Art & Queer Culture

Description

Art and Queer Culture is a comprehensive and definitive survey of artworks that have constructed, contested or otherwise responded to alternative forms of sexuality. Not a book exclusively about artists who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, Art and Queer Culture instead traces the shifting possibilities and constraints of sexual identity that have provided visual artists with a rich creative resource over the last 125 years.The definitive account of alternative forms of sexuality in art since 1890.
Catherine Lord is Professor of Studio Art and Core Faculty Member in the Program in Women’s Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is a writer, artist and curator whose work addresses cultural politics, including disability, queer identities, feminism and colonialism. She has received fellowships and awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Lord was Associate Editor at Afterimage, and her critical essays and fiction have been published in Art & Text, New Art Examiner,Whitewall,Framework, Documents, X-Tra, Art Journal and Art Paper. Her work is also included in the surveys The Contest of Meaning (1989) and Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the 1850s to the Present (1996).

Richard Meyer is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California. His studies in modern and contemporary art focus on the ongoing debate over sexuality and gender, its effects on modern art and visual culture, and censorship and the public sphere. A graduate of Yale (BA) and Berkeley (MA, PhD), in 1998 he was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Getty Research Institute for History of Art & Humanties. His writing has appeared in a number of art journals, including Artforum, and in several museum publications, such as Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2007). He is the author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (2002).

“Big, queer, complex and sumptuously done-up… Over 500 beautiful illustrations […] ranging from anonymous pornographic photos to some of the greatest paintings done by humans in the last 125 years… A heady and thoroughly pleasing mix up of low and high culture… [A] landmark tome… Sagely curated”—Dazed & Confused

“In this first book to be published on criticism and theory regarding queer culture, Phaidon has certainly set the bar high… A significant resource.”—Aesthetica

“Serious and sleek… Ambitious and laudable… The book’s impressive archival reach means the international curaterati will be leafing through its pages for years to come… An exhibition in book form: a potentially groundbreaking, long overdue exhibition that is it is impossible to imagine a large-scale international institution having the courage or, perhaps more accurately, the corporate support to stage… An impressive archive of reprinted documents… A significant collection of texts linked to key historical moments… Meyer and Lord have produced a magnificent book”—Art Monthly

“Brilliant… A gorgeous coffee table book that showcases queer culture from nightclubs to high art… Ambitious and timely.”—Diva

“[An] expertly researched combined reader and artist directory.”—Art Review

“…A comprehensive historical overview of Queer Art… Chock full of photos, drawings, posters, texts, and more, documenting the rise of queer artistic voices in modern society.”—LA Weekly

“A considered and sensitive exploration of how the art world has collided with queer culture.”—ShortList

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