Monday, October 13, 2014

A Beautiful And Brief Queer History Of The Classical Nude In Art


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/classical-nude_n_5968008.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay%20Voices

A new exhibition at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is taking a comprehensive look at the ways in which artists, from antiquity to present day, have imagined the naked body. Showcasing over 100 objects of painting, photography, sculpture, video, drawing and print, the show will tackle the nude in typical Leslie-Lohman fashion: by exploring the space between binary definitions of sexuality and gender.

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https://www.leslielohman.org/exhibitions/current.html

Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History
October 17, 2014 - January 4, 2015

Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History, curated by scholar Jonathan David Katz, investigates the continued centrality of the classical nude over centuries of art making. This exhibition explores how images of the classical past have acted as recurring touchstones in the historical development of same-sex representation, and as such, constitute a sensitive barometer of the shifting constructions of what we today call gay and lesbian or queer culture. The classical past is thus gay culture’s central origin myth, and its representation offers far more information about the culture that appropriates the classical past then it does about that past itself. In tracing this trajectory of the classical nude across history, this show concentrates on four major periods: Antiquity, the Renaissance, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the modern/contemporary periods.




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