ΜΙΛΑΝΟ. ARTE E OMOSESSUALITÁ

Sebastiane Arrivabene: Psiconauta, 2006

.
Art and Homosexuality
On 10 July - 11 November 2007, Palazzo della Ragione, Milan, will host the exhibition Arte e Omosessualità. Da von Gloeden a Pierre et Gilles (‘Art and Homosexuality – from von Gloeden to Pierre et Gilles'), which proposes over 150 artists to extensively study - for the first time in Italy - the association between art and homosexuality in the period ranging from the birth of photography to date, ideally from Von Gloeden to Pierre et Gilles.
Visual representation of subjects that are strictly related to homoerotism is part of man's history from time out of mind, though the cultural relevance expressed and the underlying meanings clearly mirror the consequences of historical and sociocultural details. Scenes with homoerotic settings appear in vessels manufactured in ancient Greece and in Persian bas-reliefs at the dawn of oriental art, in Italian Renaissance art and in baroque art; it is a subtle common thread that runs through short circuits and essential passages and reaches us today, autonomously developing long before the modern concept of genre diversity was first processed.
But what does "homoerotic art" really mean? Does it comprise works created by artists, whose homosexuality is undoubted and, in whom, something recalling a homoerotic taste can often, but not necessarily, be found? Or does it designate the work of artists who are not officially homosexual, but whose creations reveal an exceptional eroticism that leads to this interpretation? Starting from an artist's homosexuality to interpret his work involves a series of very thorny issues. Awareness of the author's (homo)sexual inclination generally warns us about the possible presence of metaphorical representations of homosexuality. What relations are there between the artist's biography and the interpretation of his work?
Selection criteria of exhibited works did not take this association into account, but rather considered each work's specific features, detecting both conventional genre similarities and a theme that runs within a common trend of feeling, of mood expressions, attitudes and emotions, with no claim to define the canons of a "specific homosexual feature" in art.
According to this logic, some works display an openly homoerotic content, while others express it latently by means of specific codes, symbols, hints, allegories and metaphors. The exhibition track starts from Arcadian photographs by baron von Gloeden to retrace the regions of homoerotic photography, from Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber to Mapplethorpe, from Jack Pierson to Lorca di Corcia, with a survey of James Bidgood's camp aesthetics recovered from David Lachapelle to Pierre et Gilles in recent years. Artists who, by now, work in a historical time that enables the free development of gay, lesbian and transgender themes, proposing prevailing emotional upheavals and issues that are often crucial in most fin-de-siècle art and in art at the dawn of the new millennium. A track organised by examples that from Louise Bourgeois and Carol Rama reaches David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Gilbert&George, developing through Urs Luthi, Ugo Rondinone and Yasumasa Moritura's quest for identity.
Through the evolution of perception and the subsequent representation of existential diversity, this track by images highlights the work of the last generation of artists to use homoerotic love as an expedient to both question superstructures based on race, desire, genre and sexual identity and, to break down conventional distinctions between art, eroticism and pornography.

(Αναδημοσίευση από το site Uninews.inicredito.it)