Before I say anything else, Tate Britain’s exhibit on Queer British Art is a must-see. If you have not gone, go. It is that important.
I originally heard about the exhibition from advertisements on the tube, the internet, etc., and I was intrigued to go. I pre-booked my tickets (13£ with my student ID, 16£ for general admissions, under-16s are free), and besides that, went in completely blind. Looking back, that was a smart decision. By not doing any research, I went in with no expectations whatsoever, and could accept the art for what it was—not what I wanted it to be.
The exhibit is divided into eight thematically connected rooms; these rooms were entitled Coded Desires, Public Indecency, Theatrical Types, Bloomsbury and Beyond, Defying Convention, Arcadia and Soho, Public/Private Lives, and Francis Bacon & David Hockey. As seen in the name, each room explored the lives of these queer artists through different lenses.
Each room could be examined on its own and deserves their own blog posts, but I’ll mention a few highlights. In the Coded Desires room, Henry Scott Tuke’s 1869 painting “July Sun” stood out the most to me. It simply showed two naked men, one admiring the other up close. There is nothing explicit about it, but the admiration and love among the models and the artist are palpable. The broader brush strokes conceal the identity from the viewer, and yet somehow allows a glimpse into the intimacy these three men must share.
In the “Public Indecency” room, there hung Wilde’s prison door at Reading Gaol. It stood austere, ugly, and out of place in a place that celebrated defiance and artistry. It forced the viewer into the role of jailer, keeping those we see as different behind closed doors, trying to make ourselves feel safe at the expense of other people.
That repression was explored in other ways, as well. There is a portrait from 1895 of Aubrey Vincent Bearsley, a friend of Wilde’s and former editor of literary journal The Yellow Book, who was dismissed because of his association and relationship with Wilde. In the Bloomsbury and Beyond Room, a large painting done by Duncan Grant in 1911 for a Borough Polytechnic dining room portrayed an implicitly homoerotic scene of naked men swimming into a boat. This piece received a visceral negative response, as apparently it would be “degenerative” for the students who would eat there.
However, that is not to say everything in the exhibition is negative. One painting stood out among the rest for being distinctly positive. Laura Knight’s 1913 painting Self Portrait shows Knight herself, examining various female nude figure models. According to the caption provided, at this point women were not allowed to attend life classes. In response, Knight sensually painted her female “friend” nude and submitted the painting to the Royal Academy. She eventually became the first female elected to the Royal Academy since its founding in 1768. That piece, to me, represented the tone of the entire exhibiton; these artists all endured great social struggles and feared retribution constantly from the wider British public. However, they never gave up. They saw art as the place to challenge and question and to make their struggles known—and to overcome them.
Right before one can exit the exhibit, there is a small room, where people can fill out a comment card and then read other people’s comments. Overwhelmingly, the comments were from young, queer people who felt like their identity was being recognized, that their views and life experiences mattered, despite what our politicians may be yelling from their pulpits. At the beginning, I told you to go to this exhibit, and now I will explain why. This exhibit explores a large part of art history that is ignored, or simply categorized into other areas. In a time where LGBTQA+ identities are being invalidated, where being any sort of racial, economic, or gendered minority puts you at risk, we need to support those who are desperately trying to get their stories told. The Tate is giving them a chance to tell those stories. It is our job to go hear them.
~Laudie Porter, ’18
