April 8, 2017 |
As a straight man working in fashion, being surrounded by gay works of art is nothing new – some of the daily looks are worthy masterpieces in themselves (they told me to say that). And this exhibition, opening this week at Tate Britain, is full of just that, being the first to be dedicated to queer British art, celebrating fifty years since homosexuality was (partially) decriminalised in England and Wales. From early neoclassical paintings that weren’t considered expressions of male-male relations at their inception, like William Blake Richmond’s The Bowler (because clearly there’s nothing sexual about eight naked men having a game of boules), to the more explicit works of Duncan Grant, the exhibition showcases, above all, a marginalised expression of sexual identity.
It begins ambiguously – stood in front of Walter Crane’s The Renaissance of Venus, the exhibition’s subject matter is not overt, it’s only when I work out that the nude model posing as the Goddess of Love is, in fact, male, that it all makes sense. Later works do not require less clarification, namely Keith Vaughan’s much later (and louder), tantalisingly-titled sketch, Drawing of a nude male masturbating. As well as paintings, the show exhibits a treasure trove of curiosities; Oscar Wilde’s prison cell door, Noël Coward’s monogrammed dressing gown, and my personal favourite, a box of buttons collected by two men as mementos of their (politely titled) “liaisons” with soldiers who were stationed near their home. With over two hundred in the box, the collection brings a new meaning to the old idiom of pressing all the right buttons…
Given our own expertise in the after-dark activities of Soho, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the “Arcadia and Soho” room, filled with the works of Edward Burra and Keith Vaughan, as reference to the epicentre of queer culture that was Soho in the 1950s and 60s. Or, as Francis Bacon more eloquently put it: “the sexual gymnasium of the city”. To top it all off (quite literally), the rainbow flag will be flown above the gallery as part of a new partnership between Tate and Pride in London,to which all of us at Ten Towers, salute.
Queer British Art: 1861-1967 will run from the 5th April to the 1st October 2017 at Tate Britain
