WEEK FIFTEEN: QUEER THEORY

In Nelson and Searls Giroux’s piece, “Queer,” they define queer theory in relation to gender theory, and that queer theory disentangles sex acts from gender identity and argues that sexuality is not an essential personal attribute but an available culture category. It attempts to show that there is no natural relation between anatomical parts and what those parts are meant to do or mean in a given context. They say that terminology is important and queer substitutes homosexual because it has ties to medical discourse and is no longer used in self-identification. There are many levels of sexuality and how people define sexuality so they are you cannot limit it to two terms homo and heterosexual when ideas of sex may or may not include genitals (187). Sedgwick and Butler argue that gender and sexuality are “performance discourses” and only secondarily about being (188). You are not born man, woman, homosexual, you become that through acts (189).

In “Queer Wallpaper,” Jennifer Doyle raises questions from her finding and viewing a pieces of ‘gay art’ (close up of male sexual acts) by Warhol in a gay bar. She states that by using queer in relation to art, we are saying something about the importance of sexuality in art (344). Study and discussion of sexuality in art is recent in art history but the subject of sexuality still remains on the outside of the official boundaries of the field (345). Since no one talks about sexuality, most don’t know that Warhol was one of, or the, most famous gay artist. Some of the most influential queer writing about art has taken place outside of the discipline (345).  It goes to say that art historians still don’t want to acknowledge sexuality playing a role in art. An artist’s queerness is in the domain of sexual but also how they make art and the kinds of relationships between people and the art they make (347).

Whitney Davis’s “Winckelmann Divided: Mourning the Death of Art History,” tells the history of who is thought to be the father of art history and how he raised the discipline from just being about artist’s lives and attempted systematic stylistic analysis, historical contextualization and iconographic analysis. Winckelmann integrated two methods of art history: formalism and historicism. He favored historic explanation over subjective aesthetic, political sexual response (41). He redefined classicism to form assigned it to the Egyptians, Archaic Greece, and the Etruscans as Hellenistic art was the pinnacle (42). Modern art history can be seen as an objective account of Winckelmann’s instructions- periodization, stylistic criticism, iconography, historicism, and ethical valuation. We need to give up art history as bringing something to live but as laying it to rest and let it be history (50).

Richard Meyer’s “Identity,” defines identity how individuals recognize themselves through shared conditions or qualities: race, gender, religion, class, or cultural origin. In the 1950s it was a popular science term but then it wasn’t assigned to particular racial, cultural or sexual differences, it was often used to designate a problem (345). Identity wants the affirmation of differences but also desires inclusion and equality (347). In the history of art, let artists decide to either embody their terms of gender, race, religion, and sexuality but also let it exceed or elude them (356). Artists desire to inhabit the space of identity but also avoid it.

Jonathan Katz’s article, “Passive Resistance: On the Success of Queer Artists in Cold War American Art,” was a bit difficult for me to decipher. It may have been how it was written or how he posed his points. Gay artists in the Cold war made art like every aspect of their lives, they appeared to function within the national consensus as anything else was too dangerous (11). Gay or queer self-identification was not very common for fear of what may happen to them in this hostile time both across the seas and at home. Katz wondered how such a despised group of people early on still remained center stage as the model of high cultural achievement and that was his answer (2). They used passivity as a mode of resistance to survive such a hostile culture for gays (15). They used techniques that would be seen at the post-modern. During the Cold War they could still make their art but had to remain partially hidden to enjoy their success.