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Queerness in 18th- and 19th-Century European Art and Visual Culture
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Queerness in 18th- and 19th-Century European Art and Visual Culture

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2024) | Viewed by 2451

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Andrew Shelton

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History of Art, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Interests: J.-A.-D. Ingres; Achille Devéria; histories of art exhibitions and art criticism; portraiture; art in relation to gender and sexuality; queer masculinities in 19th-Century French Art and Visual Culture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

I am delighted to serve as the Guest Editor of a Special Issue of Arts, devoted to queerness in 18th- and 19th-century European art and visual culture. Essays regarding a wide variety of topics that subvert or disrupt heteronormative interpretations of the art and visual culture of this period are welcome, including the works of art produced by or under the auspices of personages who can plausibly be identified as attracted to members of the same sex; works or creative situations that can be construed as expressing or eliciting same-sex sexual desire or attraction; works or creative situations in which the heteronormative polarity of the processes of identification and desire can be perceived as having been collapsed or scrambled; works or creative situations that involve gender-bending or gender fluidity; works or creative situations that either deepen or complicate our understanding of sexuality and/or sexual identity during the 18th and 19th centuries; and works that eroticize individuals or situations that are normally regarded as lying outside the realm of the erotic.

Prof. Dr. Andrew Shelton
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • queer
  • art history
  • 18th- and 19th-century Europe

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 11881 KiB  
Article
Sex, Sign, Subversion: Symbolist Art and Male Homosexuality in 19th-Century Europe
by Ty Vanover
Arts 2024, 13(3), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030103 - 5 Jun 2024
Viewed by 245
Abstract
There is something queer about Symbolism. Art historians have long acknowledged the links between Symbolist aesthetics and contemporaneous ideas about human sexuality, and even a cursory examination of artworks by male Symbolist artists working across the continent reveals an eyebrow-raising number of muscled [...] Read more.
There is something queer about Symbolism. Art historians have long acknowledged the links between Symbolist aesthetics and contemporaneous ideas about human sexuality, and even a cursory examination of artworks by male Symbolist artists working across the continent reveals an eyebrow-raising number of muscled nudes, lithe ephebes, and intimate male couplings. The sensual male body could register the artist’s erotic desire, even as he put it forth as an idealized emblem of transcendental truth. But perhaps Symbolism’s queerness extended beyond subject matter. Scholars have argued that Symbolism was in part defined by a subversive approach to visual semiotics: a severing—we might say a queering—of the ties binding a sign to its established cultural meaning. Similarly, male homosexual subcultures were sustained by endowing established signs and pictures with a uniquely queer significance. This paper seeks to tease out the relationship between Symbolist aesthetics and male homosexuality in terms of a shared sensibility towards pictorial interpretation. Taking as a case study the work of the Swedish Symbolist artist Eugène Jansson, I argue that Symbolism held appeal for homosexual artists precisely because queer subcultures were primed to read subversive meaning into normative pictures. Offering a new reading of Symbolism’s sexual valences, I contextualize the movement’s attendant artworks within the broader cultural landscape of homosexual signs and symbols and articulate the parallels between Symbolist approaches to the image and queer modes of seeing in the late nineteenth century. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Queerness in 18th- and 19th-Century European Art and Visual Culture)
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22 pages, 8805 KiB  
Article
“Lost in Flowers & Foolery”: A Gendered Reading of the 9th Earl of Devon’s Flower Watercolors
by James Thomas Stewart
Arts 2024, 13(3), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030102 - 5 Jun 2024
Viewed by 403
Abstract
William Courtenay, 3rd Viscount Courtenay and 9th Earl of Devon (1768–1835), has been most remembered for his romantic relationship with author and slave owner, William Beckford (1760–1844), which scandalized London society in 1784. However, the 9th Earl’s life after this event has received [...] Read more.
William Courtenay, 3rd Viscount Courtenay and 9th Earl of Devon (1768–1835), has been most remembered for his romantic relationship with author and slave owner, William Beckford (1760–1844), which scandalized London society in 1784. However, the 9th Earl’s life after this event has received little attention despite his artistic contributions to the built environment of his ancestral home of Powderham Castle in Devon. In the 1790s, he created a series of flower watercolors on paper and cabinets under the supervision of his drawing master, William Marshall Craig (c.1765–1827). These artworks complicate ideas about gendered expectations of amateur artistic subjects, with flower painting being largely understood as a feminine accomplishment. This article explores the Earl’s watercolors in the context of the spaces at Powderham to argue they are evidence of his effeminate behavior and participation in female activities alongside his thirteen sisters. The association of these objects with a man attracted to those of his own sex contribute to studies of queerness, amateur art, and the country house in the late eighteenth century. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Queerness in 18th- and 19th-Century European Art and Visual Culture)
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17 pages, 18116 KiB  
Article
Symbolist Androgyny: On the Origins of a Proto-Queer Vision
by Damien F. Delille
Arts 2024, 13(3), 90; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030090 - 20 May 2024
Viewed by 470
Abstract
This article focuses on artistic and aesthetic practices within the idealist and symbolist movements of the late 19th century in France. It investigates how artists and art critics embraced androgynous imaginaries derived from Greco-Roman antiquity and the Platonic myth, transforming them into tools [...] Read more.
This article focuses on artistic and aesthetic practices within the idealist and symbolist movements of the late 19th century in France. It investigates how artists and art critics embraced androgynous imaginaries derived from Greco-Roman antiquity and the Platonic myth, transforming them into tools for social and sexual emancipation and giving rise to a proto-queer vision. An analysis of the art of Alexandre Séon, Odilon Redon, Jeanne Jacquemin, and Léonard Sarluis, in conjunction with the symbolist theories of Joséphin Péladan, Gabriel-Albert Aurier, and Émile Verhaeren, reveals an idealistic pursuit grounded in the union of the masculine and the feminine through the act of creation. Through the examination of artworks, contemporary critical discourse, and the personal correspondence of these art figures, this study posits that the androgyne serves as a heuristic model for a queer art history. The ideal androgyne, as theorized in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings, can function as a methodological paradigm in art studies as a tool for visualizing and conceptualizing homosexuality in art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Queerness in 18th- and 19th-Century European Art and Visual Culture)
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22 pages, 7715 KiB  
Article
Reading Cisheteronormativity into the Art Historical Archives
by Kirstin Ringelberg
Arts 2024, 13(3), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030089 - 14 May 2024
Viewed by 498
Abstract
Madeleine Lemaire (1845–1928) might appear to be a typical “woman artist” of the Belle Époque, a painter of images of fashionable women, equally popular for her watercolor flowers and her skills as a salon hostess, with biographical sketches of her then and now [...] Read more.
Madeleine Lemaire (1845–1928) might appear to be a typical “woman artist” of the Belle Époque, a painter of images of fashionable women, equally popular for her watercolor flowers and her skills as a salon hostess, with biographical sketches of her then and now assuming that if she had sex or romance, it was with men. However, a closer look has also revealed Lemaire to be potentially atypical. Unlike her women colleagues, she exhibited salacious nudes; her work was once described as having “a bit of the mustache”; and she generally dodged discussions of either her gender or her sexuality, even though her social group included those who openly flaunted their own non-conformities. Using archival materials, artworks, and contemporary theory to unpack the possibilities presented by Lemaire’s case, I also explore the gains for art history in reconsidering previously female-identified and straight-seeming artists in more fluid gender and sexual terms. What might we discover if we recognize ourselves as the constructors of a cisheteronormative past, reading into the archives the assumptions that our current culture’s binary norms enforce? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Queerness in 18th- and 19th-Century European Art and Visual Culture)
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