuality from a social problem and personal failing to an individual and collective identity.

Quite apart from the fact that it facilitates identity politics, however, an acceptance of otherness, whether defined as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or the umbrella term queer, is also often personally empowering. Fostering qualities of introspection and encouraging social analysis, it enables people who feel excluded from some of the core assumptions and rituals of their society to evaluate themselves and their society from an ambiguous and often revealing perspective.

Homoerotic desire and behavior have been documented in every conceivable kind of society. What varies is the meanings that they are accorded from era to era and place to place. In some societies, homosexuality is tolerated and even institutionalized, whereas in others it is vilified and persecuted. In every society, there are undoubtedly individuals who are predominantly attracted to members of their own sex or who do not conform easily to gender expectations, but the extent to which that sexual attraction or gender nonconformity functions as a defining characteristic of these individuals’ personal and social identities varies considerably from culture to culture.

Thus, any transhistorical and transcultural exploration of the queer artistic heritage must guard against the risk of anachronism, of inappropriately imposing contemporary culture-bound conceptions of homosexuality on earlier ages and different societies. Sexual categories are always historically and culturally specific rather than universal and invariant.

On the other hand, however, the recognition of cultural specificity in regard to sexual attitudes need not estrange the past or obscure connections and continuities between historical periods and between sexual ideologies. For instance, modern North American and western European male homosexuality, which is predominantly androphiliac (that is, between adults), egalitarian, and socially disdained, is in many crucial respects quite different from ancient Greek male homosexuality, which was predominantly—though by no means exclusively—pederastic, assymetrical in power, and socially valorized; but awareness of those differences does not obviate the similarities that link the two distinct historical constructs.

Neither does the acknowledgment of the distinctions between ancient Greek homosexuality and modern homosexuality entail the dismissal of the enormous influence that classical Greek attitudes toward same-sex love exerted on the formation of modern Western attitudes toward homosexuality. For many individuals in the early modern and modern eras, ancient Greek literature, philosophy, and art helped counter the negative attitudes toward same-sex eroticism fostered by Christian culture. Ancient Greek literature and art have provided readers, writers, and artists of subsequent centuries a pantheon of heroes, a catalog of images, and a set of references by which same-sex desire could be encoded into their own representations and through which they could interpret their own experiences.

Nor should our sensitivity to the cultural specificity of sexual attitudes cause us to rob individual artists of individual perspectives or to condescend toward the past. All artists exist in relation to their time and must necessarily create from within their worldviews, or, as philosopher Michel Foucault would say, the epistemes of their ages. But the fact that artists are embedded in their cultures does not mean that they lack agency and individuality.

Artists tend to be more independent than their contemporaries, not less; and although they may express the tendencies and suppositions of their societies, they also frequently challenge them, even if those challenges are themselves facilitated and contained by societal beliefs. Hence, it is a mistake to assume that artists of earlier ages, before the general emergence of a modern homosexual identity, could not share important aspects of that consciousness, including a subjective awareness of difference and a sense of alienation from society. One of the rewards of studying the queer artistic heritage is, in fact, the discovery of a queer subjectivity in the past and of

the affinities as well as differences between earlier and later homosexualities.

A Beginning, Not an End

For all its considerable heft, The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts has no pretensions to comprehensiveness. There are some notable omissions of topics and artists, due variously to lack of space, an absence of available information and research, or a difficulty in finding qualified contributors. Moreover, The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts is undoubtedly biased in favor of European and American artistic traditions, even as it also provides a great deal of information about other traditions and cultures.

The point that needs emphasis, however, is that as the first comprehensive work of its kind, this encyclopedia is an important beginning, not an end. It introduces readers to a wealth of artistic achievement, making accessible the fruits of the intense study that has recently been focused on queer culture. It aspires to be a valuable companion to readers interested in the artistic representation of alternate sexualities from ancient times to the present.

Claude J. Summers

January 2004

How to Use The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts

SIR FRANCIS BACON DIVIDED BOOKS INTO THREE TYPES. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but cursorily; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. This book aspires to all three categories.

We certainly believe that The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts is inviting and rewarding enough to entice readers into diligent and attentive study. At the same time, however, we hope that the book will also invite browsers, who will dip into it repeatedly over time for pleasure and enlightenment. In addition, we hope that it will also serve as a valuable reference tool for readers who need to find particular information quickly.

The essays in the Encyclopedia are presented alphabetically, an arrangement that should encourage browsing. They are generally of three types: overviews of national or ethnic art or art historical periods, essays on topics or movements of particular significance for the queer visual arts, and essays on individual artists important to the queer arts heritage. The A-to-Z List of Entries provides a convenient, alphabetical guide to the entries.

The overviews of art historical periods or national art sometimes comprise several essays. For example, the entry on European Art includes distinct essays on the following periods: Medieval, Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Eighteenth Century, Neoclassicism, Nineteenth Century, and Twentieth Century. Similarly, the survey of American Art includes multiple essays, American Art: Gay Male, Nineteenth Century; American Art: Lesbian, Nineteenth Century; American Art: Gay Male, 1900– 1969; American Art: Lesbian, 1900–1969"; American

Art: Gay Male, Post-Stonewall; and American Art: Lesbian, Post-Stonewall. Under the rubric Subjects of the Visual Arts, there are twenty-three distinct essays on subjects ranging from Androgyny to Vampires.

The entries on individual artists are also diverse, varying from succinct accounts to in-depth critical analyses of major figures such as Caravaggio or Michelangelo. The most important criterion in determining whether an artist was assigned an entry is his or her contribution to the queer visual arts. The lack of an individual entry for an artist does not, however, mean that the author is not significant to the glbtq heritage or is not discussed in the volume. For example, there are no entries for Frederic Leighton or Gustave Moreau, but both can be found in the volume. Discussions of artists who are not accorded individual author entries can most conveniently be found via the Index of Names.

The frequent cross-references should be helpful for readers interested in related topics or in finding further discussions of particular artists. At the end of nearly all the articles, readers are urged to see also other entries. Each article is followed by a brief bibliography. With some exceptions, the bibliographies emphasize secondary rather than primary material, pointing the reader to other studies of the topic or artist.

Finally, the volume’s two indexes should be of help in maneuvering through this large collection. The Topical Index conveniently groups entries that are related to each other in various ways, including the nationality of artists. The Index of Names should be especially valuable in enabling readers to discover discussions of individual artists, some of whom are discussed in several entries in addition to—or in lieu of—their own entries.

A-to-Z List of Entries

Abbéma, Louise

Abbott, Berenice

African Art

African Art: Contemporary

African Art: Traditional

African American and African Diaspora Art

AIDS Activism in the Arts

American Art

American Art: Gay Male, 1900–1969

American Art: Gay Male, Nineteenth Century

American Art: Gay Male, Post-Stonewall

American Art: Lesbian, 1900–1969

American Art: Lesbian, Nineteenth Century

American Art: Lesbian, Post-Stonewall

Angus, Patrick

Architecture

Arts and Crafts Movement

Austen, Alice

Australian Art

Bachardy, Don

Bacon, Francis

Barthé, James Richmond

Bazille, Jean-Frédéric

Beardsley, Aubrey

Beaton, Cecil

Bernhard, RuthBiren, Joan Elizabeth (JEB)

Bleckner, Ross.

Blunt, Anthony

Bonheur, Rosa.

Breker, Arno

Bronzino, Agnolo

Brooks, Romaine

Cadmus, Paul

Cahun, Claude

Canadian Art

Caravaggio

Carrington, Dora

Cellini, Benvenuto

Censorship in the Arts

Chicago, Judy

Classical Art

Contemporary Art

Cooling, Janet

Corinne, Tee

Day, F. Holland

Demuth, Charles

Dobell, Sir William

Donatello

Duchamp, Marcel

Duquesnoy, Jérôme

Dureau, George

Dürer, Albrecht

Eakins, Thomas

Edison, Laurie Toby

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)

Elbe, Lili

Erotic and Pornographic Art

Erotic and Pornographic Art: Gay Male

Erotic and Pornographic Art: Lesbian

European Art

European Art: Baroque

European Art: Eighteenth Century

European Art: Mannerism

European Art: Medieval

European Art: Neoclassicism .

European Art: Nineteenth Century

European Art: Renaissance

European Art: Twentieth Century

Fani-Kayode, Rotimi

Fini, Léonor

Flandrin, Hippolyte

French, Jared

Friend, Donald

Fuseli, Henry

Géricault, Théodore

Gilbert & George

Girodet-Trioson, Anne-Louis

Gleeson, James

Gloeden, Baron Wilhelm von

Gluck (Hannah Gluckenstein)

Gonzáles-Torres, Félix

Goodsir, Agnes Noyes

Grace, Della (Del LaGrace Volcano)

Grant, Duncan

Gray, Eileen

Hammond, Harmony Lynn

Haring, Keith

Hartley, Marsden

Hepworth, Dorothy, and Patricia Preece

Höch, Hannah

Hockney, David

Hodgkins, Frances

Homer, Winslow

Homomonument

Hosmer, Harriet Goodhue

Indian Art

Islamic Art

Israel, Franklin D.

Japanese Art

Johns, Jasper

Johnson, Philip .

Kahlo, Frida

Khakhar, Bhupen

Klumpke, Anna Elizabeth

Latin American Art

Latina/Latino American Art

Laurençin, Marie

Leibovitz, Annie

Lempicka, Tamara de

Leonardo da Vinci

Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation

Lewis, Mary Edmonia

Leyendecker, Joseph C.

Ligon, Glenn

List, Herbert

Lukacs, Attila Richard

Lynes, George Platt

Mammen, Jeanne

Mapplethorpe, Robert

Marées, Hans von

Meurent, Victorine

Michals, Duane

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Minton, John

Morgan, Julia

Native American Art

New Zealand Art

Ocaña, José Pérez

Pacific Art

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)

Parsons, Betty

Percier, Charles, and Pierre Fontaine

Photography

Photography: Gay Male, Post-Stonewall

Photography: Gay Male, Pre-Stonewall

Photography: Lesbian, Post-Stonewall

Photography: Lesbian, Pre-Stonewall

Pierre et Gilles

Pisis, Filippo Tibertelli De

Pontormo, Jacopo

Pop Art

Pulp Paperbacks and Their Covers

Raffalovich, Marc André

Rainbow FlagRauschenberg, Robert

Ricketts, Charles, and Charles Shannon

Ritts, Herb

Rudolph, Paul

Salons

Sargent, John Singer

Schwules Museum (Gay Museum)

Segal, George

Sipprell, Clara Estelle

Sodoma, Il (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi)

Solomon, Simeon

Stebbins, Emma

Subjects of the Visual Arts

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Androgyny

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Bathing Scenes

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Bicycles

Subjects of the Visual Arts: David and Jonathan

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Diana

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Dildos

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Dionysus

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Endymion

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Ganymede

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Harmodius and Aristogeiton

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Hercules

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Hermaphrodites

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Narcissus

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Nude Females

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Nude Males

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Orpheus

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Priapus

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Prostitution

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Psyche

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Sailors and Soldiers

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Sappho

Subjects of the Visual Arts: St. Sebastian

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Vampires

Surrealism

Symbolists

Tchelitchew, Pavel

Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen)

Tress, Arthur

Tsarouchis, Yannis

Tuke, Henry Scott

Vaughan, Keith

Video Art

Walker, Dame Ethel

Warhol, Andy

Weber, Bruce

White, Minor

Whitney, Anne

Wojnarowicz, David

Wolfe, Elsie de

Wood, Thelma Ellen

Zenil, Nahum B

a

Abbéma, Louise (1858–1927)

A PAINTER IN THE IMPRESSIONIST STYLE, AS WELL AS AN engraver, sculptor, and writer, Louise Abbéma was one of the most successful women artists of her day. Her media were etching, pastel, and particularly watercolor; as a writer, she collaborated with the journals Gazette des Beaux-Arts and L’Art. She is best remembered for her portraits and genre scenes, and for her relationship with Sarah Bernhardt, but Abbéma also painted flowers again and again. They appear throughout her oeuvre— women hold them in bunches, they fill vases, and they are the subjects of her still lifes.

Abbéma was born in Etampes, France, the great-granddaughter of actress Mlle Contat and Comte Louis de Narbonne. Through her aristocratic family, she had an early introduction to the arts. Tellingly, however, in 1903, Abbéma wrote that it was lesbian painter Rosa Bonheur who …decided me to become an artist.

Abbéma began studying art at an early age. By twelve she had begun to paint, making genre scenes of her hometown. In 1873 she went to Paris to study with painter Charles Chaplin and the following year with Carolus- Duran. At this time it was still somewhat unusual for women to be accepted in the art academies. She later studied with Jean-Jacques Henner.

In 1876, at age 18, Abbéma painted a portrait of her good friend, the lesbian actress Sarah Bernhardt, whom she met five years earlier. The portrait was exhibited at the Paris Salon des Artistes Français of 1876 (at Carolus-

Duran’s suggestion, she had begun showing work in the Salon the previous year). Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt was an immediate success for the young painter, and Abbéma became Bernhardt’s official portraitist.

Soon after this success, Abbéma made a bronze medallion of Bernhardt (the only known sculpture by her), which she exhibited at the Salon in 1878. In turn, Bernhardt, herself a sometime sculptor, exhibited a marble bust of Abbéma at the same Salon. Abbéma later made drawings after both sculptures. Abbéma and Bernhardt maintained a close friendship throughout their lives.

A self portrait by Louise Abbéma.

Abbéma’s long relationship with Bernhardt, coupled with the fact that she never married, has been the basis for the widespread assumption that she was a lesbian. In addition to painting Bernhardt, Abbéma also

In addition to painting Bernhardt, Abbéma also made portraits of her instructor Carolus-Duran; Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opéra; and Ferdinand de Lesseps, among many others. One of her most esteemed works is the painting Déjeuner dans la serre (owned by the Museum of Pay, France), which may most fully declare her affinities with the Impressionists.

Like many artists, Abbéma enhanced her reputation by regularly exhibiting at the Salon. She received an honorable mention from the Salon in 1881 and continued to show there until 1926. An artist of international reputation, she also exhibited work in the Women’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Among Abbéma’s surviving works are mural sketches

Among Abbéma’s surviving works are mural sketches she made for the Columbian Exposition and large decorative panels for the Town Halls of Paris and the 7th, 10th, and 20th arrondissements; the Hôtel de Ville; the Musée de l’Armée; the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt; and the French National Horticultural Society. Her international work includes decorative panels for the Palace of the Governor of Dakar in Senegal, Africa.

In 1900, Abbéma exhibited work at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and was awarded a bronze medal. She was nominated as official painter of the Third Republic, and in 1906 she was awarded the Cross of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Abbéma died in 1927, aged sixty-nine, having had a long and successful career.

— Carla Williams

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs dessinateurs et graveurs. Vol. 1. Paris: Librairie Grund, 1976.

Fusco, Peter, and H.W. Janson, eds. The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth Century Sculpture from North American Collections. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with George Braziller, 1980.

Garfinkle, Charlene G. Louise Abbema and the Transatlantic Nature of Her Columbian Exposition Mural Sketches. Lecture, Ohio State University, 1999.

www.comenosfinearts.com/european/abbema_bio.htm

SEE ALSO

European Art: Nineteenth Century; Bonheur, Rosa

Abbott, Berenice (1898–1991)

ACCOMPLISHED AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER BERENICE Abbott may be best known for her photographs of New York City’s changing cityscape, but she also made memorable images of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men in Paris in the 1920s and in New York from the 1930s through 1965.

Born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, Abbott briefly attended Ohio State University before moving to New York City in 1918. In New York, she lived in a semi-communal Greenwich Village apartment shared by Djuna Barnes and others. Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp were part of her social circle.

In 1921, Abbott moved to Europe, where she studied sculpture in Paris and Berlin. Among her lovers in Paris were artists’ model Tylia Perlmutter and sculptress and silverpoint artist Thelma Wood. In Paris, between 1923 and 1925, she studied photography while working as Man Ray’s assistant. In 1926, she opened her own portrait studio and had a successful one-person exhibition. Two years later, she showed photographs at the Salon des Indépendants.

During Abbott’s Paris years, she photographed many figures from the worlds of literature and the arts, including James Joyce, Foujita, Coco Chanel, and Max Ernst. However, her most significant contribution to queer history and aesthetics are her vivid portraits of lesbians and bisexuals. Among these are the younger expatriate lesbian writers Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Janet Flanner and Flanner’s lover Solita Solano, as well as the artist Gwen Le Gallienne, with whom she frequented gay bars.

Another of Abbott’s most memorable images is that of a masculine-appearing Thelma Wood, made after she and Abbott were no longer lovers. Abbott also photographed Wood’s new love, Djuna Barnes, whose affair with Wood was the inspiration for the novel Nightwood (1936). Unlike her image of Wood, Abbott’s photograph of her lover, Tylia Perlmutter, is delicate and dreamy.

Abbott also photographed the French bookstore owner Adrienne Monnier, Sylvia Beach’s lover; the wealthy Violette Murat (Princess Eugène Murat); and artist Marie Laurençin, a bisexual who may have had an affair with Murat. Abbott made images as well of such gay or bisexual men as André Gide, Robert McAlmon, and the flamboyant Jean Cocteau. Abbott’s bisexual Paris clients also included painters Margaret Sargent and Betty Parsons (later of the Betty Parsons Gallery in Manhattan) and architect/designer Eileen Gray.

Returning to New York City in 1929, Abbott photographed the rapidly changing city. She also photographed U.S. Highway 1 from Maine to Florida and created images to illustrate the laws and processes of physics. But she also continued making images of lesbian and bisexual women. In particular, she photographed such subjects as poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harlem Renaissance art patron A’Lelia Walker, and actress/director Eva Le Gallienne, Gwen’s stepsister.

A photomural by Berenice Abbott.

In New York, Abbott formed an alliance with critic Elizabeth McCausland, which lasted from the early 1930s until McCausland’s death in 1965. Abbott’s portraits of McCausland confirm the aptness of the nickname she gave her lover, Butchy. McCausland wrote early essays about Abbott’s work.

Having almost flaunted her love of women early in her life, Abbott later obscured and even lied about her lesbianism, distancing and closeting herself as thoroughly as possible. In 1968, she moved permanently to Maine.

Had her lovers been male and her lesbian and bisexual subjects been heterosexual, Abbott’s work—given its quality and the accomplishments of her subjects— would have achieved earlier and greater recognition. Still, her work brought her fame and financial security. Her images of blatantly lesbian-appearing women, such as Jane Heap, for example, have been exhibited in art galleries and museums for decades. As the story of her life and the lives of her subjects become better known, her role in creating memorable images of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people finds greater appreciation.

— Tee A. Corinne

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbott, Berenice. Berenice Abbott Photographs. New York: Horizon Press, 1970. Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Mitchell, Margaretta K. Recollections: Ten Women of Photography. New York: Viking, 1979.

O’Neal, Hank. Berenice Abbott: American Photographer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982.

Peters, Susan Dodge. Elizabeth McCausland On Photography. Afterimage 12.10 (1985): 10–15.

SEE ALSO

Photography: Lesbian, Pre-Stonewall; Gray, Eileen; Parsons, Betty; Wood, Thelma Ellen

African Art: Contemporary

Black Africans typically shun members of their communities who are openly gay because they believe Westerners imposed homosexual behavior on their indigenous cultures. Consequently, and unfortunately, intolerance of homosexuality in Africa is frequently urged as an active moral and developmental good, and seen as part of the struggle of African nationalism against Western imperialism. In this difficult climate, only a few openly gay black African artists produce work with homosexual themes.

Bulelwa Madekurozwa

One such artist is the painter Bulelwa Madekurozwa (b. 1972), who lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe. While studying in Harare in the early 1990s, Madekurozwa discovered that most of the artists in her school were men who painted portraits of stereotypically shy but proud African women tilling fields and toting babies. To challenge this representation, Madekurozwa painted portraits of strong black women with direct gazes.

Early in her career, Madekurozwa grappled with ways to express her thoughts and experiences as an African lesbian through her art. To put it mildly, lesbianism is not accepted in Zimbabwe. Although the country has an active women’s rights movement, females are both socially and legally disadvantaged.

Since women traditionally were denied individual sexual identities, lesbians face horrifyingly violent anti-gay sentiments. As the country’s gay community slowly takes shape, therefore, women are being left behind. While men who come out in Zimbabwe at least know that male homosexual relationships exist, the inability even to conceive of a lesbian relationship hinders the coming-out process for women.

It is therefore not surprising that Madekurozwa makes only veiled references to lesbianism in her paintings. In one early work, two figures—one clothed and androgynous, the other with the nude body of a black woman—embrace.

When the public did not take Madekurozwa’s early paintings seriously, she decided to change her subject matter. She discovered that her work makes more of an impression on Zimbabweans when she addresses homosexuality through images of males. Additionally, painting seminude male figures allows Madekurozwa to counter the frivolous display of half-naked women’s bodies on television and in movies, videos, magazines, and paintings. In her works, the male body becomes a commodity since it is objectified for the delight of the viewer.

Heaven (1997) depicts a young, uniformed policeman in a state of half undress crouching in an alluring pose. The painting grabs the viewer’s attention since it is nearly life-sized and the composition looks like a close-up snapshot, with parts of the figure cut off at the edge of the canvas. The absence of margins around the figure encourages the viewer’s eye to travel into the scene and caress the male body.

Heaven borrows the pinup idea featured in the logo of a well-known gay club, and the scribbled messages in the upper right-hand corner are reminiscent of lewd bathroom graffiti. Madekurozwa serves the policeman to the viewer like a piece of meat while making the point that figures of authority are as human as the rest of us and, as such, are sexual—sometimes homosexual—beings.

as such, are sexual—sometimes homosexual—beings. Sunday Afternoon (1997) addresses the homosexual nature of two male policemen. The figures, one of them

only partially clothed, lovingly embrace while facing the viewer. Madekurozwa’s large, flowing, sumptuously colored brushstrokes are so sensuous, the figures’ expressions so tender and content, that the viewer is forced to ask: How can anything be wrong with this?

Madekurozwa’s paintings of authority figures articulate the conflict between societal expectations, gender stereotyping, and personal needs. Her work encourages viewers to challenge convention so that they may achieve personal fulfillment.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Like Madekurozwa, the Nigerian-born, London-based photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955–1989) used his art to undermine conventional perceptions. His photographs of nude or seminude black males frequently blend African and Western iconography with sexual, sometimes homoerotic, themes. They present an alternate reality, transporting the viewer into unfamiliar worlds that encourage a reconsideration of commonly held ideas and assumptions about racial and sexual identity. Living in London since adolescence, Fani-Kayode was all too aware of the Western world’s misperception and misrepresentation of black Africans. His black-and-white photograph entitled Mask (1989) appears, at first glance, to fulfill the Western stereotype of the African primitive: The male subject wears only a loincloth and crouches in an aggressive pose, seemingly ready to run into the jungle toting a bow and arrow. Fani-Kayode also knew that, in the Western imagination, the African body is not only exotic but also erotic. Consequently, when the viewer scrutinizes Mask, she realizes that the loincloth is actually a studded leather jockstrap. Further, the man’s teeth are metal portions of the studded cock ring that he holds in his mouth. The jockstrap and cock ring parody the Western idea that the black male is nothing more than a sex machine that emits semen and speaks salacious words.

Further, the over-the-top representation found in Mask challenges the validity of this stereotype. The two plant fronds that the figure holds in front of his face function as a mask, reminding viewers that they should look beyond stereotypes to discover complex personalities. By creating a brash, in-your-face image, Fani-Kayode forces the viewer to reconsider his understanding of race and sexuality. Fani-Kayode’s black-and-white photograph entitled White Bouquet (1987) also shakes the viewer’s established worldview. The photo, a reinterpretation of Édouard Manet’s famous painting Olympia (1863), shows a white man presenting a bouquet of flowers to a black male lounging on a chaise. Both nude figures turn their backs to the viewer. In Manet’s work, a clothed black female servant gives flowers to a nude white female prostitute, and both women face the viewer.

White Bouquet’s gender and racial reversal is echoed in its compositional inversion; even the presenter of the flowers is on the opposite side from that in Olympia. This undoing of the familiar results in an ambiguous image left open to many complex interpretations.

Conclusion

Although a few contemporary black African artists address issues of homosexuality, violent opposition to the gay lifestyle in Africa makes it difficult for them. While Bulelwa Madekurozwa cautiously exhibits her work in Zimbabwean galleries, Rotimi Fani-Kayode once stated that if he exhibited his works in Nigeria, riots would break out. Certainly Fani-Kayode would have been accused of spreading corrupt and decadent Western values. — Joyce M. Youmans

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bailey, David A. Photographic Animateur: The Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode in Relation to Black Photographic Practices. Third Text 13 (Winter 1997): 57–62.

Bulelwa Madekurozwa. Gasworks Gallery. www.gasworksgallery.org/varts/bul_mad/ (20 July 2001).

Chipunza, Linda. Looking Closely. Gallery: The Art Magazine from Gallery Delta 16 (June 1998): 16–18.

Fani-Kayode, Rotimi. Traces of Ecstasy. Ten.8 2.3 (Spring 1992): 64–71.

Fani-Kayode, Rotimi, et al. Rotimi Fani-Kayode and A. Hirst. Revue Noire 3 (December 1991): 30–50.

Hall, Charles. Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Arts Review 43.1 (January 1991): 42. Oguibe, Olu. Finding a Place: Nigerian Artists in the Contemporary Art World. Art Journal 58.2 (Summer 1999): 30–41.

Mabanga, Thebe, and Bulelwa Madekurozwa. The Male Commodity. Daily Mail and Guardian, 29 September 2000. www.mg.co.za/mg/art/q_n_a/000929-bulelwa.html (20 July 2001).

Mercer, Kobena. Mortal Coil: Eros and Diaspora in the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Overexposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography. Carol Squiers, ed. New York: The New Press, 1999. 183–210.

Sibanda, Doreen. Contemporary Maskings: Bulelwa Madekurozwa and Tendai Gumbo. Gallery: The Art Magazine from Gallery Delta 13 (September 1997): 12–15.

Taylor, Robert. Gay Artist, Black Genius. Body Politic 5: Power Tools. www.bodypolitic.co.uk/body5/rotimi.html (6 July 2001).

Vera, Yvonne. Bulelwa Madekurozwa. Revue Noire 28 (March–April– May 1998): 10–13.

Wright, Kai. Lesbians Admonished with ‘Sew Them Up’: Organizing Challenges for Zimbabwean Women Come from Outside, within Gay Community. The Washington Blade, May 5, 2000. www.aegis.com/news/wb/2000/WB000501.html (13 July 2001).

SEE ALSO

African Art: Traditional; African American and African Diaspora Art; Fani-Kayode, Rotimi

African Art: Traditional

MANY FORMS OF AMBIGUOUS SEXUALITY CAN BE found throughout the traditional arts of Africa, including images of androgyny, hermaphroditism, and transvestism. Moreover, much of erotic sculpture and theater can also be seen as homoerotic, although the goals of eroticism may differ greatly in the African context from those of the Western context, having more to do with increase and the veneration of ancestral power than with sexual pleasure. Furthermore, African art is so symbolic and iconic that if homosexual implications do exist, they may be difficult for the outsider to read.

Traditional African art is distinguished here from contemporary African art, but it should be noted that tradition and the contemporary are not mutually exclusive in Africa. If tradition is recognized to mean handed down, then most of what is known as the traditional African arts almost always blends the traditional with the transitional, or the handed across, to varying degrees. The same can be said of homosexual traditions. African arts are a holistic form traditionally, consisting of the integration of sculpture, costuming, sound, movement, oral narrative, and theater, which sometimes are indistinguishable. This concept of holism applies not only to the arts, but pervades all of traditional African thinking about the nature of things and of human behavior. Holism does not divide, as in Western compartmentalization and categorization.

Polarities

In Africa, polarities such as homosexual and heterosexual may function as complementary oppositions generally do, expressing the extremes of human behavior such as the passive and the aggressive, the benevolent and the malevolent, the feminine and the masculine, or the spiritual and the physical.

There are many examples of dual, antithetical masks. Among the Baga of Guinea, for example, the masquerade of D’mba is the epitome of beauty and good comportment, while her antithesis, D’mba-da-Tshol, is the epitome of ugliness and erratic behavior. Among the Dan of Liberia, sleek and gentle female masks are opposed to grotesque and violent male masks.

In social structure, dual entities exist, such as masculine and feminine sides of the village among the Baga, each containing men and women, each side complementing the other in complex alignments of paired oppositions.

Together, these pairings in masking and in social structure suggest the human condition and the need to balance complementary oppositions such as aggression and passivity, order and chaos, care and neglect, the hot and the cool, and masculine and feminine qualities in both men and women. In much of African culture, the extremes, which are found in all of us, are considered useful and should be channeled situationally.

Homosexual Behavior in African Cultures

Apparently, many cultures in Africa include the range of sexuality in these useful dualities. Quite a few studies have shown that homosexual behavior is accepted in many traditional African societies, even if, like much of African thought, it is not to be discussed openly. Homosexual behavior has its accepted niche, for example, among the Temne of Sierra Leone, where it is associated with the left hand, as opposed to the right, the hidden and private as opposed to the open and public.

Public display is governed in Africa differently from the West. Same-sex physical affection such as holding hands, hugging, kissing, and sleeping together is simply the African norm, displayed openly, although not associated with homosexuality. Public display of affection between men and women, however, is considered offensive.

Sexual play and intercourse between men, especially, and, to some extent, between women, has been documented widely in traditional Africa, and in some cases it is practiced openly. Frequently scholars have attributed these activities to economic need of the powerless, sexual voracity of the powerful, or the social prohibition of heterosexual activity before marriage. Sexual preference, however, might also be considered a factor in some cases.

In the ritual arts, some homosexuality seems to have taken place, although this is extremely difficult to document, given the severe secrecy governing most of African ritual. Because of its special status, homosexuality is often accommodated in ritual situations, such as the priesthood, where the special facility of gender mediation suggests special spiritual powers. Ritual contexts have also provided for the acceptance of homosexuality as a stable category, and for some rare cases of homosexual marriage within traditional African societies.

Homosexual Coupling in Art and Ritual

In the material form of the arts, the clear depiction of homosexuality of any type is almost nonexistent. There are, however, two exceptions worth noting.

One ancient Egyptian wall relief from Dynasty V south of Saqqara shows the close embrace of two powerful male court officials, Nyankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, both bearing the title of king’s manicurist. Face to face, with noses touching, one holds the other’s wrist, while the other, slightly behind, holds the shoulder of the first.

Although their shared tomb depicts their respective wives and children as well, which is common imagery, this precise embrace is a pose reserved in Egyptian art for spouses, or in representing the king being received by a god, and the embrace of two men is never otherwise seen. The two men have been called brothers, or twins, by scholars, but no written evidence from the tomb supports this.

South of the Sahara, one ivory carving dating to the early twentieth century from the Vili of Congo (Kinshasha), in a private collection in Antwerp, seems to show several homosexual scenes: two men with their hands on the genitals of adjacent men, two men holding a phallic staff, and one man holding his own erection. Sexuality is clearly an element in some prehistoric South African rock painting, where groups of men are shown with erections, but they are generally hunting scenes, and the intent of this imagery is elusive. Wrestling scenes in Egyptian art, such as those at Beni Hassan, may seem homoerotic to Westerners, but they function in the context of war and Egyptian assertions of power. To the casual observer, the appearance of homosexuality in African art is often the result of a misunderstanding of complex symbolic codes. Conversely, the seeming absence of clear imagery throughout African art may be due to our inability to interpret more abstract conventions, or due to the inherent left-handedness or secrecy of homosexual acts.

Homosexual coupling, both male and female, however, clearly exists in other forms of art, such as theatrical ritual, where it can easily be read because of the direct use of the human body. In the proceedings of male and female initiation into adulthood, the context of some of the most magnificent African art and essentially a theater of symbolic performance ritual, homosexual practices are often reported.

Man–boy sex, or at least the representation of it, is most common. Among the Temne of Sierra Leone, for example, the last boy to be initiated is given the name, Tithkabethi (vagina initiate). Boys in initiation often wear women’s clothes, as documented among the Temne and among the Nandi of Kenya.

Among the Ndembu of Congo (Kinshasa), the chief instructor of the boys’ initiation is called the husband of the novices and the novices themselves are called mwadi, senior wives, and are said to be married by the chief instructor. The novices are said to play with the sexual organs of male visitors to the initiation lodge, a practice considered helpful in the healing of their circumcisions. In a particular ritual, an elder man lies on the ground, exposing his penis, and each of the novices mimes copulation with him.

One must keep in mind that initiation procedure is performance, not real life. Nevertheless, that these practices overlie real man–boy sex within the initiation is not so hard to imagine, as the practice has been documented so thoroughly throughout Africa in daily life apart from ritual. In Sierra Leone, for example, it is rather common for a big man, who otherwise leads a heterosexual life, to have sex with an adolescent boy, to whom he gives gifts, as he would to any lover. Enough suggestions have been given of homosexual insertion as a part of African male initiation to give the practice some credibility.

Throughout the male initiation ceremony, the masculinity of the young boy is challenged, whether through beatings by the older men, the ritual mutilation of his penis, or through sexual receptivity. It has been suggested that since initiation procedures are sexually exclusive, and each sex remains independent from the other for a given period of time, heterosexual intercourse itself is rejected in favor of homosexual intercourse.

Nowhere in Africa is man–boy sex explained, as it is in New Guinea, as a means of increasing the sexual potency of the young boy. Rather, it seems to function as a demonstration of power relations, and, to some extent, as sex education as well as gender formation. It is in the rituals of male and female initiation principally that the social construction of gender is negotiated and reinforced.

Among women in initiation proceedings, for example in the Bondo association of Sierra Leone, it is said that the very tight bonds that are developed between the initiates of the same age group often include homosexuality, in the context of an extremely close and lengthy con-finement away from the rest of society, and that these relationships often continue into adulthood and heterosexual marriage.

Among the Kaguru of Tanzania, some men claim that women demonstrate sexual intercourse to the girls in initiation, the leaders together, and with the initiates, taking the roles of both men and women, although this has not been confirmed.

Homosexuality in the Artist/Ritual Leader

While homosexuality may not often be the subject of African art, homosexual persons may be more inclined than others to become practitioners of the arts and rituals. In the Sudan, the healing ritual system known as zaar, practiced mainly by women, is also joined by men, some of whom become ritual leaders. These men are assumed to be homosexual by the community, and some are overtly homosexual. In Mombasa, Kenya, receptive homosexual men called mashoga, dressed in wigs and women’s clothes, are active as performers at weddings, playing the pembe (a female musical instrument), and doing chagkacha (a seductive female dance).

Male ritual leaders called mugawe among the Meru of Kenya dress as women routinely and sometimes even marry other men. Coptic monks in the sixth or seventh century, whose work included the painting of sacred manuscripts, apparently were known for their homosexuality, judging by a man’s wedding vow on papyrus that promises never to take another wife, never to fornicate, nor to consort with wandering monks.

Among the Dagara of Burkina Faso, the homosexual man is said to be well integrated into the community, occupying a performance role of intermediacy between this world and the otherworld, as a sort of gatekeeper. As Somé reports, a Dagara man has testified that such a person experiences a state of vibrational consciousness which is far higher, and far different from the one the normal person would experience…. So when you arrive here, you begin to vibrate in a way that Elders can detect as meaning that you are connected with a gateway somewhere…. You decide that you will be a gatekeeper before you are born.

Diviners, who manipulate materials to find a spiritual solution to clients’ problems, in several areas of Africa have been known to be homosexuals, for example among the Zulu of South Africa and among the Nyoro of Kenya, where they would demonstrate spiritual possession by becoming a woman.

Carlos Estermann found that among the Ambo of Angola a special order of diviner, called omasenge, dressed as women, did women’s work, and contracted marriage with other men who might also be married to women. "An esenge [sing. of omasenge] is essentially a man who has been possessed since childhood by a spirit of female sex, which has been drawing out of him, little by little, the taste for everything that is masculine and virile."

In the case of the Zande of the Central African Republic, sex between a man and a boy was said to benefit the diviner, and would take place before the consultation of oracles, when sex with women would be taboo. But, as Evans-Prichard reported, the Zande went on to allow that the reason was not simply ritual prohibition, but also just because they like them.

Homoeroticism in Art

Perhaps the most common use of eroticism in African art is the depiction of the phallus. Well-known examples of singular phallic sculpture include columnar earthen shrines, documented among many groups in the Sahel— for example, the Dogon, Batammaliba, and Lobi. The sexual realism of these columns is heightened by the pouring of white meal over the rounded top.

Large, vertical, stone pillars, called akwanshi, found along the Cross River in Nigeria, and traced to before the colonial period, are carved quite realistically as an erect penis, with a distinct head and shaft. Generally the height of an adult person, they seem also to represent a truncated human figure.

Male initiates among the Zulu of South Africa carry wooden clubs with a knob on the end resembling the head of a penis. With sometimes several dozen young men initiated at one time, the sea of upraised phalluses is a powerful sight.

The Baga of Guinea revere a great male founding spirit who is manifested by an enormous, vertical shaft of fiber, perhaps twenty meters tall, topped by a wooden bird head, and carried inside by as many as twenty men. The powerful male image is frightening to the community, as it shivers and throbs. Alternatively, a heavy, wooden, vertical shaft in the form of a huge serpent may represent the founding male spirit, and is balanced on top of the dancer’s head.

The exaggeration of the phallus as a part of a male figure is almost universal throughout Africa. The Yoruba god, Eshu, the god of confusion, the crossroads, chance, and sex, is depicted with a wooden phallus sprouting from the top of his head. Wooden figures of ancestral chiefs among the Ndengese of Congo (Kinshasa), are carved with enormous phalluses to emphasize the fertile power of the ancestors. The Egyptian god, Amun-Min, he who awoke the sexual potency of the god Osiris, is depicted as a mummy with an erection.

Among the Yaka of Congo (Kinshasa), during the initiation called nkanda, young male officials perform with erotic masks known as kholuka in the coming-out ceremonies. The masks, constructed by the young men, often are surmounted by human figures in heterosexual intercourse but also frequently by the single male figure with an enormous erection, very realistically formed, and sometimes shown in masturbation. During the dance, including pelvic thrusts, the dancer also carries a wooden phallus, and sometimes sheds his clothing to reveal his own erect sexual organ. During this performance, the men disparage the women and ridicule the women’s sexual organs, while extolling their own.

All these phallic representations are made by, made for, and used by, men exclusively. What is one to make of the stimulus for this? If men are the ones who venerate, worship, and manipulate the representation of the male organ, and are energized by it, it cannot be seen as other than same-sex attraction of a sort, and perhaps symbolic mutual masturbation, even as the stated intention is to honor the ancestors, to encourage fertility and increase, or to enliven the dead.

In female homosexuality, the creation of an artificial penis has been documented among the Ovimbundu. Wilfred Hambley mentioned, in 1937, that A woman has been known to make an artificial penis for use with another woman.

In Zanzibar, the artificial penis was said by M. Haberlandt, in 1899, to have been made by black and Indian craftsmen. "It is a stick of ebony in the shape of a male member of considerable size, sold secretly. Sometimes it is also made from ivory. There exist two different forms. The first has below the end a nick where a cord is fastened, which one of the women ties around her middle in order to imitate the male act with the

other. The stick is pierced most of the way and it then pours out warm water in imitation of ejaculation. With the other form, the stick is sculpted with penis heads at both ends so that it can be inserted by both women into their vaginas, for which they assume a sitting position. This kind of stick is also pierced. The sticks are greased for use."

Cross-Dressing in Art

African art history is full of references to cross-dressing, both male-to-female and female-to-male. Throughout Africa, masked dance is almost exclusively performed