Exhibition: ‘TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950’ at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism

Exhibition dates: 7th October, 2022 – 21st May, 2023

Head Curator: Karolina Kühn
Curators: Juliane Bischoff, Angela Hermann, Sebastian Huber, Anna Straetmans, Ulla-Britta Vollhardt

Wer’e here, we’re queer, we’re not going anywhere.

Despite years of persecution, death and inequality, the presence of queer identity, diversity and creativity remains undimmed.

There are some fabulous, groundbreaking human beings who are “being seen” in this posting. Equally, there are some fabulous art works that illuminate the(ir) human condition.

Let’s celebrate their existence.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

About the exhibition

TO BE SEEN is an exhibition devoted to the stories of LGBTQI+ in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Through historical testimony and artistic positions from then and now, it traces queer lives and networks, the areas of freedom enjoyed by LGBTQI+, and the persecution they suffered.

The exhibition takes an intimate look at a variety of genders, bodies, and identities. It shows how queer life became ever more visible during the 1920s, giving rise to a more open treatment of role models and of desire. During this period, homosexual, trans, and non-binary people achieved their first successes in their fight for equal rights and social acceptance. They organised, fought for scientific and legal recognition of their gender identity, and carved out their own spaces.

But as recognition and visibility in art and culture, science, politics, and society increased, so did resistance. After the Nazis came to power, the LGBTQI+ subculture was largely destroyed. After 1945, their stories and fates were scarcely archived or remembered.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism website

“When a right is withheld from you, you must fight and not give in; that is a moral duty.”

Joseph Schedel opened the first meeting of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee of Munich on September 24, 1902

Exterior view of the NS Documentation Center in Munich showing a work in the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 – Maximiliane Baumgartner’s “You look at us – we look at you”: Rubbing against the architecture of the executive gaze (Based on a paper by Anita Augspurg ‘Mißgriffe der Polizei’ / ‘Abuses by the Police’, 1902) 2021
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

TO BE SEEN | Trailer

The exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 is dedicated to the stories of LGBTIQ* in Germany in the first half of the 20th century from October 7th, 2022 to May 21st, 2023 at the Munich Documentation Center. With historical testimonies and artistic positions from then to the present, the exhibition traces queer life plans and networks, freedom and persecution.

The exhibition takes an intimate look at diverse genders, bodies and identities. It shows how queer life became more and more visible in the 1920s and how role models and desires were dealt with more openly. Homosexual, trans* and non-binary people achieved their first successes in their fight for equal rights and social acceptance: they organised themselves, fought for scientific and legal recognition of their gender identity and conquered their own spaces.

In addition to recognition and visibility in art and culture, science, politics and society, resistance also increased. After the National Socialists came to power, the LGBTIQ* subculture was largely destroyed. After 1945 their stories and fates were hardly archived or remembered.

Unknown photographer
Lili, Paris
1926
From N. Hoyer (ed.). Man into Woman. An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex. The true story of the miraculous transformation of the Danish painter Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre). London: Jarrolds, 1933, 1926, opp. p. 40.
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Lili Elbe, a transgender woman who underwent sex reassignment surgery in Berlin in the 1930s.

Around 1900, queer people in Germany began gaining more and more visibility in public life – in art, culture, science, and politics. Existing role models for men and women were being questioned. Homosexual women and men as well as trans* and non-binary people achieved initial successes in their struggle for equal rights and acceptance: they organised and fought for scientific and legal recognition of their sexual and gender identity.

They met in public places, founded clubs and associations, and started magazines. New terms were coined to describe their identities and create a sense of belonging. Urning, lesbian, girlfriend, Bubi, homosexual: more than a hundred years ago there were already many expressions for what we call queer today. But as their visibility grew, so did the social and political backlash. The Nazi takeover in 1933 was a defining moment for queer people – their subculture was largely destroyed. In the postwar years, discrimination continued.

Even decades later, LGBTQI+ history is still hardly remembered or preserved in archives. Through historical testimonies and artistic positions from then and now, TO BE SEEN traces queer lives and networks, the spaces of freedom enjoyed by LGBTQI+ people, and the persecution they suffered.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Unknown photographer
Police photo of Liddy Bacroff
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Staatsarchiv Hamburg

Police photo of Liddy Bacroff, taken after an arrest, 1933. Barcoff described themself as a “homosexual transvestite”, lived from sex work, and was convicted several times. In 1943, they was murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Liddy Bacroff, a transgender woman initially from Ludwigshafen, who moved to Hamburg and lived for the majority of her life publicly presenting herself as a woman. She did not perceive herself to be a man (and, indeed, in papers she left after having been imprisoned, she determined what her name would be while also conspicuously referring to herself as “Liddy Bacroff, Transvestit”). But this was effectively her own form of self-ID. Certainly the authorities didn’t see her as such — her records remain filed under her deadname and identify her as a homosexual man – and, though she’d have been given a Transvestitenschein in Berlin, she wasn’t IN Berlin. Having not visited Hirschfeld and his Institut, it’s a marvel she uses the term “Transvestit”; elsewhere she does refer to herself as a “Mann-Weib” (a “male woman”), and frequently as a girl or a woman. The authorities, again, call her a man or, occasionally, a “Zwitter.” (NB. “Zwitter” means “hermaphrodite” and is here not meant literally but rather as an epithet recorded in the official files – an insult to her.) So the language that is used to describe trans people is inconsistent and, often, absent (depending on the sources). Reading between the lines is necessary, especially in the official records, which view trans women (regardless their lived circumstances or their appearance) only as homosexual men, and charge them as such. And while Hirschfeld was conscientious, the police were… not. This is especially true as the 1930s unfolded and the country Nazified. I wrote a very long thread a while back about “Heinrich Bode”, who was assigned male at birth but frequently presented as a woman. I used that thread to highlight difficulties of definition because Bode denounced their appearance as a woman in court filings and personal testimony, but at the same time also hinted that there was something much deeper than “just” dressing as a woman. But as they were subjected to prosecution by the Nazified judiciary and security state, they were under duress. So, do we assume that Bode was trans, and denied it because of the threat of punishment? Or was their presentation simply playing with the conventions of gender?

Dr. Bodie A. Ashton Historiker, Universität Erfurt. Text from his Twitter account

Unknown photographer
Police photo of Liddy Bacroff
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Staatsarchiv Hamburg

Alexander Sacharoff (Russian, 1886-1963)
Pavane Fantastique
c. 1916/1917
© Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München

Unknown photographer
Alexander Sacharoff
c. 1914
© Deutsches Theatermuseum München

The androgynous dancer created new body images and developed the swapping of clothes into a stage genre of its own.

Queer

“Queer” originally referred to anything that did not fit into the usual categories. In English the word queer (meaning strange, other, suspicious), was used earlier as a derogative term for homosexuals. Since the 1990s, however, the term has been adopted by many non heterosexual and non-binary people as a positive self-designation. Within the exhibition, queer is used as a catch-all term for a variety of sexual and gender identities and practices that deviate from heterosexual ideas. The term primarily, but not only, refers to LGBTQI+ – in other words lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual persons. Furthermore, “queering” can be understood as a practice of combating various forms of discrimination and exclusion. Applied to gender, sexuality, and identity issues, it means casting a critical gaze at the worldview that regards a heterosexual relationship between two persons as the social norm. The rigid binary division of gender into man and woman and the associated role models are thrown into question. In the exhibition, historical self-designations are used where they can be traced through sources.

Self empowerment

In the German Empire, politics, the economy, and society were dominated by men. The gender order, which was maintained over centuries by state and church, was strictly divided into two parts: men and women were assigned clear roles within which they must operate. People who did not conform to these role models and lived gender and sexual identities outside the normative order were ostracised. They were considered immoral, criminal, or ill. According to Paragraph 175 of the Imperial Criminal Code of 1871, sexual acts between men were forbidden and punishable by imprisonment. In Austria, sex between women was also punishable.

But there were individuals who rebelled against the prevailing gender order and fought for a more open society. They opposed the outlawing of homosexuality and transsexuality, advocated a change in criminal law, and assertively engaged in the recognition of their identities. New alliances and self-images emerged. Many of these pioneers paid a high price for their rebellion: they lost their jobs, their families, and their friendships, and were socially isolated.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Emil Orlík (European born Prague, 1870-1932)
Claire Waldoff
c. 1930
© bpk | Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum

In TO BE SEEN #QueerLives we present individuals and movements who rebelled against the gender order that prevailed around 1900 and advocated a more open society. In their fight for equal rights and acceptance, they showed solidarity with each other, organised themselves in clubs, founded magazines, coined new terms and met in bars and clubs.

One of them was the chansonnière and cabaret artist Claire Waldoff (1884-1957). Born as Clara Wortmann in Gelsenkirchen, she is a central figure in the Berlin cultural scene of the 1920s. Her songs are known throughout Germany. She lives openly with her partner Olga (Olly) von Roeder and shapes the city’s lesbian scene.

Emil Orlik (European born Prague, 1870-1932)

Emil Orlik (21 July 1870 – 28 September 1932) was a painter, etcher and lithographer. He was born in Prague, which was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and lived and worked in Prague, Austria and Germany.

Emil Orlik was born the son of a tailor on July 21, 1870, in Prague, then the capital of a province within the Austro-Hungarian empire. He first studied art at the private art school of Heinrich Knirr, where one of his fellow pupils was Paul Klee. Other friends at this time included Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Starting in 1891, Orlik studied at the Munich Academy under Wilhelm Lindenschmit. He later learned engraving from Johann Leonhard Raab and proceeded to experiment with various printmaking processes, including woodcut, which he and his friend, Bernard Pankok, experimented with in 1896.

Orlik left the Academy in 1893. He performed his military service for a year before returning to Prague in 1894. He relocated to Munich in 1896, where he worked for the magazine Jugend (Youth). He spent most of 1898 travelling through Europe, visiting the Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, and Paris.

Emil Orlik’s prints and techniques went through extensive changes as he traveled internationally, learning new methods wherever he went. Known for his portraits of a wide variety of well-known individuals including Josephine Baker, Albert Einstein, and Marc Chagall, Orlik was an artistic chameleon, never sticking to one genre or style but studying many. His prints catalog his travels, creating a kind of pictorial diary of the years 1892 to 1900 in particular. Many of his works, often produced in color, appeared in the European periodical PAN, along with the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, Kathe Kollwitz, and Max Klinger.

Japanese art and culture fascinated Orlik. He was aware of the impact Japanese art was having on European art and decided to visit Japan. In 1900, he traveled to Japan and spent a year studying Japanese woodblock cutting and printing. His studies of the Japanese culture led him to the art of Utamaro and Hiroshige. Orlik studied the language before his departure and within four months of his arrival he was proficient enough in Japanese to converse with the artisans whose work he admired and under whom he studied.

Orlik never limited himself to popular subject matter. He studied any scene that inspired him, major events or everyday life. He produced fourteen lithographs of the trial of Arthur Schnitzler and his fellow actors; reenactment of the banned play, “Aus dem Reigin,” for which Orlik was a defence witness. After the trial, Orlik began working for the theatre as a designer of costumes, stage sets, and posters.

He kept all his early woodblocks and, in 1920, he published his celebrated portfolio Kleine Holzschnitte (Small woodcuts) in an edition of 100, which also contained the text of his descriptions of each of the prints. The portfolio contained thirty-four woodcuts, eighteen of which were printed in colours. The complete portfolio is now very rarely found. It included such delightful items as Aus London and the superb colour woodcut Schneiderwerkstatt bei Orlik in Prag (the Orlik tailoring workshop in Prague), which depicts his father and colleague’s busy sewing.

Orlik was also commissioned to design colour posters for the Best-Litovsk Peace Conference at which Russia and Germany ended their conflict. He produced seventy-two lithographs, including a number portraits of Leon Trotsky. Around this time he also began to study photography, and by the mid-1920s was photographing celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich and Albert Eintstein.

Emil Orlik died of a heart attack on September 28, 1932. His brother Hugo was willed the estate, and with it the numerous works of art Orlik had collected throughout the years. Hugo Orlik and his family perished in WWII at the hands of the Nazis, and the only survivor was an aunt who regained what little was left of Emil’s effects. To this day Orlik’s work is still exhibited throughout the world.

Anonymous. “Emil Orlik Biography” on The Annex Galleries website Nd [Online] Cited 17/04/2023. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Installation views of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

Unknown photographer
Trans* people in the Eldorado in Berlin
1926
© bpk / Kunstbibliothek, SMB

Meeting, moving – forging bonds

Bars and clubs, magazines, organisations, private or public places: queer subcultures and networks emerged in Germany beginning at the turn of the century and especially in the 1920s. Political goals were formulated together. People communicated using their own codes, ciphers, and symbols.

The public sphere continued to be reserved primarily for men – heterosexual, white, and Christian men. But the experience of conquering one’s own spaces against all social opposition, of joining forces and stepping into the public sphere together, led to a growing self-confidence in the queer scenes. In the process, they not only fought for their own interests; political bonds were forged and coalitions formed that bridged differences.

Visions for a society with equal rights for all people were drafted, and existing structures of power were questioned. But internal conflicts emerged as well, and not all queer groups pulled together.

§ 175 des Reichsstrafgesetzbuchs

Trancript: “Paragraph 175: Perverse fornication committed between persons of the male sex or by persons with animals is punishable by imprisonment; loss of civil rights may also be imposed.”

According to Paragraph 175 of the Imperial Criminal Code, sexual intercourse between men was punishable. This provision originated in the Prussian Criminal Code and was introduced throughout Germany with the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Prior to this, homosexuality was exempt from punishment in some German states, such as Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, following the example of France. The paragraph was controversial from the beginning: ecclesiastical conservatives and extreme right-wing parties demanded it be made more severe; liberals, social democrats, and communists called for its abolition.

Organisations and the conquest of public space

At the end of the nineteenth century, gay men joined forces to fight against persecution based on Paragraph 175. They founded clubs and associations and sought supporters to achieve their vision of a more open society. Berlin became the hub of this movement and developed into a leading centre of attraction for queer people. It was in Berlin that, in 1897, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was founded, which aimed to achieve legal and social equality for homosexual and trans* people.

Some activists from the women’s movements joined this struggle, especially when the extension of Paragraph 175 to encompass women was debated in 1909. Their goal was far-reaching sexual and social reform: a woman’s right to sexual self-determination, abortion, extramarital relations, and independence from her husband. Some leading women’s rights activists lived with another woman, but only few openly identified as lesbian.

Queer subcultures flourished in the Weimar Republic. A diverse landscape of organisations emerged that represented the interests of gays, lesbians, and trans* persons. However, the struggle against Paragraph 175 was not always synonymous with advocacy for an open society. Among gay activists there were also those who paid homage to a homoerotic male cult. They excluded – in addition to women – all those who did not conform to their heroic, in some cases also racist ideas of masculinity.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Adolf Brand (publisher)
Der Eigene (The Unique)
1926

Founded in 1896 by Adolf Brand, “Der Eigene” was the longest-running homosexual journal. With its literary-artistic contributions it evoked the image of heroic masculinity.

Struggle against Paragraph 175: the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee

The physician Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) came from a liberal Jewish family and began actively campaigning for the abolition of Paragraph 175 at the end of the nineteenth century. His actions were motivated by the persecution to which gay men were subjected. As a sexual reformer and founder of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, he fought against the prevailing rigid sexual morality and contributed significantly to the visibility of queer people.

Magnus Hirschfeld utilised modern means in his educational activities. The silent film drama was shot in 1919 with his active participation. It is considered the first film to deal openly with Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) the subject of homosexuality. Heavily attacked by conservative and right-wing extremists, and by some with anti-Semitic motives, the film was used as an opportunity to curtail the artistic freedom introduced after the 1918 revolution. After being screened publicly for a full year, the film was banned by censors in 1920 and almost all copies were destroyed.

“Anders als die Andern” is about a homosexual musician who is subject to blackmail. When he no longer knows what to do and files charges, not only is the blackmailer convicted, but he himself is also sentenced – for violating Paragraph 175. He is shattered by the verdict and takes his own life.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Excerpt from Different from the Others | © UCLA Film & Television Archive

Excerpts from Different From the Others (Anders als die Andern) (Germany, 1919), which was preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive as part of the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project. Funding provided by The Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation and the members of Outfest.

Synopsis

The concert violinist Paul Koerner takes a student under his wing, much to the worry of the boy’s parents. Koerner is meanwhile being blackmailed by a former lover, since in Germany any homosexual relations at that time were punishable under the law, codified in Article 175, which was not removed from the books until the 1960s. The German film, Different From the Others is, as far as we know, the first fiction feature film to address a specifically gay audience. Fortunately, even though more than 90% of all German silent films have disappeared, this film exists today in at least half its original length. When the film was first shown in 1919, gay and lesbian audiences must have been amazed that a mainstream fiction feature film would portray their situation as a fact of nature, rather than a perversion. Today, this film celebrates the brief opening of that door, before it slammed shut for another 50 years.

The film was produced and directed by Richard Oswald, at that time one of Germany’s most prolific independents, who made films cheaply and premiered them in a Berlin cinema he owned, where his wife would often handle the office box. Oswald had earned a fortune in 1917 / 1918 with a number of “educational” feature films about sexually transmitted diseases, which were approved by the censorship authorities, simply because syphilis was rampant in the trenches. Oswald would continue to produce controversial films, like his acknowledged masterpiece, The Captain from Koepenick (1931) based on Carl Zuckmayer’s anti-authoritarian play. The Nazis never forgave Oswald for Anders als die Andern or Koepenick, forcing Oswald into exile and eventually to Hollywood, where he directed several films and televisions shows. Although long under appreciated in Germany, recent critical reappraisals have valued his in-your-face aesthetic and modern subject matter.

Only a severely truncated version of the film has survived, with Ukrainian titles, as Gosfilmofond in Russia. It was restored previously to a semblance of the original 1919 release by the Munich Film Museum. The UCLA restoration is based on that Munich reconstruction, with some changes and additions made.

Credits

Richard-Oswald-Produktion. Screenwriters: Magnus Hirschfeld and Richard Oswald. Cinematographer: Max Fassbender. With: Conrad Veidt, Leo Connard, Ilse von Tasso-Lind, Alexandra Willegh, Ernst Pittschau, Fritz Schulz.

Different From Others: A Legacy Preserved (2012)

Featurette about the restoration of German silent film Different From Others (1919). Produced for the Outfest Legacy Project and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

On October 6 the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer lives 1900-1950 opens at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. TO BE SEEN is devoted to the stories of LGBTQI+ in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. Through historical testimony and artistic positions from then and now, it traces queer lives and networks, the areas of freedom enjoyed by LGBTQI+, and the persecution they suffered.

Participating artists

Katharina Aigner, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Claude Cahun, Zackary Drucker & Marval Rex, Nicholas Grafia, Philipp Gufler, Richard Grune, Lena Rosa Händle, Hannah Höch, Paul Hoecker, Nina Jirsíková, Germaine Krull, Elisar von Kupffer, Zoltán Lesi & Ricardo Portilho, Herbert List, Heinz Loew, Jeanne Mammen, Michaela Melián, Henrik Olesen, Emil Orlik, Max Peiffer Watenphul, Jonathan Penca, Lil Picard, Karol Radziszewski, Alexander Sacharoff, Gertrude Sandmann, Christian Schad, Renée Sintenis, Mikołaj Sobczak, Wolfgang Tillmans and others.

TO BE SEEN will be accompanied by an extensive program of events and outreach on topics such as the persecution of LGBTQI+ persons under National Socialism, the queer history of Munich, intersectionality and drag, as well as queer identity in literature and film. All information and updates can be found at nsdoku.de/tobeseen.

The accompanying publication features a collection of texts and artworks from the exhibition as well as essays by key voices that shed light on past and present queer lives from an academic and social perspective. The book in German and English will be published in December 2022 by Hirmer Verlag. It features contributions by, among others, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Michaela Dudley, Sander L. Gilman, Dagmar Herzog, Ulrike Klöppel, Ben Miller, Cara Schweitzer, Sebastien Tremblay.

TO BE SEEN: Queer lives 1900-1950 takes place under the patronage of Claudia Roth, Minister of State for Culture and Media. The exhibition was funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Director: Mirjam Zadoff
Head Curator: Karolina Kühn
Curators: Juliane Bischoff, Angela Hermann, Sebastian Huber, Anna Straetmans, Ulla-Britta Vollhardt
Project Management: Karolina Kühn, Anna Straetmans, Sebastian Huber

Press release from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism

Film still from The Mystery of Gender
Austria 1933
© Filmarchiv Austria

In April 1933, the film “The Mystery of the Gender” ran in Viennese cinemas for about two weeks before it was banned. The film is a mixture of romance and medical educational film, including close-ups of the women’s genitals. Among the protagonists are – without mentioning their names – Toni Ebel, Charlotte Charlaque and Dora Richter. You can find an excerpt of the film in our storytelling http://www.tobeseen.nsdoku.de

Toni Ebel converted to Judaism in early 1933, but reversed the conversion as the pressure of persecution increased. After 1945 she was recognised in the GDR as a victim of fascism. Ebel was able to start a new life as a painter.

Charlotte Charlaque and Toni Ebel remained in correspondence after their forced separation in 1942. In 1946 Charlaque told her friend about her loneliness, her arrival as a refugee in New York and the difficulties in getting her female name recognised.

Dora Richter became known as one of the first trans* women to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Since it was difficult for trans* people to find work, she took a job as a housemaid at the Institute for Sexology, which was looted by National Socialist groups in 1933. Nothing is known of Richter’s fate after 1933.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism showing at rear, an enlargement of an image by an unknown photographer of the Eldorado in the Motzstrasse (1932, below); and at left centre in the display cabinet, an image by an unknown photographer Trans* people in the Eldorado in Berlin (1926, above)
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

The Eldorado on Lutherstraße was one of the city’s infamous cabaret bars.

The Eldorado was the name of multiple nightclubs and performance venues in Berlin before the Nazi Era and World War II. The name of the cabaret Eldorado has become an integral part of the popular iconography of what has come to be seen as the culture of the period in German history often referred to as the “Weimar Republic”. …

Eldorado was a gay cabaret in that along with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* patrons, a heterosexual-identifying audience (artists, authors, celebrities, tourists) would have been present as well. “Cross-dressing” was tolerated on the premises, though for the most part legally prohibited and / or sharply regulated in public (and to an extent in private) at the time. This exception to everyday life attracted not only male patrons who wished to dress in the “clothing of the opposite sex”, and their admirers, but also to no small extent women who wished to do the same, and their admirers. Wealthy lookers-on were encouraged to come and drink and watch as so-called “Zechenmacher” (tab payers). The practice was particularly common in so-called “Lesbian bars” or at so-called “Lesbian balls” in the neighbourhood at the time and up the 1960s in places like the Nationalhof at nearby Bülowstraße 37. As women’s incomes were on average much lower than men’s then as now, male spectators with money to spend were explicitly welcome, and it was not uncommon that there were sex-workers present to offer their services. Eldorado also included what have come to be called drag shows as a regular part of the cabaret performances.

Text from the Wikipedia website

The Eldorado, which opened in 1926 on Lutherstrasse in Berlin-Schoeneberg, was – along with its counterpart, the “new Eldorado” on Motzstrasse – one of the internationally most well-known trendy bars of its time. Magnus Hirschfeld, Claire Waldoff, Anita Berber and Marlene Dietrich often and happily visited the Eldorado, as did the prominent National Socialist Ernst Röhm. With its shows, it attracted a wealthy audience, which soon consisted not only of homosexuals and trans* people, but above all of onlookers heterosexuals. Guests could purchase tokens that could be exchanged for a dance with the Eldorado’s “transvestite” staff.

Token from the Eldorado with same-sex dancing couples on the front and back
c. 1930
© Gay Museum, Berlin

Dance monocle in original bag
© dhmberlin

A popular accessory for lesbian women in the 1920s was the “dance monocle”

Short hair, ties, tails, and top hats were other identifying marks within part of the lesbian scene – and soon to be common among modern heterosexual women as well. The “New Woman” of the 1920s broke away from traditional gender images and appropriated new things and spaces that had previously been occupied by men.

In the Berlin scene, but also in other cities, numerous gay and lesbian clubs that rented premises, called for social activities, but also explicitly pursued political and emancipatory goals. One of the largest “women’s clubs” was the Violetta Ladies’ Club, founded in Berlin in 1926.

The founder of the women’s club Violetta was the lesbian activist Lotte Hahm (1890-1967), who also wrote for “The Girlfriend”. Together with her Jewish partner Käthe Fleischmann (1899-1967) she ran the lesbian bar Monokel-Diele in Berlin. After 1933, both initially tried to maintain lesbian networks and meeting places under cover names. Fleischmann, persecuted as a Jew, survived the Nazi era in various hiding places.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Invitations to monocle parties of the Violetta women’s club in Berlin and the women’s association “Geselligkeit” in Chemnitz
In Garçonne 1931/1939
© forummuenchenev

Unknown photographer
The Eldorado in the Motzstrasse, corner of Kalckreuthstrasse
1932
© nsdoku

Meeting places

A lively scene for homosexuals and trans* persons emerged in Germany during the 1920s. Especially in major cities, a number of clubhouses, bars, and clubs functioned as meeting places. The undisputed centre of queer life was Berlin. Police authorities there followed a more liberal course than elsewhere after the end of the nineteenth century. Nearly two hundred subcultural venues are documented in the imperial capital between 1919 and 1933, about eighty of them for lesbian women.

In conservative Munich, as in smaller cities and rural areas, fewer venues existed. Homosexual men had to resort to informal meeting places, due to the ongoing criminal persecution. They used public parks and toilets as “pick-up spots” to socialise or have sex. In doing so, they always ran the risk of being denounced or stopped by the police.

Magazines and informal networks

Magazines were an important means of communication for queer subcultures. They listed relevant clubs and bars, bookstores, and associations, and served as contact exchanges. These references and opportunities were essential particularly for queer people in rural areas, where there were no functioning networks. However, the publishers had to reckon with the banning of their print products at any time. It was not uncommon for entire print runs or volumes to be labeled as “trash texts” and confiscated.

In order to avoid police persecution and social exclusion, the scene employed its own linguistic codes. Camouflage terms such as “friend”, “girlfriend”, “ideal friendship”, “friendly exchange of ideas”, or “ideal-minded” were used to refer to lesbian and gay connections. Lonely hearts ads in relevant magazines were often the only way to find like-minded people, especially in smaller towns and in the countryside.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism showing historical magazines

In TO BE SEEN you can leaf through historical magazines. They were an important means of communication for queer subcultures.

Magazines such as “Die Freundsblatt”, “DasFreundschaftsblatt” or “Frauenliebe” referred to relevant pubs, bookstores and associations and served as contact exchanges. Especially for queer people in rural areas, where there were no functioning networks, these tips and opportunities were essential. However, the publishers had to expect their printed products to be banned at any time. It is not uncommon for entire editions or volumes to be marked as “trash and dirty writing” and confiscated.

“The Girlfriend” (subtitle “The Ideal Friendship Journal”, later “Weekly Journal for Ideal Female Friendship”) was a magazine for lesbian women from 1924 to 1933 in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. It is considered the first lesbian magazine and was first published monthly, then every two weeks, and later even weekly.

The editor was Friedrich Radzuweit (1876-1932), chairman of the Federation for Human Rights. The content focuses on information on lesbian life and meeting places for lesbians, political topics, short stories, serialised novels and classifieds. Although “The Girlfriend” was primarily aimed at a lesbian readership, there are also numerous articles that deal with topics such as ‘transvestism’ or transgender. It was discontinued a few weeks after the National Socialists seized power in January 1933: the last issue appeared on March 15, 1933, a week before the Enabling Act was passed.

Covers from Die Freundin (The Girlfriend), September 1932, and Liebende Frauen (Women in Love), 1929

Cover of “Die Freundin” (The Girlfriend)
26. December 1927
© Forum Queeres Archiv München

Unknown photographer
Magnus Hirschfeld
c. 1900
© Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Unknown photographer
“Zwischenstufenwand” (sexual transitions wall)
c. 1925-1930
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz

The “Zwischenstufenwand” (sexual transitions wall) in the Institute for Sexology illustrated Hirschfeld’s theory that all people have male and female qualities in them.

The famous picture wall, illustrating Hirschfeld’s sex and gender theories. It was first exhibited in Leipzig (1922) on occasion of the German Natural Scientists’ and Physicians’ centenary and then in Vienna (1930) at the World League for Sexual Reform’s congress. The picture wall (2×1 m by 4×5 m) always had a prominent place in the Institute and was used to explain sexual theories to visitors.

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism

Knowledge, diagnosis, control

Scientific interest in sexuality and gender was expanding around the turn of the century. The amount of sexological research and number of publications increased. Most writings described homosexuality or trans* identities as “pathological” conditions. This assumption has since been scientifically refuted. At the same time, groundbreaking theories emerged, for example Magnus Hirschfeld’s model of “sexual intermediates.” In it, the sexologist anticipated the later realisation that numerous other gender identities besides man and woman exist.

Yet, then as now, knowledge also meant power and control. People were examined, described, classified, and judged as patients. Some sexologists incorporated ideas in their research that drew on biologism and eugenics. These were spread throughout society and later played a central role for the Nazis: their conception of so-called “racial hygiene” distinguished between “valuable” and “unworthy” life.

The driving forces in the German-speaking world from the 1860s on were the lawyer and physician Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and the physician Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Ulrichs in particular fought for the decriminalisation and recognition of homosexuality. His insights into the diversity of sexuality and gender are still essential today. Other scientists understood the “third sex” as a pathological phenomenon and wanted to effect the “re-education” and “healing” of their patients with methods that were sometimes questionable. The result was often physical or psychological trauma.

The Institute for Sexology and its patients

Magnus Hirschfeld was the best-known representative of sexology in the German-speaking world. He combined a pursuit for emancipation and a scientific perspective, was a champion of decriminalisation and a physician at the same time. His Institute for Sexology, founded in Berlin in 1919, became the centre of the liberal-leftist sexual reform movement of the Weimar Republic. In addition to research and medical consulting, the institute operated a library, an archive, and a museum. Unlike conservative sexologists, Hirschfeld and his staff worked towards the self-acceptance of homosexuals and trans* persons.

This “adaptation therapy” or “milieu therapy” aimed to help people adapt to the queer milieu that suited them, instead of repressing their identity. Many important people from the gay community, such as Lili Elbe, were treated here. Homosexual writers such as André Gide and Christopher Isherwood visited the institute. People who today would be considered intersex were also counselled. From the beginning, the Nazis were disturbed by liberal sexology, Hirschfeld, and his institute. Many of the institute’s employees were, like Hirschfeld himself, Jewish. In 1933, Nazi students and SA members demolished the institute; Hirschfeld was on a world tour at the time and remained in exile in France.

The institute grew to become a refuge for “transvestites”. This is how people who we understand today as trans* persons were called at the time. Some of them lived in the institute and earned their living there. They were particularly dependent on it. Despite the institute’s great merits, the relationship between doctors and “patients” was not unproblematic from today’s point of view.

By mediating between queer people and state power, Hirschfeld and his colleagues were able to protect their patients and fight for more rights and freedom for them. But in order to do so, they cooperated with the police and the courts, thus providing the state institutions with access and control. Then as now, intersex and trans* people were rarely perceived as experts on themselves, making them dependent on the recognition bestowed by medicine and the justice system. This was accompanied by a scientific and state-regulatory view of their bodies that pushed them into the role of patients, externally controlled subjects, instead of granting them autonomy over their bodies as well as their own voice.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Hirschfeld’s medical practices are controversial today

However, Magnus Hirschfeld also referred those male homosexuals who, based on his biological research, assumed that homosexuality could also be treated, to other doctors. They castrated the patients and implanted heterosexual testicles in them.

Not only Magnus Hirschfeld’s medical practices, but also his scientific approach is controversial today. His absolute belief in biology leaned towards social Darwinism and eugenics. He founded a “Medical Society for Sexology and Eugenics”. He thus promoted “sexual selection” in order to improve the “mental fitness of the offspring”. He was thus at the same time far away and entirely in line with the National Socialists.

The National Socialists saw Hirschfeld as a security risk, a threat to the population growth of the “Aryan race” and not only in him. Tens of thousands of gay men are sentenced to prison, jail, and concentration camps, the gay civil rights movement is crushed, gay hangouts are closed, magazines are banned, and then, on May 6, 1933, the Institute for Sex Research is looted and its library burned.

Gabi Schlag and Benno Wenz. “Magnus Hirschfeld – pioneer of sex research,” on the SWR website 29.7.2021 [Online] Cited 12/04/2023. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research.

Unknown photographer
First Congress for Sexual Reform on a Sexological Basis
1921
From Magnus Hirschfeld, Sexology, vol. 4, plates
© Forum Queeres Archiv München

Session of the “International Conference for Sex Reform on a Sexological Basis”, organised by Hirschfeld 1921 in Berlin at the Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus. (Hirschfeld, leaning forward, is seated just beneath the lectern.) This was the first sexological congress held anywhere, and it laid the groundwork for the Copenhagen congress of 1928.

Willy Römer (German, 1887-1979)
Transvestites in Front of the Institute of Sexology
1921
Gelatin silver print
© bpk / Kunstbibliothek, SMB, Photothek Willy Römer

Titled “Transvestites in Front of the Institute of Sexology” this photograph was taken on the occasion of the First International Congress for Sexual Reform on the Basis of Sexology in Berlin, 1921.

Willy Römer (December 31 , 1887 in Berlin – October 26, 1979 in West Berlin ) was a press photographer. His picture agency was one of the ten most important of the Weimar period. The pictures mainly illustrate life in Berlin from 1905 to 1935. It is thanks to a rare stroke of luck that his extensive picture archive survived the Second World War almost unscathed.

“Transvestite Certificate” for Gerd Katter
1928
© Archiv der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft

Starting in 1900, “Transvestite Certificates” were issued by a doctor, that officially certified that a person was known to be “wearing men’s clothing” or “wearing women’s clothing”.

In TO BE SEEN #QueerLives we also show Gerd Katter’s “Transvestite License”. From 1900, “transvestite certificates” were issued in some cities. It is a medically certified official confirmation that a person is known as “wearing men’s clothing” or “wearing women’s clothing”. The authorities refrain from making an arrest if you show them during checks. However, those affected are thus registered with the police and can be monitored more easily.

Gerd Katter (1910-1995) came to the Institute for Sexology at the age of 16 – at that time still with a female birth name. Barred from having his breasts amputated because of his youth, Katter tries to operate on himself, which requires an emergency amputation. Katter is one of many people who receive concrete, albeit unconventional, help at the institute. So he is prescribed to visit bars where “transvestites” meet. According to the adaptation therapy pursued at the institute, those seeking advice should be brought into contact with like-minded people. This is how they should learn to accept themselves.

Magnus Hirschfeld repeatedly invited Gerd Katter to the institute to show his guests a medical case study – a practice of displaying people and their bodies that was common at the time, but which is problematic from today’s medical-ethical point of view. Gerd Katter later completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter and lived in the GDR.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Charlotte Wolff (German-British, 1897-1986)
Bisexuality
German edition from 1981
© NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

Charlotte Wolff – Sexology in Exile

Female homosexuality and bisexuality received little attention in the male-dominated field of sexology. An exception was the research of Charlotte Wolff (1897-1986). The physician situated precisely these topics at the centre of her work. After 1933, left-wing, Jewish, and openly lesbian women in Germany were increasingly targeted by the Nazis. Being Jewish, she emigrated to Paris in 1933, and to London in 1936. Her research on lesbian sexuality and bisexuality earned her international recognition beginning in the 1960s.

Feeling Bodies, Seeing Images

At the same time as the advancements in sexology, new notions of the body, gender, and intimacy were finding expression in art and culture. Literature, theatre, film, and the visual arts offered an opportunity to question gender stereotypes and to create new roles and body images. These served as the basis for imagining freer ways of living and to lay the foundation for what we perceive today as queer aesthetics.

While Article 142 of the Weimar Constitution promised extensive artistic freedom, censorship was simultaneously introduced for the new medium of film. Munich in particular had numerous bans on film and theatre performances deemed offensive.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Unknown photographer
Anita Berber
c. 1925
© Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin – Archive German State Opera

New images of the body

In the first half of the twentieth century, artists experimented with new representations of the human body. They conceived of a wide spectrum of possible identities and sexualities situated outside the dominant categories. Artists subverted binary notions of gender, whether through ambiguities, gender-neutral codes, or playing with androgynous body images.

In 1933, the Nazis put an end to this diversity. Avant-garde works by artists such as Hannah Höch or Jeanne Mammen were denounced as “degenerate” and confiscated, banned, or destroyed. The regime instead honoured artists such as Arno Breker, Leni Riefenstahl, and Josef Thorak, who immortalised traditional gender images in monumental depictions. Such images supported the Nazi regime’s racial ideals, and endured well into the postwar period.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1954)
Que me veux-tu?
1929
Gelatin silver print
Paris Musees, musée d’Art moderne

Hannah Höch (German, 1889-1978)
Untitled (Hannah Höch at her easel, The Hague; self-portrait (double exposure) with the painting Symbolic Landscape III)
1930
Gelatin silver print
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

Hannah Höch worked with clichés and role models in her art and was a significant influence on the Dada movement.

Hannah Höch (German, 1889-1878)

Hannah Höch (German: [hœç]; 1 November 1889 – 31 May 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media.

Höch’s work was intended to dismantle the fable and dichotomy that existed in the concept of the “New Woman”: an energetic, professional, and androgynous woman, who is ready to take her place as man’s equal. Her interest in the topic was in how the dichotomy was structured, as well as in who structures social roles.

Other key themes in Höch’s works were androgyny, political discourse, and shifting gender roles. These themes all interacted to create a feminist discourse surrounding Höch’s works, which encouraged the liberation and agency of women during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and continuing through to today.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Lovers

The works gathered here show homosexual couples and their intimate relationship with each other. At a time when gay and lesbian love could almost solely take place in secret, capturing queer intimacy within art became a political statement. The images represent an act of self-assertion within a discriminatory environment. They propose utopias and alternative realities that make togetherness possible – partly with recourse to antiquity, partly with a visionary view of future forms of loving and being.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Gertrude Sandmann (German, 1893-1981)
Rosa Nachthemd und schwarzer Pyjama (Pink nightgown and black pyjamas)
1928
© Anja Elisabeth Witte/Berlinische Galerie

Gertrude Sandmann (16 November 1893 – 6 January 1981) was a German artist and Holocaust survivor. Born into a wealthy German-Jewish family, Sandmann studied at the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen and had private tutelage from Käthe Kollwitz. In 1935 she was banned from practicing her profession due to the Nuremberg Laws. Given a deportation order in 1942, she ignored it, faked her own suicide, and hid with friends in Berlin until the end of the war. She lived in an apartment in Berlin-Schöneberg until the end of her life. She was a lesbian and, after the war, worked to improve the rights and visibility of LGBT people. Much of her oeuvre is held by the Potsdam Museum.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Gertrude Sandmann (1893-1981), who trained in Berlin and Munich, took private lessons from Käthe Kollwitz in the 1920s. She and the older artist remained lifelong friends. Unlike Kollwitz, however, Sandmann was less focused on social critique. A committed feminist, women were her favourite theme, as they were for her colleague Jeanne Mammen, who was about the same age.

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism showing at centre, Dora Kallmus’ photograph The trapeze artist Barbette (Nd, below)
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

The stage as site of utopias

In the Weimar Republic, vaudevilles, theatres, and nightclubs emerged in many major cities, on whose stages a freer treatment of sexuality and gender identities was allowed. Stage celebrities became role models for alternative gender roles, with drag performances developing into a genre in its own right.

The 1920s, often referred to as “golden” years, were by no means characterised by prosperity for most citizens, even though more and more people gained access to entertainment culture. War trauma and economic hardship stimulated the need to escape the worries of everyday life.

For many people, the bars and clubs of this period were places where they came into contact with alternative gender images and homosexuality, as well as where social debates were sparked.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Dora Kallmus (Atelier d’Ora) (Austrian, 1881-1963)
The vaudeville and trapeze artist Barbette
Nd
© Estate of Madame d’Ora, MK&G ~ Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

The trapeze artist Barbette (real name Vander Clyde, 1899-1973) celebrated great success in Europe from the mid-1920s. Barbette performed, among other things, in the Berlin Varieté Wintergarten. The sensational productions of the “female impersonators” became increasingly known to a mass audience – and thus also helped the male and female impersonators of the Berlin scene to gain acceptance.

Dora Philippine Kallmus (Madame D’Ora) (Austrian, 1881-1963)

Dora Philippine Kallmus (20 March 1881 – 28 October 1963), also known as Madame D’Ora or Madame d’Ora, was an Austrian fashion and portrait photographer.

Early life

Dora Philippine Kallmus was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1881 to a Jewish family. Her father was a lawyer. Her sister, Anna, was born in 1878 and deported in 1941 during the Holocaust. Although her mother, Malvine (née Sonnenberg), died when she was young, her family remained an important source of emotional and financial support throughout her career.

She and her sister, Anna, were both “well-educated,” spoke English and French, and played the piano. They had also traveled throughout Europe.

She became interested in the photography field while assisting the son of the painter Hans Makart, and in 1905 she was the first woman to be admitted to theory courses at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Training Institute). That same year she became a member of the Association of Austrian photographers. At that time she was also the first woman allowed to study theory at the Graphischen Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, which in 1908 granted women access to other courses in photography.

Career

In 1907, she established her own studio with Arthur Benda in Vienna called the Atelier d’Ora or Madame D’Ora-Benda. The name was based on the pseudonym “Madame d’Ora”, which she used professionally. D’ora and Benda operated a summer studio from 1921 to 1926 in Karlsbad, Germany, and opened another gallery in Paris in 1925. The Karlsbad gallery allowed D’Ora to cater to the “international elite vacationers.” These same clients later convinced her to open her Paris studio.

Between 1917 and 1927, D’Ora’s studio “produced” photographs for Ludwig Zwieback & Bruder, a Viennese department store. She was represented by Schostal Photo Agency (Agentur Schostal) and it was her intervention that saved the agency’s owner after his arrest by the Nazis, enabling him to flee to Paris from Vienna.

Her subjects included Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Tamara de Lempicka, Alban Berg, Maurice Chevalier, Colette, and other dancers, actors, painters, and writers.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Dora Kallmus (Austrian, 1881-1963)
The vaudeville and trapeze artist Barbette (detail)
Nd
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Unknown photographer
Dance study of Alexander Sakharoff
1912
Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration: illustr. Monatshefte für moderne Malerei, Plastik, Architektur, Wohnungskunst u. künstlerisches Frauen-Arbeiten – 30.1912

Life under dictatorship

After the Nazis took power in 1933, every form of queer life was threatened and continued to exist only in private spaces or secret locations. Hopes for a tacit tolerance of homosexuality by the Nazis were finally dashed after the murder of Ernst Röhm, chief of- staff of the SA (Storm Troopers). The period of open persecution had begun.

During the first major Nazi raids against homosexuals on October 20, 1934, 145 men were arrested in Munich alone. Paragraph 175 of the penal code was made more severe in June 1935: any act between men bearing sexual suggestion was now punishable.

About 57,000 homosexual men were sentenced to prison, and between 6,000 and 10,000 of them were deported to concentration camps, of whom at least half were murdered.

Female homosexuality was not prosecuted in the dictatorship, but was socially ostracised. If lesbian women and persons who did not conform to their gender were denounced, they were threatened with police investigations, house searches, and interrogations. If political opposition, social deviance, or racial persecution additionally occurred, they faced repression or even internment in a concentration camp.

The graphic artist Richard Grune (1903-1983) was imprisoned almost continuously from 1934 to 1945 because of his homosexuality. After his liberation from the concentration camp, he processed what he had experienced through art.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Richard Grune (German, 1903-1983)
Solidarity: Prisoner Supports His Exhausted Comrade
1945-1947
Lithograph
© Wien Museum

“Solidarity,” a lithograph of one prisoner supporting another, by German artist Richard Grune, who spent eight years in Nazi concentration camps after being convicted for homosexuality.

Trained as an artist and graphic designer, 29-year-old Richard Grune moved to Berlin the same month that the police began forcing these establishments to shut down. Although prominent nightclubs like the Eldorado faced closure, members of these communities still found ways to continue gathering more privately. For example, Grune hosted two parties for friends in his studio in fall 1934. He was denounced afterward – along with dozens of others – by a private citizen who often passed information to police. Grune was then arrested for alleged violations of Paragraph 175, the statute of the German criminal code that criminalised sexual relations between men. He was imprisoned for several months before being convicted and sentenced to a year in prison.

After serving his sentence, Grune was arrested again by the Gestapo and held indefinitely in what was misleadingly referred to as “protective custody” (“Schutzhaft”) – an experience shared by many convicted of violating Paragraph 175 under the Nazi regime.5 Grune spent the next decade in concentration camps, including Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg. He escaped from Flossenbürg in April 1945 as American forces approached and camp authorities evacuated the prisoners.

Grune created the featured lithograph6 – “Solidarity: Prisoner Supports His Exhausted Comrade” – in 1945 as part of a series of images inspired by his experiences as a prisoner in the Nazi camp system. These lithographs were reproduced in two published portfolios in 1947.7 Grune’s artwork reflects many of his own experiences, but it does not reference his persecution as a gay man in any specific way. Instead, his lithographs seem to suggest the idea of shared suffering among all concentration camp prisoners. Because sexual relations between men remained criminalised for decades in Germany after the end of World War II, many people convicted under Paragraph 175 chose to conceal the details of their past persecution under the Nazi regime.8

After the war, Grune chose to portray himself as a political prisoner of Nazism, but he was not able to obtain official recognition or compensation for his suffering. Although his lithographs are among the most important artistic representations of concentration camp experiences created immediately after the war, Grune could not support himself as an artist. He did occasionally find design and illustration work, but he made his living by working as a bricklayer. Grune died in obscurity in Kiel, Germany in 1983.

Anonymous. “Lithograph by Richard Grune,” on the Holocaust Sources in Context website Nd [Online] Cited 10/04/2023. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research.

“This is how the Führer cleaned up!”
Front page of the extra issue of the Völkischer Beobachter, June 30, 1934, Berlin edition
Public domain

Homosexuality in Nazi organisations and in the military

The proscription of homosexuality was used by various sides in the political struggle. In 1931 / 1932, the Social Democrats utilised Ernst Röhm’s homosexuality to harm the Nazi Party. The Röhm case served the notion of “gay Nazis” gathering together in male associations, a phenomenon that did exist. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the Nazi regime increasingly cracked down on homosexual activity in the army, police, and Nazi associations. Intimacy between men was now punished particularly severely in party organisations and the police. Nazi propaganda labeled homosexual men as “enemies of the state” to legitimise this persecution. Nevertheless, clandestine homosexual encounters continued to occur.

Adapting to survive

After the dismantling of gay and lesbian subcultures across the entire state and the harshening of criminal law, homosexual contact took place almost exclusively in private spaces. Fear of denunciation and persecution drove most homosexuals to hide their sexuality and conform.

This also applied to lesbian women and trans* persons, who were not prosecuted per se. They could remain unhampered as long as they did not attract attention. Marriages of convenience were one of many survival strategies. Certain prominent artists were tolerated by the Nazi regime despite their widely known homosexuality. The regime, which needed these stars for its propaganda, held off on persecution, and demanded that they conform in their way of living.

Persecution and imprisonment

The Nazi regime’s treatment of homosexuals and trans* persons was not uniform. Initially, most of the men convicted under Paragraph 175 were released after serving their prison sentences. Especially since 1940 many were transferred to concentration camps. Lesbian women and trans* persons were sometimes charged with other crimes, such as prostitution or indecent behaviour. Others were persecuted for political, social, or racist reasons.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Unknown photographer
Photographs from Elisabeth (Lilly) Wust’s diary entry on the deportation of her Jewish partner Felice Schragenheim to the Theresienstadt concentration camp
August 21, 1944
© Jewish Museum Berlin

Part of the diary entry by Elisabeth (Lilly) Wust on the deportation of her Jewish partner Felice Schragenheim to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, August 21, 1944

Elisabeth (Lilly) Wust (1913-2006) and Felice Schragenheim (1922-1945) met in Berlin in 1942, shortly after Schragenheim went into hiding as a Jew. They moved in together a little later and promised to marry in June 1944. On August 21, 1944, Felice Schragenheim was discovered and taken to a Berlin collection point for Jews. Lilly Wust visited her there several times before the deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto. In the hope of being able to help her beloved, Lilly Wust travelled to Theresienstadt herself in the fall of 1944.

Felice was deported to Auschwitz a little later. She died in early 1945, probably in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Lilly Wust searched for her for years.

The love story of Lily Wust and Felice Schragenheim gained notoriety in the 1990s through the book “Aimée & Jaguar” and the feature film of the same name. However, there is another version of the story: Elenai Predski-Kramer, a former girlfriend of Felice Schragenheim, tells her perspective on the love story after the book was published and expresses the suspicion that Lilly Wust herself might have betrayed Felice Schragenheim. However, there is no evidence for this.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Unknown photographer
Photograph from Elisabeth (Lilly) Wust’s diary entry on the deportation of her Jewish partner Felice Schragenheim to the Theresienstadt concentration camp (detail)
August 21, 1944
© Jewish Museum Berlin

Exile and resistance

Only a few homosexual and trans* people succeeded in escaping Nazi persecution through emigration. This option was usually only open to the wealthy or those who had international contacts and could find work abroad thanks to their education and language skills. Leaving Nazi Germany was made more difficult by the measures against capital transfer, which were tightened in 1934. The “Reich Flight Tax” reduced assets by 25 percent upon departure, the export of foreign currency was prohibited, and the transfer of bank or securities assets was made almost impossible.

Individual homosexual or transgender people decided to actively resist the Nazi regime, also in the territories occupied by Germany. They documented the crimes of the Nazi regime, called for resistance, carried out sabotage, committed attacks, or fought as partisans or members of foreign troops against Hitler’s Germany.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1954)
Self Portrait (with Nazi badge between her teeth)
1945
Gelatin silver print
© Jersey Heritage Collection

Jewish-French author and photographer Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1954) and her partner Marcel Moore (French, 1892-1972) put up resistance against the Nazi regime.

After four years of subversive activity, the pair were arrested by the Germans in 1944. Initially, the Nazi authorities couldn’t believe that the women carried it out by themselves. “They believed that there must be somebody else involved, there must be a man involved,” says Downie.

While waiting to be questioned, Cahun and Moore attempted suicide. They both took pills – barbiturates – which put them into a coma. Once they were well enough, they were sentenced to death for undermining the German forces. But the Bailiff of Jersey and the French Consul pleaded on their behalf – by that time, the Normandy landings had happened and Saint-Malo (the main connecting port) had been liberated, so they could no longer be deported to camps in Europe – and their sentence was commuted.

Although their lives had been saved, Moore and Cahun were not pleased. “They wanted to be martyrs for their cause,” says Downie. “To them, that would’ve been the realisation of their life of resistance, to be a martyr for freedom.”

At 3.40pm on May 9, 1945, the swastika was lowered from Fort Regent, a 19th-century fortification in St Helier, and the Union Jack was hoisted, signalling the official end of the occupation. Then the celebrations began. Cahun joined the crowds in Royal Square cheering, flag-waving, and holding a sailor aloft. Despite ill health from their time in prison, they kept on creating work after the war. In the same month, a photograph shows them gripping a Nazi eagle badge brazenly between their teeth, a silk scarf tied around their head, their hands dug into their coat pockets, their eyes staring defiantly at the camera.

Jessie Williams. “Claude Cahun: Jersey’s queer, anti-Nazi freedom fighter,” on the Huck website 14th May, 2020 [Online] Cited 17/04/2023. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research.

After 1945

Queer history was hardly remembered or archived after 1945. To this day, we know only some of the pioneers of the queer emancipation movement. We know even less about the life of those who were persecuted, driven into exile, murdered – or simply remained invisible.

After the end of the war, queer people continued to be marginalised. Gay men in particular continued to suffer in large numbers under Paragraph 175, many of whom did not go free but were transferred from concentration camps directly to prisons.

The ongoing discrimination by state and society changed only slowly. In 1969, Paragraph 175 was reformed and criminal law liberalised. Beginning in the 1970s, new social movements emerged, including a homosexual emancipation movement. Various groups reclaimed the “pink triangle” as a symbol to stand up for the rights of queer people.

Lesbian and feminist groups also gained popularity during the 1970s. Although lesbian sexuality was not directly persecuted by the state, many suffered from the misogynistic legal situation. The legal preferential treatment of men made it difficult to live out lesbian relationships, due to discrimination in labor and marriage laws.

The emergence of HIV in the 1980s affected many gay men and trans* people: thousands became infected, developed AIDS, and died. The state did not help, but instead relied on stigmatising measures and an aggressive rhetoric of exclusion, especially in Bavaria. For those affected, this recalled the previous period of open persecution.

Thanks to the efforts of activists, the health, political, and social situation of LGBTQI+ persons has improved since the 1990s. Today, queer people in Germany can celebrate some achievements and are also represented in politics. However, much remains to be done for LGBTQI+ equality. In many places around the world the situation is increasingly deteriorating. Trans* people in particular continue to face great discrimination.

Therefore, the commitment to queer self-determination is not over, but more relevant than ever. Because in the end, it not only ensures the preservation of LGBTIQ* human rights, but creates a more just society for all.

Text from Stories of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950

Paul Hoecker (German, 1854-1910)

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism showing in the bottom image at left on the wall, Paul Hoecker’s painting Head of a youth / Portrait of a boy (1901); and at right on the wall, Paul Hoecker’s painting Pierrot (Nd)
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

Paul Hoecker (German, 1854-1910)
Young Man’s Head
Cover of Jugend magazine, volume 44, 1901
Public domain

A chapter of TO BE SEEN #QueerLives is dedicated to the artist Paul Hoecker (1854-1910). It was created in collaboration with @forummuenchenev, which researches Hoecker’s story to honor and commemorate his life and work.

Paul Hoecker shaped the Munich art scene in the late 19th century. After his homosexuality became known, the artist was excluded and fell into oblivion. As a professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, Hoecker had a great deal of influence during his lifetime: almost all the painters in the artist group “Die Scholle” and many illustrators for the magazines “Simplicissimus” and “Die Jugend” were among his students. The co-founder of the Munich Secession also received great recognition for his artistic work.

Hoecker privately exchanged views with the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld about the fact that he has “contrasexual tendencies”, i.e. is gay. When a sex worker was recognised in the model of his acclaimed work “Ave Maria”, he was involuntarily outed. Paul Hoecker forestalled a scandal by resigning from his professorship. In this way he was able to avoid having to take a public position on his sexuality. He withdrew first to Italy and later to his home in Silesia, Oberlangenau.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Paul Hoecker (German, 1854-1910)

Paul Hoecker (11 August 1854, Oberlangenau – 13 January 1910, Munich) was a German painter of the Munich School and founding member of the Munich Secession…

The Munich Academy

In 1891, at the young age of 36, he was appointed to the Munich Academy, where he replaced Friedrich August von Kaulbach, who had resigned suddenly. He was the first teacher at the academy to take his students on field trips, which often lasted two weeks. He was also one of the first “modern” teachers there, exposing his students to impressionism and the latest developments from the Barbizon School. His studio was often referred to as the “Geniekasten” (Genius Box).

Due to the pervasive influence of Franz von Lenbach, very little exhibition space was available for any art that was considered modern. In 1892, shortly after being appointed a professor, this problem motivated Hoecker to become one of the founding members of the Munich Secession, acting as its secretary. The Secession ultimately inspired similar movements in Berlin and other cities.

Scandal

In 1897, a scandal broke out when it was rumoured that Hoecker had used a male prostitute as a model for a painting of the Madonna. Eventually, the scandal became more personal in nature, and he chose to resign from the academy. He then travelled to Capri, where he stayed at the Villa Lysis, home of industrialist and poet Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, who had left Paris in the wake of his own scandal. While there, Hoecker painted several portraits of Fersen’s lover, Nino Cesarini, a professional model. Though the Jugend magazine published one of his Nino portraits in 1904 – a fully clothed version. By 1901 he returned to Oberlangenau. In 1910, he died of what was diagnosed as “Roman Malaria”.

Posthumous recognition

Despite his important role for the Munich art scene of the late 19th century, Paul Hoecker is hardly known today. This is probably due to the fact that he left the professorship in connection with his homosexuality. In October 2019 a research group was formed at the Forum Queeres Archiv München to investigate the life and work of the painter. Part of the family owned estate of Paul Hoecker has found its way into the archive of the Forum Queeres Archiv München and was digitalised.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Elisar von Kupffer (German, 1872-1942)
Dove Sei? / Where Are You?
1914/1918
© Comune di Minusio – Centro Elisarion

Elisar von Kupffer (German, 1872-1942)

Elisàr August Emanuel von Kupffer (20 February 1872 – 31 October 1942) was a Baltic German artist, anthologist, poet, historian, translator, and playwright. He used the pseudonym “Elisarion” for most of his writings…

Career

In 1895 he published Leben und Liebe (Life and Love), a book of poetry. In autumn of that year he moved to Berlin to study at the Berlin Art Academy and moved in with Von Mayer. The following year, he left Agnes and wrote the dramas Der Herr der Welt (Master of the World), and Irrlichter (Wisps) as well as three one-act plays. In 1897 he published the anthology Ehrlos (Infamous, or Dishonorable).

Von Mayer graduated in 1897 and they travelled throughout Italy, Sicily, Southern France and Geneva before returning to Berlin. They spent the summer in Thuringia and Heiligendamm and went back to Italy in 1899. Early next year, Adolf Brand published Von Kupffer’s influential anthology of homoerotic literature, Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltliteratur (roughly, “Love of Favourites and Love Between Friends in World Literature”. Lieblingminne is a neologism created by Von Kupffer). The anthology was researched and created, in part, as a protest against the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in England. It was reprinted in 1995.

In 1908 he published a book on Il Sodoma, the Renaissance artist. In 1911, he and Von Mayer founded the publishing house Klaristische Verlag Akropolis in Munich and Von Kupffer published three major works: a play, Aino und Tio, Hymnen der heiligen Burg (Hymns of the Holy Castle) and Ein neuer Flug und eine heilige Burg (A New Flight and a Holy Castle). His work was also published and reviewed in the gay magazine Akademos, published by Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen. That same year, he and Von Meyer announced the creation of a “new religion”, Klarismus (Clarity), and established a community in Weimar. The following year he published a book on Klarismus called Der unbekannte Gott (The Unknown God). In 1913, the Brogi Gallery in Florence hosted his first art exhibition. Later that year, a Klarist community was established in Zürich.

Later life and death

In 1915, with World War I in progress and growing animosity towards Germans, they left Italy and moved to Ticino, where Von Kupffer established himself as a painter and muralist in Locarno, Switzerland. They were granted Swiss citizenship in 1922. From 1925 to 1929 they transformed their villa in Minusio, near Lake Maggiore, into an opulent collection of art, the “Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion”. He was also a photographer, making photographic studies of boys for use in the creation of his paintings, but most of his works featured a youthful version of himself. The Klarist “Elisarion Community” was founded at Minusio in 1926. During the 1930s, the number of visitors increased, then sharply decreased; stopping altogether just before the onset of World War II.

As his health declined, he became reclusive and died on 31 October 1942. Since 1981 the “Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion” has been a Museum dedicated to Von Kupffer’s work. The villa was willed to the municipality of Minusio, and his ashes are interred inside, together with Von Meyer’s. The Elisarion Community was satirically referenced as the “Polysadrion” (roughly; Place of Many Idiots), in the 1931 novel Schloss Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985)
Les Amies
1924
From the portfolio Nudes
© Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Germaine Luise Krull (20 November 1897 – 31 July 1985) was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner. Her nationality has been categorised as German, French, and Dutch, but she spent years in Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and India. Described as “an especially outspoken example” of a group of early 20th-century female photographers who “could lead lives free from convention”, she is best known for photographically illustrated books such as her 1928 portfolio Métal.

Heinz Loew (German, 1903-1981)
Doppelportrait Heinz Loew und Hermann Trinkaus im Atelier, Bauhaus Dessau, Doppelbelichtung (Double portrait of Heinz Loew and Hermann Trinkaus in the studio, Bauhaus Dessau, double exposure)
1927
Gelatin silver print
3 1/2 x 4 1/4″ (9 x 12cm)
© Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

Christian Schad (German, 1894-1982)
Boys in Love (Liebende Knaben)
1929
© Museen der Stadt Aschaffenburg / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

Max Peiffer Watenphul (German, 1896-1976)
Stillleben mit Mimosen (Still Life with Mimosas)
1932

Max Peiffer Watenphul (1896 – 13 July 1976) was a German artist. Described as a “lyric poet of painting”, he belongs to a “tradition of German painters for whom the Italian landscape represented Arcadia.” In addition to Mediterranean scenes, he regularly depicted Salzburg and painted many still lifes of flowers. As well as oil paintings, his extensive body of work encompasses watercolours, drawings, enamel, textiles, graphic art, and photographs.

Gerda Wegener (Danish, 1885-1940)
Lili with a Feather Fan
1920

Gerda Wegener (Danish, 1885-1940)
Lili Elbe
c. 1928

Gerda Wegener (Danish, 1885-1940)
At the mirror
1931-1936

Advertisement by the Hella Knabe tailoring studio
In Die Freund, December 31, 1932
© forummuenchenev

On December 31, 1932 … this advertisement for Hella Knabe’s tailoring studio appeared in “Die Freund”. In the 1920s, a separate infrastructure was also created for “transvestites” – people who preferred the clothing of the opposite sex, including trans* people. Hella Knabe’s made-to-measure studio became a nationwide attraction. The hairdresser and seamstress, whose husband was a “transvestite” himself, advertised not only in scene magazines, but also in national magazines such as Jugend and Simplicissimus.

Hella Knabe made women’s underwear, artificial busts, corsets and chastity belts for her customers and ran a mail order business. In addition, she received boarders, clothed them, applied make-up and enabled them to live in the opposite sex for a short time. She continued to offer her services after 1933 and kept in touch with her clients through her own magazine with subcultural content. In 1938 she was therefore fined for distributing “lewd literature”.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Damenbar (Lesbian Bar)
c. 1930-1932
Lithograph

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Siesta
c. 1930-1932

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Hermaphrodite
c. 1945
© Stadtmuseum Berlin / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)

Jeanne Mammen (21 November 1890 – 22 April 1976) was a German painter and illustrator of the Weimar period. Her work is associated with the New Objectivity and Symbolism movements. She is best known for her depictions of strong, sensual women and Berlin city life.

Jeanne Mammen was born in Berlin, the daughter of a successful German merchant. She and her family moved to Paris when she was five years old. She studied art in Paris, Brussels and Rome from 1906-1911. Her early work, influenced by Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and the Decadent movement, was exhibited in Brussels and Paris in 1912 and 1913.

In 1916 Mammen and her family fled Paris to avoid internment during World War I. While her parents moved to Amsterdam, Mammen chose instead to return to Berlin. She was now financially on her own for the first time, as the French government had confiscated all of her family’s property. For several years Mammen struggled to make ends meet, taking any work she could find, and spending time with people from different class backgrounds. These experiences and newfound sympathies are reflected in her artwork from the period.

In time Mammen was able to find work as a commercial artist, producing fashion plates, movie posters, and caricatures for satirical journals such as Simplicissimus, Ulk, and Jugend. In the mid-1920s she became known for her illustrations evoking the urban atmosphere of Berlin. Much of her artwork depicted women. These women subjects often included haughty socialites, fashionable middle-class shop girls, street singers, and prostitutes. Her drawings were often compared to those of George Grosz and Otto Dix. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s she worked mainly in pencil with watercolour washes, and in pen and ink.

In 1921, Mammen moved into an apartment with her sister in Berlin. This apartment was a former photographer’s studio which she lived in until her death. Aside from Art throughout her life Mammen also was interested in science. She was close friends with Max Delbrück who left Europe and took some of her artwork with him and exhibited them in California. In addition to bringing these art works to be exhibited he also sent Mammen care packages from the United States with art supplies.

In 1930 she had a major exhibition in the Fritz Gurlitt gallery. Over the next two years, at Gurlitt’s suggestion, she created one of her most important works: a series of eight lithographs illustrating Les Chansons de Bilitis, a collection of lesbian love poems by Pierre Louÿs.

In 1933, following Mammen’s inclusion in an exhibition of female artists in Berlin, the Nazi authorities denounced her motifs and subjects as “Jewish”, and banned her lithographs for Les Chansons de Bilitis. The Nazis were also opposed to her blatant disregard to for apparent ‘appropriate’ female submissiveness in her expressions of her subjects. Much of her work also includes imagery of lesbians. The Nazis shut down most of the journals she had worked for, and she refused to work for those that complied with their cultural policies. Until the end of the war she practiced a kind of “inner emigration”. She stopped exhibiting her work and focused on advertising. For a time she also peddled second-hand books from a handcart.

In the 1940s, in a show of solidarity, Mammen began experimenting with Cubism and expressionism, a risky move given the Nazis’ condemnation of abstract art as “degenerate”. After the war she took to collecting wires, string, and other materials from the streets of bombed-out Berlin to create reliefs. In the late 1940s she began exhibiting her work again, as well as designing sets for the Die Badewanne cabaret. She created abstract collages from various materials, including candy wrappers. In the 1950s she adopted a new style, combining thick layers of oil paint with a few fine marks on the surface.

In the 1970s there was a resurgence of interest in Mammen’s early work as German art historians, as well as art historians of the women’s movement, rediscovered her paintings and illustrations from the Weimar period. In 2013 her later, more abstract work was featured in “Painting Forever!”, a large-scale exhibition held during Berlin Art Week. In 2017-2018, the Berlinische Galerie mounted a major exhibition of Mammen’s work, titled, “Jeanne Mammen: Die Beobachterin: Retrospektive 1910-1975” (Jeanne Mammen: The Observer: Retrospective 1910-1975), which included more than 170 works in various media, covering the period from the 1920s to her late work in the 1960s and beyond. The show was conceived as an update to a show mounted by the Galerie at the Martin Gropius Bau in 1997, which featured primarily works from the 1920s. In 2010 the Des Moines Art Center exhibited 13 water colour paintings done by Mammen which were inspired by Berlin in the Weimer era.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Herbert List (German, 1903-1975)
Beachcomber, Baltic Sea
1933
Gelatin silver print

Renée Sintenis (German born Poland, 1888-1965)
Zwei stehende Rehe (Two Standing Deer)
1948
Etching
22.3 x 15.2cm
© Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin

Renée Sintenis (German born Poland, 1888-1965)

Renée Sintenis, née Renate Alice Sintenis (20 March 1888 – 22 April 1965), also known as Frau Emil R. Weiss, was a German sculptor, medallist, and graphic artist who worked in Berlin. She created mainly small-sized animal sculptures, female nudes, portraits, and sports statuettes. She is especially known for her Berlin Bear sculptures, which was used as the design for the Berlinale’s top film award, the Golden Bear…

Career

When Renée Sintenis (as she called herself from then on) met the sculptor Georg Kolbe in 1910, she became his model. She modelled for a now lost life-sized statue.

Inspired by this activity, she began creating in sculpture female nudes, expressive heads like those of André Gide and Joachim Ringelnatz, athletes like the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, and self-portraits in drawings, sculptures (in terracotta) and etchings.

After 1915, the concise animal figures emerged, which became the subject of her artistic life. Since she rejected monumentality in sculpture, she mainly created small-format sculptures. These small works of art such as horses, deers, donkeys and dogs, enjoyed great popularity with the public because they were cheaper, suitable as gifts and could be placed in small rooms.

From attending Kolbe’s studio, a long-term friendship developed, which he accompanied artistically. In the 1913 Berlin autumn exhibition, the first major exhibition of the Free Secession, Sintenis took part (as in the following years) with small-format plaster sculptures.

From 1913 on, she had her works cast in the Hermann Noack fine art foundry, which she attended artistically for decades.

In 1917 she married the type artist, book designer, painter and illustrator Emil Rudolf Weiß, whom she had met years earlier as her teacher and was also and then as a fatherly friend. He supported her and introduced her to numerous other artists. Their collaboration was limited to a few joint projects, of which the edition of the 22 Songs of the poems by Sappho, for which she created the etchings and Weiß made the font designs, achieved particular fame.

From 1913 she exhibited her sculptures regularly and was highly valued by her colleagues from the Free Secession, the most important Berlin artists’ association, among others, by Max Liebermann, Max Beckmann, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The opening of a gallery in Berlin in 1922 made her the most important protagonist of the well-known Flechtheim art circle in those years. The art-interested public was infatuated with her athletic figures, portraits of friends and the small-format self-portraits.

In addition, due to her body size, slim figure, charisma, her self-confident, fashionable demeanor and androgynous beauty, she was often portrayed by artists like her husband, Emil Rudolf Weiß and Georg Kolbe, and by photographers, like Hugo Erfurth, Fritz Eschen and Frieda Riess. She embodied perfectly the type of the ‘new woman’ of the 1920s, even if she appeared rather reserved.

During the Weimar Republic, Renée Sintenis became an internationally recognised artist, with exhibitions in the Berlin Nationalgalerie, in Berlin, in Paris, the Tate Gallery, in London, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, Glasgow and Rotterdam. Her small-sized depictions of athletes (boxers, footballers, runners) and portrait busts of their circle of friends were found in public and private collections around the world.

In 1928 Sintenis won the bronze medal in the sculpture section of the art competition for the Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, for her “Footballeur”. She is thought to be the first LGBTQ+ Olympic medallist. Renée Sintenis took part in the 1929 exhibition of the German Association of Artists in the Cologne State House, with five small-format animal sculptures. In 1930 she met the French sculptor Aristide Maillol in Berlin. In 1931 she was appointed as the first sculptor, and second woman after Käthe Kollwitz, together with 13 other artists, to join the Berlin Academy of the Arts – Fine Arts section, although the National Socialists forced her to leave in 1934.

In 1932, she created a statue of the Berlin Bear, a bear standing on its hind legs with its arms raised, based on the Coat of arms of Berlin. The design was popular, and she sold many 15 cm (5.9 in) statues of the bear, which brought wealth and was taken up again in later life.

Third Reich

Emil Rudolf Weiß was dismissed from his university post on 1 April 1933, because of an angry statement against the Nazi regime and the law to reintroduce the civil service. Sintenis herself was excluded from the Academy of the Arts in 1934 because of her Jewish origins – her maternal grandmother was Jewish before her conversion. Nevertheless, she was able to stay in the Reich Chamber of Culture, even if her works were removed from public collections by the National Socialists.

During the Third Reich, Renée Sintenis and her husband Emil Rudolf Weiß lived with considerable restrictions. She continued to exhibit, although one of her self-portraits was shown in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1934. Since she was not banned from exhibiting, she was represented in Düsseldorf by the art dealer Alex Vömel, Flechtheim’s successor. In contrast to the 1920s, she was not doing well financially, which was reinforced by the bronze casting ban of 1941.

Until the forced dissolution of the Deutscher Künstlerbund in 1936, Sintenis remained a member of the German Association of Artists. That she was sponsored by the NSDAP propagandist Hans Hinkel, as it was later claimed, has not been proven and is highly unlikely.

Her husband died unexpectedly on 7 November 1942 in Meersburg on the Lake Constance. His death plunged Sintenis into a deep crisis. As a result, she took over his studio in the Künstlerhaus on Kurfürstenstrasse, where Max Pechstein also worked. His family took temporarily on her when her studio house was destroyed by arson and several Allied bombings in 1945. Sintenis lost almost all of her possessions; all papers and parts of her work were lost. While most of the cast models were preserved, the plaster frames of most of the portrait heads were also destroyed. In a self-portrait mask from 1944, the hardships of the war years are visible in her features.

Post-war career

After the war, Sintenis and her partner Magdalena Goldmann moved into an apartment on Innsbrucker Strasse in 1945, where they both lived until their deaths. In 1948, Sintenis received the art prize of the city of Berlin and was appointed by Karl Hofer to the Berlin University of Fine Arts. She was appointed full professor in 1955, although she gave up teaching the same year. She was also appointed to the newly founded Academy of the Arts of Berlin (West) in 1955.

In the 1950s, she became very successful once again. She stayed true to her artistic focus and motifs, which she called “making animals”.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Lena Rosa Händle (German, b. 1976)
Girl Under Trees
2016
Courtesy the artist
Photo: @frau_orla

In “These hands – a world without equal” (2022, below), the artist Lena Rosa Händle explores the continuation of hidden lesbian codes from the 1920s to the present day. Händle refers to the dancer Tilly Losch, the painter Mariette Lydis and the artist Claude Cahun and focuses on the motif of the hands as a gesture and code of lesbian people. In her photographs, @lenarosahaendle, together with DJane and curator @tonicahunter, reinterprets traditional gestures and is reminiscent of the first female photo studios of the 1920s.

For her work “Girls under Trees” (2016, above), Händle draws on the motif of a tapestry that schoolgirls painstakingly embroidered in 1941 in needlework classes, which were compulsory for girls at the time. Händle adds two personal ads from the newsreel published in Vienna in 1942 to the motif: “Miss is looking for correspondence with a girlfriend under modern” and “Lady wants a girlfriend for the purpose of cinema and theatre”. Advertisements like these are testimonies to the few coded signs of lesbian subculture during the Nazi era. Terms such as “Miss”, “Girlfriend” and “Lady” served as lesbian identification codes, as did the colours lilac and violet. In doing so, the artist sensitively refers to issues such as political power structures, socially enforced expectations and the resulting subtlety of lesbian aesthetics.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Lena Rosa Händle (German, b. 1976)
These hands – a world without equal
2022
Courtesy the artist

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism showing Wolfgang Tillmans’s photograph The Cock (Kiss) (2002, below)
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968)
The Cock (Kiss)
2002
Courtesy Galerie Buchholz

El Palomar
Schreber is a Woman
2020
Film still
© El Palomar

In their audiovisual piece Schreber is a Woman, the Barcelona-based artists’ collective El Palomar delves into the mind of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German lawyer (1842-1911) who became famous for his reports from a psychiatric clinic that later inspired Freud. In his Memoirs of My Nervous Illness from 1903 Schreber recounts feeling like a woman, among other experiences. The book influenced Sigmund Freud to elaborate his theories on paranoia and schizophrenia. Relevant to Schreber’s story is the fact that his father, Dr. Moritz Schreber, authored several books that proposed strict authoritarian models for the physical and moral education of children, which were very popular in Germany and other parts of Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century.

El Palomar uncover and reinterpret the writings of Schreber from a transfeminist perspective to deconstruct the Freudian link between Schreber and schizoprenic paranoia trough a queer viewpoint. Focusing on the images and sounds that Schreber describes in his memoirs, the film offers a rereading of the case as rooted in a period when gender identities were restricted to classical binary archetypes. Schreber is a Woman subverts the original circumstances of queer lineage, recontextualizing gender and pleasure in the present.

Anonymous. “Schreber is a Woman – Video Art on Queer and Trans History,” on the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism website Oct 7, 2022 [Online] Cited 10/04/2023. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research.

Installation view of the exhibition TO BE SEEN: Queer Lives 1900-1950 at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism showing work from Philipp Gufler’s series Quilts, in the bottom image Quilt #43 (Sophia Goudstikker) (2021)
Photo: Connolly Weber Photography/NS-Dokumentationszentrum München

Philipp Gufler (German, b. 1989)
Quilt #50 (Lil Picard)
2022
Screenprint on fabric
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Françoise Heitsch
Photo: @frau_orla

In his quilts Philipp Gufler references queer artists, scholars, and places of queer life that have found little or no place in written memories and the historical canon. The series thus becomes an alternative archive that generates a form of intergenerational memory through the technique of “quilting.” In this technique the textiles left behind by deceased people are reassembled and contextualised. The fine materiality of the fabrics stands in direct contrast to the often massive, solid stone monuments of Western historiography. By reusing a variety of historical relics, he creates diverse personal and ancestral forms of memory of different origins. The choice of materials in the works is just as important as the choice of motifs and the associated stories that are told.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Zoltán Lesi (Hungarian, b. 1982) and Ricardo Portilho (Brazilian)
In Frauenkleidung (In Women’s Clothing)
2019
Courtesy the artists and Edition Mosaik Salzburg
Foto: @frau_orla

The poetry collection “In Frauenkleidung” (In Women’s Clothing, above) is a joint work by the lyricist Zoltán Lesi and the designer Ricardo Portilho and is dedicated to the lives of intergender athletes in the early 1930s. In their book, both artists combine documentary language with historical photographs and newspaper clippings drawn from Lesi’s image archive, which has been in the making since 2017. The resulting surrealistic collage uses historical distance to question facts, construction, and truth in a humorous yet sensitive way.

Parallel to the publication, they have created the audio installation “Ein Sprung und der Hummer” (A Jump and the Lobster, below) which, in the form of a Dadaist assemblage inspired by Joseph Cornell, blurs the line between fiction and the documentation of the biographies of the athletes, contributing another layer to the narrative level of the book of poems.

Text from the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism Instagram page

Zoltán Lesi (Hungarian, b. 1982) and Ricardo Portilho (Brazilian)
Ein Sprung und der Hummer (A Jump and the Lobster) (installation view)
2018/2022
Courtesy the artists
Foto: @frau_orla

Zoltán Lesi (Hungarian, b. 1982) and Ricardo Portilho (Brazilian)
Ein Sprung und der Hummer (A Jump and The Lobster) (installation view)
2018/2022
Courtesy the artists
Foto: @frau_orla

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80333 Munich
Phone: +49 (0)89 233-67000

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Review: ‘Queer British Art 1861-1967’ at Tate Britain, London

Exhibition dates: 5th April – 1st October, 2017

Curators: Clare Barlow, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain with Amy Concannon, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain

Queer British Art 1861-1967 book cover

Very Pauline

Queer British Art 1861-1967 at Tate Britain examines the “historical reality of same-sex relationships and non-normative sexual identities” from 1861, the year for the end of the death penalty for sodomy in Great Britain, through to 1967 which is when sex between consenting adults in private, obviously male homosexuality is partially decriminalised in England and Wales. The timescale of the exhibition encompasses the beginning of a more considered understanding of gender and sexual identity through to the beginnings of a limited freedom: from repression to liberation.

For a man who came out in London in 1975, only 8 short years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, this exhibition should have been more engaging than it was. While there were some outstanding art works and artefacts presented in the eight rooms of the exhibition, chronologically laid out in the posting below – such as the prison door from Oscar Wilde’s cell at Reading Gaol, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell’s book covers, the paintings of Henry Scott Tuke and the photography of Angus McBean – there was little of the passion of being gay in evidence in much of the objects, or how they were presented. It all seemed so very academic, and not in a good way. Other than some stunning erotic drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, Duncan Grant and Keith Vaughan (see below) there was little to suggest that being gay had anything to do with sex, the exhibition living up to that very British of axiom’s, “No sex please, we’re British!” The curators may have thought that sex would be a distraction, for it was all ‘very Pauline’.

The exhibition is full of innuendo, supposition, obfuscation, abstinence, hints, traces, clouded desires and supposed longings – in both the art work and the wall texts which accompanied the work. Of course, this is how artists had to hide their sexuality, same-sex desires and relationships during much of this period for fear of ostracisation from society and possible prosecution, but the presentation came across as little more than “au fait”, so much matter of fact. The exhibition was not helped by illuminating texts such as this: “The exact nature of Thomas and Philpot’s relationship is unknown. Many of Philpot’s depictions of Thomas carry a homoerotic charge and some are exoticising. What Thomas felt about his years with Philpot from 1929 to the artist’s death in 1937 is unknown.” Ugh!

You might as well have said nothing, and let the art work speak for itself.

Other commentaries could have done with a more insightful enunciation of the circumstances of the particular artist, in addition to text on the specific art work. A perceptive anointing of their life would have added invaluably to the frisson of the exhibition. For example, I wanted to know why the painter Christopher Wood died at the young age of 29 as well as the specifics of his painting Nude Boy in a Bedroom (1930, below). According to Wikipedia, Wood – bisexual, addicted to opium and painting frenetically in preparation for his Wertheim exhibition in London – became psychotic and jumped under a train at Salisbury railway station. These are the things that you need to know if you are to fully appreciate the gravitas of a life and a person’s relationship to their art, don’t you think?

Further, no pictures were allowed in the gallery spaces. Whereas I could take photographs of the Rachel Whiteread exhibition at the same venue to my heart’s content (even after being confronted by a guard who said I couldn’t, who was then corrected by a colleague with no apology for his attitude to me), I had to play a Machiavellian game of cunning hide and seek with guards and attendants to get the installation photographs of this exhibition. Why was this so? It almost seemed to be a case of the gallery being ashamed of the art they were exhibiting, as though the attitudes of the past towards art that explores same-sex relationships was being replicated by the duplicity of the gallery itself: the art could be seen but not heard, hidden away in the bowls of an academic institution. I also noted that one of 19 collages that Kenneth Halliwell exhibited at the Anno Domino gallery in 1967 (see below) was purchased by the Tate in 2016. Considering “the exhibition was a failure and Halliwell’s professional frustration contributed to the breakdown of his relationship with Orton,” eventuating the murder of the playwright and his own suicide… for some of those very same works to now reside at the Tate is the ultimate irony. I doubt Halliwell would have been laughing in his grave.

The stand out works in this exhibition were by Duncan Grant and Keith Vaughan. Their work explores the strength and beauty of the male form with a vitality of purpose and harmony of composition that was succinct and illuminating for this viewer. Grant’s Bathing (1911, below) ascribes anthropomorphic qualities to distorted figures whose elongated arms, distended chests and exposed buttocks would have been shocking to the people of Belle Epoque Britain. His erotic drawings (below) were the most beautiful, sensitive and sensual art works in the whole exhibition. Vaughan’s simplification of the figuration of the male form into abstract shapes, whilst still retaining the enigma of sensuality, narrative and context, are the triumph of this inverts painting. Their patterning and displacement of time and space onto an intimate other – a copious, coital realm of existence full of feeling, information and matter – were a revelation to me.

While the exhibition enunciates a remarkable range of identities and stories, from the playful to the political and from the erotic to the domestic, it was a deflating experience. I came away thankful that I had seen the work, that the artist’s had been able to express themselves however surreptitiously, but angry that so much of the world still sees LGBTQI people as second class citizens whose art work has to be examined through the prism of sexuality, rather than on the quality of the work itself.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. How you can classify Claude Cahun as a British artist I will never know: she lived on the Channel Islands for a few years, but she was the very epitome of a French artist!

Many thankx to Tate Britain for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. All installation images are © Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Much more fucking and they’ll be screaming hysterics in next to no time.”

Joe Orton

“For me, to use the word ‘queer’ is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me, but no longer.”

Derek Jarman

“It’s really interesting as to whether or not we should be concerned with the sexuality of an artist when we consider the merits of his artwork, because really what he does behind closed doors – or she does – has nothing to do, or shouldn’t have anything to do with the impact of the artwork as we see it. But what is important is the artist can use that material of their personal life and create a work that is almost a personal diary but visually.”

Estelle Lovatt

Featuring works from 1861-1967 relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) identities, the show marks the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England. Queer British Art explores how artists expressed themselves in a time when established assumptions about gender and sexuality were being questioned and transformed.

Deeply personal and intimate works are presented alongside pieces aimed at a wider public, which helped to forge a sense of community when modern terminology of ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘trans’ were unrecognised. Together, they reveal a remarkable range of identities and stories, from the playful to the political and from the erotic to the domestic. With paintings, drawings, personal photographs and film from artists such as John Singer Sargent, Dora Carrington, Duncan Grant and David Hockney the diversity of queer British art is celebrated as never before.

Text from the Tate Britain website

100 years of gay art history, from repression to liberation

On the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales, the Tate Britain gallery is launching a major exhibition exploring Queer British Art. The new exhibition showcases 100 years of art and artists from the repression of the Victorian era through to the love and lust of 1960s Soho.

Room 1: Coded Desires

In spite of the Victorian era’s prudish reputation, there are many possible traces of transgressive desire in its art – in Frederic Leighton’s sensuous male nudes, for instance, or Evelyn De Morgan’s depictions of Jane Hales. Simeon Solomon attracted sustained criticisms of ‘unwholesomeness’ or ‘effeminacy’ – terms which suggest disapproval of alternative forms of masculinity as much as same sex desire. Yet other works which might look queer to us passed without comment.

The death penalty for sodomy was abolished in 1861 but it was still punishable with imprisonment. Sex between women was not illegal and society sometimes tolerated such relationships. Yet for most people, there seems to have been little sense that certain sexual practices or forms of gender expression reflected a core aspect of the self. Instead, this was a world of fluid possibilities.

These ambiguities offered scope for artists to produce work that was open to homoerotic interpretation. Queer subcultures developed: new scholarship on same-sex desire in Renaissance Italy and ancient Greece allowed artists to use these civilisations as reference points, while the beautiful youths in Wilhelm von Gloeden’s photographs attracted communities of collectors. As long as there was no public suggestion that artists had acted on their desires, there was much that could be explored and expressed.

Installation view of Room 1 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain with Frederic Leighton's 'The Sluggard' (1885, bronze) in the middle of the room

Installation views of Room 1 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain with Frederic Leighton’s The Sluggard (1885, bronze) in the middle of the room
Photos: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905) 'Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene' 1864 from the exhibition 'Queer British Art 1861-1967' at Tate Britain, London, April - October, 2017

Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905)
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene
1864
Watercolour on paper
330 x 381mm
Tate. Purchased 1980

Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene is a touching image of female love. The piece is inspired by fragmented poems written by a woman named Sappho in the 4th century BC, in which she pleads that Aphrodite help her in her same-sex relationship. The term ‘lesbian’ derives directly from this poet, as her homeland was the Greek Island of Lesbos. Sappho’s story points to a longer history of same-sex desire. It’s perhaps for this reason that Simeon Solomon, a man who was attracted to men in defiance of the law, painted her. While a depiction of two men kissing would have been completely taboo, this is a passionate depiction of same-sex desire.

Solomon’s own sexual preferences eventually lead to his incarceration. When he was released from prison he was rejected by many of his acquaintances, struggled to find work and soon became homeless; a painful reminder of our repressive past.

Text from the Tate website

This strikingly frank image shows the ancient Greek poet Sappho in a passionate embrace with her fellow poet Erinna. Sappho is associated with the Island of Lesbos and her story gives us the word ‘lesbian’. There was a surge of interest in Sappho’s achievements and desires from the 1840s onwards. Solomon may be responding to his friend Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem Anactoria which includes Erinna amongst Sappho’s lovers. While female same-sex desire was considered more acceptable than its male equivalent, Solomon’s depiction of Sappho’s fervent kiss and Erinna’s swooning response is unusually explicit and the image was not publicly exhibited.

Wall text from the exhibition

Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905) 'The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love' 1865 from the exhibition 'Queer British Art 1861-1967' at Tate Britain, London, April - October, 2017

Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905)
The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love
1865
Ink on paper
Victoria and Albert Museum

This work was inspired by a passage from the Gospel of St John which tells how ‘the friend of the bridegroom… rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice’. In Solomon’s drawing, the friend of the bridegroom has the wings of love but his downcast expression identifies him as ‘sad love’, forever excluded. The positioning of his and the bridegroom’s hands hints at the reason for his grief, implying that that they are former sexual partners. He is forced to look on as his lover enters a heterosexual marriage: a fate shared by many men in same-sex relationships in this period.

Wall text from the exhibition

Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905)
Bacchus
1867
Oil paint on paper on canvas
Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council

The classical god of wine, Bacchus also embodies sexual ambiguity and gender fluidity. While grapes and vine leaves identify the god in Solomon’s painting, Bacchus’s full lips, luxuriant hair and enigmatic gaze hint at his elusive sexuality. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867, the critic of The Art Journal thought the figure looked effeminate, commenting ‘Bacchus is a sentimentalist of rather weak constitution; he drinks mead, possibly sugar and water, certainly not wine’. Solomon’s friend, critic Walter Pater wrote a favourable essay about the painting and poet Algernon Charles Swinburne said he found in Solomon and Bacchus alike, ‘the stamp of sorrow; of perplexities unsolved and desires unsatisfied’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905)
The Moon and Sleep
1894
Oil paint on canvas
Tate. Presented by Miss Margery Abrahams in memory of Dr Bertram L. Abrahams and Jane Abrahams 1973

Made a few years after Solomon’s arrest and social ostracisation, this painting depicts the love of the moon goddess Selene for Endymion, who, in one version of the myth, is given eternal youth and eternal sleep by Zeus. While it ostensibly depicts a heterosexual pairing, the striking similarity of the profiles of the figures in Solomon’s painting gives them both an air of androgyny. This painting was given to Tate by a descendent of Rachel Simmons, Solomon’s first cousin, who helped to support him after his fall from public favour by regularly buying his works for small sums of money.

Wall text from the exhibition

Photographer unknown
John Addington Symonds (installation view)
c. 1850s
Photograph, tinted collodion on paper
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

John Addington Symonds was a writer, critic and an early campaigner for greater tolerance of same-sex desire. This photograph probably dates from Symonds’s time at Oxford University (1858-1863). His studies informed his later essay, A Problem in Greek Ethics 1873, one of the earliest attempts at a history of male same-sex desire. Symonds frankly discussed his desires in his diaries and unpublished writings, which he believed would be ‘useful to society’. However, when his friend Edmund Gosse inherited Symonds’s papers in 1926, he burned them all apart from Symonds’s autobiography. This destruction nauseated Symonds’s granddaughter Janet Vaughan. It was not until 1984 that Symonds’s autobiography was finally published.

Wall text from the exhibition

Sidney Harold Meteyard (English, 1868-1947)
Hope Comforting Love in Bondage
Exhibited 1901
Oil paint on canvas
Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council

Hope is depicted as a respectably fully-clothed matron, whereas Love’s only costume is his elaborate cloth bindings and the rose briars that are delicately threaded through the feathers of his wings. The flowers and thorns of the roses hint at pleasures and pains combined. Love’s pensive expression and androgynous beauty is reminiscent of the work of Simeon Solomon and, while Hope stretches out her hand to comfort him, his gaze is fixed elsewhere, leaving the object of his affections undefined.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of Frederic Leighton’s Daedalus and Icarus 1896 from the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Frederic Leighton (British, 1830-1896)
Daedalus and Icarus
Exhibited 1869
Oil paint on canvas
Private collection

In a story from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Daedalus made wings for his son Icarus to escape from Rhodes. Icarus’s golden beauty is here contrasted with his weather-beaten father. When the work was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1869, The Times anxiously remarked that Icarus had the air of ‘a maiden rather than a youth’ and exhibited ‘the soft rounded contour of a feminine breast’. This response may reflect increasing concern amongst educated circles about the pairings of older men and adolescent youths in books such as Plato’s Symposium, as new scholarship explored the eroticism of the original texts.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of Henry Scott Tuke’s A Bathing Group 1914 from the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Henry Scott Tuke (English, 1858-1929)
A Bathing Group
1914
Oil paint on canvas
Lent by the Royal Academy of Arts, London

While Henry Scott Tuke used the professional model Nicola Lucciani for this painting, it is similar to his images of Cornish youths in its frank appreciation of the male nude. Lucciani’s torso is illuminated by a shaft of sunlight and he looks towards the second figure, who crouches as if in awe of his godlike beauty. Tuke presented the painting to the Royal Academy on his election as a member. Tuke used professional models when he first moved to Cornwall, but he soon befriended some of the local fishermen and swimmers in Falmouth who modelled for him in many paintings.

Wall text from the exhibition

Henry Scott Tuke (English, 1858-1929)
The Critics
1927
Oil paint on board
Courtesy of Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum (Warwick District Council)

Made just two years before Tuke’s death, The Critics is one of a number of works by Henry Scott Tuke depicting young men bathing off the Cornish coast. There has been much speculation about his relationships with his Cornish models although nothing has been substantiated. It is, however, not difficult to find a homoerotic undercurrent in this painting, as the two men on the shore appraise the swimming technique – and possibly the physique – of the youth in the water. Writer John Addington Symonds was a frequent visitor and he encouraged Tuke in his painting of male nudes in a natural outdoor setting.

Wall text from the exhibition

Room 2: Public Indecency

This room looks at ways in which sexuality and gender identity did – and did not – go public, from the 1880s to the 1920s. Public debate over sexuality and gender identity was stirred up by scandals, campaigns and scientific studies. The trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for gross indecency and Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness in 1928 for supposed obscenity put a spotlight on same-sex desire. In the field of science, the project of classifying sexual practices and forms of gender presentation into distinct identities, which had been begun by German psychiatrists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing, reached Britain through the work of Havelock Ellis who co-authored his book Sexual Inversion 1896 with John Addington Symonds. However, change was slow, and many people remained unaware of new terminologies and approaches to the self that this new science offered.

Installation view of Henry Bishop’s Henry Havelock Ellis from the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Henry Bishop (British, 1868-1939)
Henry Havelock Ellis
1890s
Oil paint on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London. Bequeathed by François Lafitte, 2003

The sexologist Henry Havelock Ellis’s great work Sexual Inversion, co-authored with John Addington Symonds, defined queer sexualities in Britain for a generation. Published in English in 1897, it drew on the experiences of people such as Edward Carpenter (whose portrait hangs nearby). It was effectively banned in Britain after the prosecution of a bookseller, George Bedborough. This informal portrait was probably made around the time of Bedborough’s trial. It depicts Ellis sitting in a deckchair in Henry Bishop’s studio in St Ives. There is some evidence Bishop was attracted to men and Ellis’s non-judgemental attitudes may have encouraged Bishop to make his acquaintance. He became a lifelong friend.

Wall text from the exhibition

Edmund Dulac (British born France, 1882-1953)
Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon as Medieval Saints
1920
Tempera on linen over board
The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

Oscar Wilde described the home of the artist and designer Charles Ricketts and his lifelong partner the painter Charles Shannon as ‘the one house in London where you will never be bored’. Here, the couple are playfully depicted by their friend Edmund Dulac in the robes of Dominican friars. These robes possibly hint at the permanence of their bond: monastic vows were, after all, intended to mark entry for life into an all-male community. The peacock feather in Rickett’s hand signals their devotion to aestheticism, an art movement dedicated to beauty and ‘art for art’s sake’. By the 1920s, this was an emblem of a previous era.

Wall text from the exhibition

Charles Buchel (British, 1872-1950) 'Radclyffe Hall' 1918 (installation view)

Charles Buchel (British, 1872-1950)
Radclyffe Hall (installation view)
1918
Oil paint on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London. Bequeathed by Una Elena Vincenzo (née Taylor), Lady Troubridge, 1963
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Born ‘Marguerite’ Radclyffe Hall and known as ‘John’ to close friends, Radclyffe Hall was a key figure in provoking debate on female same-sex desire. This portrait was made ten years before Hall found fame as the author of The Well of Loneliness 1928. Despite the pleas of literary figures, including Virginia Woolf, this novel was effectively banned on the grounds of obscenity for its frank depiction of female same-sex desire. It was semi-autobiographical and was influenced by Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion. Hall’s sober jacket, skirt, cravat and monocle in this image reflected contemporary female fashions for a more masculine style of dress. After the trial, Hall’s clothes and cropped hair became associated with lesbianism and this portrait has become a queer icon. It was given to the National Portrait Gallery by Hall’s lover, Una Troubridge.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of Room 2 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain with Oscar Wilde's Prison Door c. 1883

Installation views of Room 2 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain with Oscar Wilde’s Prison Door c. 1883
Photos: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

This is the door of Oscar Wilde’s prison cell at Reading Gaol. Wilde spent three months of his incarceration writing a tortured letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas. This was later published as De Profundis (‘from the depths’). Wilde was not allowed to send the letter, although the manuscript was given back to him when he left prison. He told his friend Robert Ross, ‘I know that on the day of my release I will merely be moving from one prison into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to be no larger than my cell, and as full of terror for me’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Robert Goodloe Harper Pennington (American, 1854-1920) 'Oscar Wilde' c. 1881 (installation view)

Robert Goodloe Harper Pennington (American, 1854-1920)
Oscar Wilde (installation view)
c. 1881
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, California
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

The American artist Harper Pennington gave this portrait to Wilde and his wife Constance as a wedding present in 1884. It captures Wilde as a young man aged 27, on the cusp of success and it hung in Wilde’s home in Tite Street, Chelsea, London. While awaiting trial, Wilde was declared bankrupt and all his possessions, including this portrait, were sold at public auction to pay his debts. Few objects from his extensive collection have been traced. This painting was bought by Wilde’s friend Ada Leverson and it was kept in storage. Wilde told a friend that Ada’s husband ‘could not have it in his drawing-room as it was obviously, on account of its subject, demoralising to young men, and possibly to young women of advanced views’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Aubrey Beardsley (English, 1872-1898) 'Enter Herodias' 1893

Aubrey Beardsley (English, 1872-1898)
Enter Herodias from ‘Salome’ by Oscar Wilde
1890s
Photo-process print on paper
Victoria and Albert Museum

Here Herodias, Salome’s mother makes a dramatic entrance, bare-breasted and positioned at the centre of the composition. The grotesque figure on the left plucks at her cloak, his robe barely concealing his giant phallus, while the slender page appears notably unmoved. They seem to epitomise two forms of masculinity: the grotesquely heterosexual and the elegantly ambiguous. Oscar Wilde is satirised as the showman-like jester in the foreground.

Wall text from the exhibition

Cecil Beaton (British, 1904-1980)
Cecil Beaton and his Friends
1927
Photograph, bromide print on paper
National Portrait Gallery, London. Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and allocated to the Gallery, 1991

This photograph was taken at Wilsford Manor in Wiltshire, Stephen Tennant’s childhood home. The party depicted here includes Tennant, artist Rex Whistler, society hostess Zita Jungman and Beaton himself, although their elaborate fancy dress and make-up makes it hard to tell them apart. The poet Siegfried Sassoon, Tennant’s lover at this time, wrote in his diary, ‘It was very amusing, and they were painted up to the eyes, but I didn’t quite like it’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Room 3: Theatrical Types

The use of ‘theatrical’ as a euphemism for queer hints at the rich culture on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century stage. The extent to which audiences were aware of this varied. Music hall male and female ‘impersonation acts’ were wildly popular but were mostly seen as innocent ‘family fun’. In the formal theatre, plays for public production had to be passed by the Lord Chamberlain’s office. While some directors found ways to avoid censorship, there were few positive and explicit depictions of queer lives and experience. Many celebrities who were in same-sex relationships understandably tried to keep their lives from public view, although their desires were often open secrets. Nevertheless, whether as the subject of a moralistic ‘problem’ play or an innuendo in a saucy song, queer perspectives could find public expression on the stage.

Installation view of Room 3 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Unknown photographer, published by The Philco Publishing Company
Hetty King (Winifred Ems)
1910s
National Portrait Gallery

Angus McBean (Welsh, 1904-1990)

Angus McBean’s career was forged in the theatre. Success came in 1936 with his photographs of Max Beerbohm’s The Happy Hypocrite 1896, starring Ivor Novello. In a break with convention, McBean’s close-up images were well lit with studio lights and staged as intimate tableaux. Inspired by the International Surrealist exhibitions of 1936 and 1937, he began to make playful ‘surrealised portraits’, which were initially published in The Sketch. These used complex props and staging to create fantastical scenes and to give the illusion of distorted scale.

The images here all depict sitters who were in same-sex relationships. McBean’s own relationships with men led to a police raid on his house and his arrest in 1942 for criminal acts of homosexuality. He was convicted and sentenced to four years in jail but was released in 1944 and quickly reestablished his reputation as a photographer.

Angus McBean (Welsh, 1904-1990)
Sir Robert Murray Helpmann
1950
Photograph, bromide print on paper
© Estate of Angus McBean / National Portrait Gallery, London

McBean’s portrait of Robert Helpmann, published in The Tatler and Bystander on 28 April 1948, shows him in the role of Hamlet, which he was then playing at Stratford-upon-Avon. The production was designed to be Victorian gothic: an Elsinore of guttering candles and chiaroscuro lighting effects. There is perhaps some suggestion of this in the heavy shadows of McBean’s photograph, while Helpmann’s dramatic make-up emphasises his melancholic expression. The backdrop was created from a blown-up photograph of text from the First Folio of the play. In defiance of the law, Helpmann lived comparatively openly with his partner, the theatre director Michael Benthall. Their relationship lasted from 1938 until Benthall’s death, in 1974.

Wall text from the exhibition

Angus McBean (Welsh, 1904-1990)
Danny La Rue
1968
Photograph, bromide print on paper
National Portrait Gallery, London

Born Danny Carroll, Danny La Rue was one of the greatest stars in female impersonation. La Rue first performed while in the navy during the Second World War and later toured with all male revues such as Forces in Petticoats before becoming a cabaret star. La Rue’s glamorous appearance on stage, captured here, was undercut by the gruff ‘wotcher mates’, with which he opened his set. La Rue preferred the term ‘comic in a frock’ to ‘female impersonator’ and described his act as ‘playing a woman knowing that everyone knows it’s a fella’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Glyn Warren Philpot (British, 1884-1937)
Glen Byam Shaw as ‘Laertes’
1934-1935
Oil paint on canvas
Kindly lent by the sitter’s grandson, Charles Hart

The actor Glen Byam Shaw is depicted here as Laertes in John Gielgud’s 1934 critically acclaimed production of Hamlet in a costume designed by Motley: Elizabeth Montgomery, Margaret Percy and Sophie Harris. Glyn Philpot cut down the original three-quarter length portrait after it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1935. This reduction puts even greater focus on Byam Shaw’s face and heavy stage make-up. While the image is typical of productions of the period, the medium of the portrait removes it from its original theatrical context. Coupled with Byam Shaw’s arch expression, the overriding impression is one of high camp. Byam Shaw had almost certainly been the lover of the poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and may have met Philpot through Sassoon.

Wall text from the exhibition

Francis Goodman (English, 1913-1989)
Oliver Messel
1945
Photograph, silver gelatin print on paper
National Portrait Gallery, London
Bequeathed by the estate of Francis Goodman, 1989

Francis Goodman’s carefully posed photograph depicts Oliver Messel, the foremost British stage designer from the 1920s to the 1950s, surrounded by eclectic props. The producer Charles Cochran recalled how Messel ‘would pull something new out of his pocket – usually something used for domestic work – which he proposed to employ to give the illusion of some other fabric’. Messel was attracted to men and his fascination with dandyish excess, pastiche and artifice has been interpreted as a queer aesthetic.

Wall text from the exhibition

Paul Tanqueray (English, 1905-1991)
Douglas Byng
1934
Photograph, bromide print on paper
National Portrait Gallery. Given by Paul Tanqueray, 1974

Gay performer Douglas Byng gained the title ‘The Highest Priest of Camp’ with songs such as ‘Doris the Goddess of Wind’, ‘I’m a Mummy (An Old Egyptian Queen)’ and ‘Cabaret Boys’, which he performed with Lance Lester. Coward described him as ‘The most refined vulgarity in London, mais quel artiste!’ Byng’s costume in Paul Tanqueray’s photograph was probably the one he wore for his song ‘Wintertime’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Room 4: Bloomsbury and Beyond

The Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers famously ‘lived in squares and loved in triangles’. Dora Carrington had relationships with men and women but loved and was loved by Lytton Strachey, who was attracted to men. Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell lived together in Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex. A chosen few of Duncan Grant’s male lovers made visits but Paul Roche was forced to camp on the South Downs as he did not meet with Bell’s approval. Bell’s husband Clive lived apart from her but they remained happily married. While sexual intimacy was valued by the Group, it was not the most important bond tying the members together. Their network was a profoundly queer experiment in modern living founded on radical honesty and mutual support.

Bloomsbury’s matter-of-fact acceptance of same-sex desire was unusual but not unique. The objects in this room show a variety of different perspectives, from the quiet homeliness of Ethel Sands’s Tea with Sickert, to Gluck’s defiant self-portrait. Together, they reveal a generation of artists and sitters exploring, confronting and coming to terms with themselves and their desires.

Installation view of Room 4 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain featuring Ethel Walker’s Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa 1920
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Ethel Walker (Scottish, 1861-1951)
Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa
1920
Oil paint on canvas

The composition of this painting reveals Ethel Walker’s fascination with Greco-Roman friezes, as well as the artistic possibilities of the female nude. The painting is inspired by Book IV of Homer’s Odyssey, in which the princess Nausicaa bathes with her maidens. In 1900, Walker became the first woman member of the New English Arts Club, whose select committee reacted to this painting with ‘spontaneous and enthusiastic applause’. There has been some speculation about the nature of Walker’s relationship with painter Clara Christian, with whom she lived and worked in the 1880s, although little evidence survives. This image offers a utopian vision of an all-female community.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of Room 4 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain featuring Duncan Grant's 'Bathing' 1911

Installation view of Room 4 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain featuring at left, Duncan Grant's 'Bathing' 1911

Installation views of Room 4 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain featuring Duncan Grant’s Bathing 1911 (at left in the bottom image)
Photos: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978) 'Bathing' 1911

Bathing was conceived as part of a decorative scheme for the dining room at Borough Polytechnic, and it was Duncan Grant’s first painting to receive widespread public attention. Grant’s design takes inspiration from summers spent around the Serpentine in Hyde Park, which was one of a number of sites associated with London’s queer culture. The painting celebrates the strength and beauty of the male form, and its homoerotic implications were not lost on Grant’s contemporaries: the National Review described the dining room as a ‘nightmare’ which would have a ‘degenerative’ effect on the polytechnic’s working-class students.

Wall text from the exhibition

Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978) 'Bathers by the Pond' 1920-1921 (installation view)

Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978)
Bathers by the Pond (installation view)
1920-1921
Oil paint on canvas
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council 1985)
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

This painting shows a scene filled with homoerotic possibilities. The setting is possibly Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex, where Duncan Grant lived with Vanessa Bell, her children and his lover David (Bunny) Garnett. Grant’s use of dots of colour shows the influences of the pointillist technique pioneered by Georges Seurat. The nude figure in the foreground basks in the sun while the seated figures behind him exchange appreciative glances. Swimming ponds often served as cruising grounds and it is perhaps unsurprising that this work was not exhibited in Grant’s lifetime.

Wall text from the exhibition

Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978) 'Paul Roche Reclining' c. 1946 (installation view)

Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978)
Paul Roche Reclining (installation view)
c. 1946
Oil paint on canvas
The Charleston Trust
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

This painting depicts Duncan Grant’s close friend and possible lover Paul Roche, lying as if asleep. He is depicted against a patterned background reminiscent of colours and fabrics produced by the Omega Workshop, the design collective founded in 1913 by Roger Fry. These soft textures contrast with Roche’s bare torso, which is further emphasised by his briefs, socks and open shirt. Grant and Roche met by chance in July 1946: after making eye contact crossing the road at Piccadilly Circus, the two struck up a conversation. Their friendship lasted until Grant’s death in 1978.

Wall text from the exhibition

Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978)

Duncan Grant produced erotic works on paper prolifically throughout his life. These objects were created in private and for personal consumption only. Racially diverse figures are presented in various states of sexual play, and Grant’s range of representation moves from explicit passion to tender post-coital repose. Overlapping bodies are depicted in impossible contortions, and the works reveal Grant’s fascination with the artistic possibilities of the male form as well as the importance of harmonious composition. The objects also demonstrate a characteristically witty approach to sexuality, with some copulating figures playfully masquerading as ballet dancers and wrestlers. As his daughter Angelica Garnett recalled, one of Grant’s favourite maxims was to ‘never be ashamed’, and his private erotica offers an unapologetic celebration of gay male sex and love.

Installation view of erotic drawing by Duncan Grant

Installation view of Ethel Sands’ Tea with Sickert c. 1911-1912 from Room 4 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Ethel Sands (English born America, 1873-1962)
Tea with Sickert
c. 1911-1912
Oil paint on canvas
Tate. Bequeathed by Colonel Christopher Sands 2000, accessioned 2001

The scene of this painting is the sitting room Nan Hudson and Sands’s home. Although it features two figures – the artist Walter Sickert and Hudson – the table is set for afternoon tea for three. The composition of the painting is arranged as if the artist was standing behind Nan, and this perspective highlights their position as a couple. In 1912, the work was exhibited as part of Sands and Hudson’s joint exhibition at the Carfax Gallery and it drew mixed reactions: Westminster Gazette called it ‘a daring picture’ but ‘a somewhat overwhelming indulgence in pure orange vermilion’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Clare Atwood (British, 1866-1962)
John Gielgud’s Room
1933
Oil paint on canvas
Tate. Presented by Mrs E.L. Shute 1937

This picture was painted in Sir John Gielgud’s flat at the time he was playing Richard II in Gordon Daviot’s Richard of Bordeaux at the New Theatre. Rather than emphasising his life in the public eye, this work draws attention to Gieglud’s domestic life. In this way, Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood gently subverts traditional associations of the feminine with private space. Atwood lived in a menage a trois with Gielgud’s second-cousin, Edith (Edy) Craig and the feminist playwright Christopher St John, who had previously lived together as an openly lesbian couple. St John later stated that ‘the bond between Edy and me was strengthened not weakened by Tony’s association with us’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of Gluck’s Self-Portrait 1942 from Room 4 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein) (British, 1895-1978)
Self-Portrait
1942
Oil paint on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London
Given by the sitter and artist, ‘Gluck’ (Hannah Gluckstein), 1973

Gluck locks gazes with the viewer in this unflinching self-portrait. Born Hannah Gluckstein, Gluck requested that the name Gluck be reproduced with ‘no prefix, suffix or quotes’. Gluck exhibited to great acclaim at the ‘The Gluck Room’ of The Fine Art Society, where visitors included Queen Mary. This painting was painted in 1942, in a difficult period in Gluck’s relationship with Nesta Obermer, Gluck’s ‘darling wife’. Obermer was frequently away, sometimes with her husband Seymour Obermer. In 1944, their relationship broke down and Gluck went to live with Edith Shackleton Herald. Their relationship lasted until Gluck’s death.

Wall text from the exhibition

Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein) (British, 1895-1978)
Lilac and Guelder Rose
1932-1937
Oil paint on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

This was one of a number of flower paintings that Gluck made during and immediately after her relationship with society florist and author Constance Spry, who she met in 1932. Spry was a leading figure in cultivating a fashion for white flowers, and often used Gluck’s paintings to illustrate her articles. Many of Spry’s customers also commissioned flower paintings from Gluck. When Lilac and Guelder Rose was exhibited at Gluck’s 1937 exhibition at the Fine Art Society, it was much admired by Lord Villiers, who remarked ‘It’s gorgeous, I feel I could bury my face in it’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Glyn Warren Philpot (British, 1884-1937) 'Henry Thomas' 1934-1935 (installation view)

Glyn Warren Philpot (British, 1884-1937)
Henry Thomas (installation view)
1934-1935
Oil paint on canvas
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Bequeathed by Mrs Rosemary Newgas, the neice of the artist 2004)
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Henry Thomas was Glyn Philpot’s servant and one of his favourite models. The high-cheekboned angularity of Thomas’s face is echoed in the diagonal lines of the abstracted background, perhaps an allusion to the batik fabric behind. The exact nature of Thomas and Philpot’s relationship is unknown. Many of Philpot’s depictions of Thomas carry a homoerotic charge and some are exoticising. What Thomas felt about his years with Philpot from 1929 to the artist’s death in 1937 is unknown. The words he wrote on Philpot’s funeral wreath, ‘For memory to my dear master as well as my father and brother to me’, hints at the imbalance between them, while also suggesting many complex layers of relationship.

Wall text from the exhibition

Edward Wolfe (British, 1897-1982) 'Portrait of Pat Nelson' 1930s (installation view)

Edward Wolfe (British, 1897-1982)
Portrait of Pat Nelson (installation view)
1930s
Oil paint on canvas
James O’Connor
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Patrick Nelson emigrated from Jamaica to North Wales in 1937, before settling in London to study law the following year. While living in Bloomsbury, Nelson worked as an artists’ model and soon became acquainted with Edward Wolfe. Nelson would also meet other prominent gay artists at this time, including his sometime boyfriend and lifelong friend Duncan Grant. Wolfe’s depiction of Nelson against the rich green background is exoticising and his pose invites the viewer to admire his body. Such objectification was typical of many depictions of black men from this time and reflects an uneven power dynamic, although Nelson’s friendship with members of the Bloomsbury group adds a level of complexity to the relationship between artist and sitter.

Wall text from the exhibition

Glyn Warren Philpot (British, 1884-1937) 'Man with a Gun' 1933 (installation view)

Glyn Warren Philpot (British, 1884-1937)
Man with a Gun (installation view)
1933
Oil paint on canvas
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Bequeathed by Jeffrey Daniels, 1986
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Glyn Philpot developed a strong reputation as a society portraitist until the 1930s, at which point he began to explore modernist forms, as well as express his sexuality more openly. This work depicts Philpot’s friend Jan Erland, who was the subject of a series of paintings by Philpot on the theme of sports and leisure. Erland is depicted cradling a gun which, he recalled, had been specifically borrowed for the occasion. Erland’s firm grip on the gun’s phallic barrel seems suggestive. Writing to his sister Daisy, Philpot described ‘every moment with this dear Jan’ as filled with ‘inspiration and beauty’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Glyn Warren Philpot (British, 1884-1937)
Man with a Gun
1933
Oil paint on canvas
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Bequeathed by Jeffrey Daniels, 1986

Tate Britain today opens the first exhibition dedicated to queer British art. Unveiling material that relates to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ+) identities, the show marks the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales. It presents work from the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy in 1861 to the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 – a time of seismic shifts in gender and sexuality that found expression in the arts as artists and viewers explored their desires, experiences and sense of self.

Spanning the playful to the political, the explicit to the domestic, Queer British Art 1861-1967 showcases the rich diversity of queer visual art and its role in society. Themes explored in the exhibition include coded desires amongst the Pre-Raphaelites, representations of and by women who defied convention (including Virginia Woolf), and love and lust in sixties Soho. It features works by major artists such as Francis Bacon, Keith Vaughan, Evelyn de Morgan, Gluck, Glyn Philpot, Claude Cahun and Cecil Beaton alongside queer ephemera, personal photographs, film and magazines.

Work from 1861 to 1967 by artists with diverse sexualities and gender identities is showcased, ranging from covert images of same-sex desire such as Simeon Solomon’s Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene 1864 through to the open appreciation of queer culture in David Hockney’s Going to be a Queen for Tonight 1960. A highlight of the exhibition is a section focusing on the Bloomsbury set and their contemporaries – an artistic group famous for their bohemian attitude towards sexuality. The room includes intimate paintings of lovers, scenes of the homes artists shared with their partners and large commissions by artists such as Duncan Grant and Ethel Walker.

Many of the works on display were produced in a time when the terms ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘trans’ had little public recognition. The exhibition illustrates the ways in which sexuality became publicly defined through the work of sexologists such as Henry Havelock Ellis and campaigners such as Edward Carpenter. It also looks at the high profile trials of Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall. Objects on display include the door from Wilde’s prison cell, Charles Buchel’s portrait of Radclyffe Hall and erotic drawings by Aubrey Beardsley.

In contrast to the bleak outlook from the courtroom prior to 1967, queer culture was embraced by the British public in the form of theatre. From music hall acts to costume design, the theatre provided a forum in which sexuality and gender expression could be openly explored. Striking examples on display include photographs of performers such as Beatrix Lehmann, Berto Pasuka and Robert Helpmann by Angus McBean, who was jailed for his sexuality in 1942, alongside stage designs by Oliver Messel and Edward Burra. Theatrical cards of music hall performers such as Vesta Tilley (whose act as ‘Burlington Bertie’ had a large lesbian following) are featured, as well as a pink wig worn in Jimmy Slater’s act ‘A Perfect Lady’ from the 1920s.

Queer British Art 1861-1967 shows how artists and audiences challenged the established views of sexuality and gender identity between two legal landmarks. Some of the works in the show were intensely personal while others spoke to a wider public, helping to forge a sense of community. Alongside the exhibition is a room showing six films co-commissioned by Tate and Channel 4 Random Acts. Created in response to Queer British Art 1861-1967 and featuring figures in the LGBTQ+ community, including Sir Ian McKellen and Shon Faye, they present personal stories prompted by the themes in the show, and invite visitors to relate their own experiences.

Queer British Art 1861-1967 is curated by Clare Barlow, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain with Amy Concannon, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

Press release from Tate Britain

Why is the word ‘queer’ used in the exhibition title?

Queer has a mixed history – from the 19th century onwards it has been used both as a term of abuse and as a term by LGBT people to refer to themselves. Our inspiration for using it came from Derek Jarman who said that it used to frighten him but now ‘for me to use the word queer is a liberation’. More recently, of course, it has become reclaimed as a fluid term for people of different sexualities and gender identities. Historians of sexuality have also argued that it is preferable to other terms for sexualities in the past as these often don’t map onto modern sexual identities. In addition to carrying out audience research, we took advice from Stonewall and other LGBT charities and held focus groups with LGBT people. The advice from all of these sources was overwhelmingly that we should use it. While we tried other titles, no other option captured the full diversity of sexualities and gender identities that are represented in the show.

Text provided by Clare Barlow, curator of Queer British Art.

Installation view of Alvaro Guevara’s Dame Edith Sitwell 1916 from Room 5 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Alvaro Guevara (Chilean, 1894-1951)
Dame Edith Sitwell
1916
Oil paint on canvas
Tate. Presented by Lord Duveen, Walter Taylor and George Eumorfopoulos through the Art Fund 1920

The poet Edith Sitwell does not seem to have had sexual relationships but was viciously satirised by the artist and writer Wyndham Lewis as a lesbian. Sitwell described the life of the artist as ‘very Pauline’, referring to the letters of St Paul, which may suggest she thought sex would be a distraction. She was close friends with Alvaro Guevara, the artist of this portrait, who had relationships with men and women. Diana Holman Hunt in her 1974 biography of Guevara suggested that Sitwell and Guevara shared a love that was ‘not physical but certainly romantic and spiritual.’ The bright colours reflect the designs of Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell’s Omega Workshops and Sitwell is sitting on a dining chair designed by Fry.

Wall text from the exhibition

Room 5: Defying Conventions

This room shows how artists and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century challenged gender norms. Some, such as Laura Knight, laid claim to traditionally masculine sources of artistic authority by depicting themselves in the act of painting nude female models. Others, such as Vita Sackville-West, had open marriages and same-sex relationships, or, like Claude Cahun, questioned the very concept of gender binaries. This was a period of radical social change. Women took on new roles during the First and Second World Wars, and gained the vote in 1918. Sackville-West worked with the Land Girls. Cahun resisted the Nazis on Jersey and was sentenced to death, imprisoned for a year and only freed by the end of the war. New fashions developed. For women, wearing trousers in public became stylishly avant-garde. Expectations were changing. Public discussion about female same-sex desire offered ways of viewing the self, but it also brought problems. Lives that had previously passed without comment might now be labelled transgressive. But for some, this was a time of liberating possibilities.

Installation view of Room 5 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain featuring at left, Laura Knight's 'Self-portrait' 1913; second right, William Strang's 'Lady with a Red Hat' 1918, and at right Alvaro Guevara's 'Dame Edith Sitwell' 1916

Installation view of Room 5 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain featuring with at left, Laura Knight’s Self-portrait 1913; second right, William Strang’s Lady with a Red Hat 1918, and at right Alvaro Guevara’s Dame Edith Sitwell 1916
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of William Strang’s Lady with a Red Hat 1918 from Room 5 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

William Strang (Scottish, 1859-1921)
Lady with a Red Hat
1918
Oil paint on canvas
Lent by Glasgow Life (Glasgow Museums) on behalf of Glasgow City Council
Purchased 1919

This portrait is of writer Vita Sackville-West. According to her son, Nigel Nicolson, she attended sittings with her lover Violet Trefusis. Sackville-West adopted a male persona, ‘Julian’, at some points in this relationship, allowing her and Trefusis to pose as a married couple so they could stay together at a boarding-house. Her fashionable dress in this image, however, gives no sign of such androgynous role-playing. The book in Sackville-West’s hand may refer to her book Poems of East and West 1917. At the time this was painted she was writing Challenge, a novel about her relationship with Trefusis, but this was not published until 1974.

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Laura Knight (English, 1877-1970)
Self-portrait
1913
Oil paint on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

When this painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1913, the reviewer Claude Phillips wrote ‘it repels, not by any special inconvenience – for it is harmless enough and with an element of sensuous attraction – but by dullness and something dangerously close to vulgarity’. His strong reaction hints at anxieties over women painting the female nude, which subverted the hierarchy of male artist and female model. When Laura Knight was at art school women were not been allowed to attend life classes. Her sensuous depiction of herself painting Ella Naper, a friend, lays claim to a professional artistic identity. In 1936, Knight was the first woman to become an Academician since its foundation.

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Dorothy Johnstone (Scottish, 1892-1980)
Rest Time in the Life Class
1923
Oil paint on canvas
City Art Centre, City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries

This image depicts the life-class Johnstone taught for women at Edinburgh College of Art, which Johnstone presents as a space of friendship and collaboration. In the foreground, one woman comments on another’s drawing while in the background, Johnstone depicts herself gesturing towards the canvas. Johnstone had an intense relationship with Cecile Walton and Walton’s husband Eric Robertson, who were also part of the Edinburgh Group of artists. She later married fellow artist David Macbeth Sutherland.

Wall text from the exhibition

Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1954)
Untitled
1936
2 photographs, gelatin silver print on paper

These images (to the left and right of I Extend My Arms), from a larger group of photographs, hint at different narrative possibilities for the sexless manikin. In one, the doll seems to take on a feminine air, posed as if delighting in the long hair that trails round its body. The other is less overtly gendered, wearing a hat made from an upright feather and holding aloft a tiny plant. The porcelain dolls’ heads outside the jar in one image are reminiscent of the masks that repeated occur in Cahun’s work and these images seem to hint at the themes of role-playing that Cahun explored in earlier self-portraits.

Wall text from the exhibition

Room 6: Arcadia and Soho

London was a magnet for queer artists. In the 1950s and 1960s, Soho was the epicentre of queer culture, described by Francis Bacon as ‘the sexual gymnasium of the city’. Many of the artists shown in this room were friends, often living in London, sometimes sharing studios. Several were encouraged by the patron and collector Peter Watson, founder of the influential literary magazine Horizon and co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Their work was often inspired by travel: to the Mediterranean, to costal Brittany, or to the seedy American bars that inspired works such as Edward Burra’s Izzy Orts.

John Craxton, John Minton and Keith Vaughan have been described as ‘neo-romantics’. Craxton, however, preferred the term ‘Arcadian’, referencing a classical utopian vision of a harmonious wilderness, populated by innocent shepherds. Yet, while it is idealised, depictions of Arcadia still sometimes include references to death and its peace can be disrupted by undercurrents of desire.

Installation view of Christopher Wood’s Nude Boy in a Bedroom 1930 from Room 6 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Christopher Wood (English, 1901-1930)
Nude Boy in a Bedroom
1930
Oil paint on hardboard laid on plywood
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Christopher Wood’s Nude Boy in a Bedroom depicts the artist’s friend and sometime lover Francis Rose, in a hotel room in Brittany where they stayed with a group of friends in 1930. The group was later joined by Wood’s mistress, Frosca Munster. According to Rose, the work ‘is a nude painting of me washing at a basin’ in which Wood ‘scattered playing cards on the bed’. The cards are tarot cards and the top card shows the Page of Cups reversed, symbolising anxiety about a deception that will be soon discovered, or referring to someone incapable of making commitments. Wood may have included these cards as an oblique reference to his ongoing relationships with his male lover and female mistress.

Wall text from the exhibition

Edward Burra (English, 1905-1976) 'Soldiers at Rye' 1941

Edward Burra based Soldiers at Rye on sketches of troops around his home town of Rye between September and October 1940. His macabre sensibility was informed by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. In the final stages of painting, he added red and yellow Venetian carnival masks, giving the figures the air of predatory birds – a regular symbol in Burra’s work from the 1930s. Seen from behind, the soldiers’ close-fitting uniforms and bulbous physiques led one critic to comment that they had the ‘bulging husky leathery shape’ of ‘military ruffians’. There is an ominous atmosphere to the painting, conveying a dangerous homoeroticism.

Wall text from the exhibition

John Craxton (English, 1922-2009)
Head of a Cretan Sailor
1946
Oil paint on board
On loan from the London Borough of Camden Art Collection
© Estate of John Craxton. All rights reserved, DACS 2016
Photo credit: London Borough of Camden

The sitter in this portrait was on national service in the Greek Navy when he first met John Craxton in a taverna in Poros. He caught Craxton’s eye with his performance of the Greek dance the zeibékiko, with ‘splendidly controlled steps, clicking his thumbs and forefingers and circling round and round in his white uniform like a seagull’. Craxton followed him to Crete in 1947, where the sailor was now working as a butcher in Herákleion. The island was a revelation and Craxton returned often, eventually partly settling there in 1960.

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Installation views of Room 6 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain

Installation view of Room 6 of the exhibition 'Queer British Art' at Tate Britain with Robert Medley's 'Summer Eclogue No. 1: Cyclists' 1950 at left, Keith Vaughan's 'Kouros' 1960 second left, Keith Vaughan's 'Three Figures' 1960-1961 second right, and his 'Bather: August 4th 1961' 1961 at right

Installation views of Room 6 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain with Robert Medley’s Summer Eclogue No. 1: Cyclists 1950 at left in the bottom image, Keith Vaughan’s Kouros 1960 second left, Keith Vaughan’s Three Figures 1960-1961 second right, and his Bather: August 4th 1961 1961 at right
Photos: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Robert Medley (English, 1905-1994)
Summer Eclogue No. 1: Cyclists
1950
Oil paint on canvas
Tate. Purchased 1992

Exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in February 1950, Robert Medley’s painting of racing cyclists on a summer’s evening in a Gravesend public park underscores his attraction to cross-class sociability. The river esplanade offers a permissible space for observing the muscular bodies and taut limbs of the youths and their admirers. The title refers to Virgil’s Eclogues, in which pastoral tranquillity is disrupted by erotic forces and revolutionary change. Medley wrote in his autobiography that the eclogue theme provided for ‘a more contemporary subject matter’. One of the cyclists was modelled on fellow artist Keith Vaughan’s lover, Ramsay McClure.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of Keith Vaughan’s Kouros 1960 from Room 6 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Kouros
1960
Oil paint on canvas
Private collection

In a diary entry for 1956, Keith Vaughan wrote of ‘A silver bromide image of Johnny standing naked in my studio, aloof, slightly tense, withdrawn like a Greek Kouros, gazing apprehensively at himself in the mirror, lithe, beautiful… it lies tormenting me on my table’. This was a photograph of Vaughan’s lover Johnny Walsh who is also represented in this painting. A ‘Kouros’ was a free-standing ancient Greek sculpture of a male youth and the image may also have been inspired by a visit Vaughan made to Greece in 1960.

Wall text from the exhibition

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977) 'Three Figures' 1960-1961 (installation view)

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Three Figures (installation view)
1960-1961
Oil paint on board
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Three Figures is typical of Keith Vaughan’s approach to group figure painting. The subjects are depicted in indeterminate locations and the lack of details a makes it to impossible to identify them or guess at their social class or profession. The close proximity of the figures in this image and the contrast between the nudity of the man with his back towards us and the other two men might suggest that this is an erotic encounter. Yet the composition remains intentionally enigmatic.

Wall text from the exhibition

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Bather: August 4th 1961
1961
Oil paint on canvas
Tate. Purchased 1962

Keith Vaughan wrote in his journal, ‘The continual use of the male figure…retains always the stain of a homosexual conception… “K.V. paints nude young men”. Perfectly true, but I feel I must hide my head in shame. Inescapable, I suppose – social guilt of the invert’. He wrestled with the competing impulses of figuration and abstraction in his work, describing how: ‘I wanted to go beyond the specific, identifiable image – yet I did not want to do an “abstract” painting. Bather: August 4th 1961 was the first break through. Every attempt up to then had finally resolved itself into another figure painting or an “abstract”.’

Wall text from the exhibition

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)

In contrast over his concerns whether his desires would be shown in his paintings, Keith Vaughan’s private drawings are explicitly erotic. Across them he depicts a range of different encounters, from sadomasochistic fantasies through to moments of tender intimacy. This is perhaps a hint of these fluctuating desires in his descriptions of relationship with his lover Jonny Walsh, of which Vaughan said, ‘I can move from tenderness to sadism in the same harmonic key’.

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Drawing of two men kissing
1958-1973
Tate Archive © DACS, The Estate of Keith Vaughan

Room 7: Public / Private Lives

This room explores the contradictions of queer life in the 1950s and 1960s. Before the partial decriminalisation of sex between men in 1967, the boundaries between public and private were acutely important to couples in same-sex relationships. Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell had separate beds in their tiny flat to maintain the pretence that they weren’t a couple. Such caution was justified. Peter Wildeblood, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Michael Pitt-Rivers were sent to jail in a case that became a rallying point for calls to change the law, which was increasingly attacked as a ‘blackmailer’s charter’. Lesbianism was not illegal, but women faced prejudice. Avant-garde photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer was thrown out of her room after she left a copy of Radclyffe Hall’s banned book The Well of Loneliness out in plain sight.

Yet despite the threat of exposure, couples lived happily together, community flourished, and a few even became queer celebrities.

Stephen Tennant (British, 1906-1986)
Lascar, a story of the Maritime Boulevard
Nd
Ink, watercolour and collage on paper
The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History, London

In this illustration for Stephen Tennant’s novel Lascar a riotous collage of burly sailors, bright flowers, letters and visiting cards seem to burst forth from the page. Some of Tennant’s initial sketches of sailors were made on visits to the Old Port of Marseilles in the 1930s, but he constantly reworked the illustrations and text, never completing it. In the last two decades of his life, visitors to Wilsford Manor in Wiltshire where Tennant lived in virtual seclusion, found pages of the novel strewn across the decaying interiors.

Wall text from the exhibition

Because We’re Queers

Between 1959 and 1962, couple Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell borrowed and stole books from libraries around Islington. They cut out some of the illustrations, which they used to paper the walls of their flat and to create new collaged covers for the books. They then returned the volumes to the shelves of the libraries and waited to watch reactions.

The covers they created are full of jokes and references to queer culture. The addition of wrestling men turns Queen’s Favourite into an innuendo. Acting family the Lunts become kitsch glass figurines, while The Secret of Chimneys is depicted as a pair of giant cats. Others were more explicit: The World of Paul Slickey gains not only a phallic budgerigar but also a cut out shape of an erect penis. The plays of Emlyn Williams are retitled Knickers must fall and Fucked by Monty.

Orton and Halliwell were eventually caught and jailed for six months for ‘malicious damage’, which Orton claimed was ‘because we’re queers’. Prison destroyed Halliwell. While Orton became a successful playwright, Halliwell became an alcoholic. In 1967, he killed Orton and took his own life. Yet while their lives ended in tragedy, the book covers give insight into a playful and subversive relationship.

Joe Orton (British, 1933-1967) and Kenneth Halliwell (British, 1951-1967)‎
The Secret Chimneys by Agatha Christie
Islington Local History Centre

Joe Orton (British, 1933-1967) and Kenneth Halliwell (British, 1951-1967)‎
Queen’s Favourite
Islington Local History Centre

Interior of the flat at 25 Noel Rd showing the extent of the collages
Image courtesy of Islington Council

Kenneth Halliwell (British, 1951-1967)‎ 'Untitled' 1967 (installation view)

Kenneth Halliwell (British, 1951-1967)‎
Untitled (installation view)
1967
Printed papers on hardboard
Tate. Purchased 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

This is one of 19 collages that Halliwell exhibited at the Anno Domino gallery in 1967. Unlike the earlier book-covers, these were made by Halliwell alone, yet they are similarly kaleidoscopic in their use of images. An archeological artefact here sits alongside fashion photography, sea-shells, insects and words from newspapers and magazines. Some of these juxtapositions are playful: ‘Eye’ appears where an eye would be. Others are more obscure and the phrases ‘Blackmail’ and ‘dirty word’ perhaps hint at oppression. The exhibition was a failure and Halliwell’s professional frustration contributed to the breakdown of his relationship with Orton, who was now established as a playwright.

Wall text from the exhibition

George Elam
Joe Orton in Islington, London
1967
George Elam/Daily Mail/REX

Angus McBean (Welsh, 1904-1990)
Quentin Crisp
1941
Photograph, bromide print on paper
National Portrait Gallery, London

Angus McBean met the writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp while walking in the blackout in 1941 and the two became lovers. McBean later said of Crisp, ‘He was really one of the most beautiful people I have ever photographed. It was a completely androgynous beauty and under different circumstances it would have been difficult to know what sex he was’. This ambiguity is captured in McBean’s photograph, which is posed to emphasise Crisp’s long lashes, glossy lips and elaborate ring, the position of which is suggestive of an earring. Crisp’s refusal to conform to traditional masculine appearance was courageous and unswerving.

Wall text from the exhibition

John Deakin (English, 1912-1972) 'Colin' c. 1950s (installation view)

John Deakin (English, 1912-1972)
Colin (installation view)
c. 1950s
Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
John Deakin Archive / James Moores Collection
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

We don’t know anything about the sitter in this portrait. Deakin’s friend Bruce Bernard, who catalogued John Deakin’s negatives, likely gave it the label ‘Colin’, perhaps from memory, perhaps from an original sleeve note by Deakin. It is therefore not clear whether it depicts a drag performance or whether the glamorous outfit reflects the sitter’s true identity. It is, however, shot in a domestic setting rather than on the stage, leaving open the possibility that it depicts the sitter’s lived experience.

Wall text from the exhibition

John Deakin (English, 1912-1972)

John Deakin seems almost to embody queer Soho of the 1950s. A close friend and drinking companion of Francis Bacon, his portrait photographs include many artists, actors, poets and celebrities. His style was often startlingly unflattering, capturing his sitters as they truly were. He said of his work, ‘Being fatally drawn to the human race, what I want to do when I take a photograph is make a revelation about it. So my sitters turn into my victims’. Deakin admitted to a drink problem which led to a chequered career and was twice sacked from Vogue. After his death, many of his photographic negatives were found in a box under his bed and were saved by his friend, writer and picture editor Bruce Bernard.

John Deakin (Englsih, 1912-1972)
The Two Roberts Asleep – Colquhoun and MacBryde
c. 1953
Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
John Deakin Archive / James Moores Collection

Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde are here shown asleep on each other shoulders in a moment of tender intimacy. They had met on their first day at Glasgow School of Art and became lovers and lifelong partners. This photograph was probably taken at Tilty Mill, the home of the writer Elizabeth Smart, who invited Colquhoun and MacBryde to live with her and her partner the poet George Barker, when they’d been evicted from their studio in London. They spent the next four years there, combining painting with helping to raise Smart and Barker’s four children. The edges of the image show evidence of fire damage from some forgotten occasion.

Wall text from the exhibition

Barbara Ker-Seymer (British, 1905-1993)

Barbara Ker-Seymer was a photographer active in the interwar years. After studying at the Chelsea School of Art, she worked for the society portrait photographer Olivia Wyndham. When Wyndham moved to New York to be with her lover, the African-American actress Edna Lloyd-Thomas, Ker-Seymer was left in charge of her studio. She established her own studio on New Bond Street in 1931, and began a successful career as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. She pursued relationships with both men and women, and was associated with the queer subculture known as the Bright Young Things. After the Second World War, she ceased to work as a photographer, opening a laundrette in 1951. Her papers, in Tate Archive, are full of playful images of her friends.

Barbara Ker-Seymer (British, 1905-1993)
Photograph album (installation view)
Nd
Tate Archive
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

This creatively arranged spread in one of Ker-Seymer’s photograph albums shows images of a number of her friends, including Marty Mann, an American who was for a time Ker-Seymer’s business partner and lover. Mann’s drinking was increasingly a problem and their relationship floundered. She later became an important advocate for the newly formed ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Room 8: Francis Bacon and David Hockney

The most fearless depictions of male same-sex desire in the years before 1967 are in the work of Francis Bacon and David Hockney. Bacon told how as a teenager his parents threw him out of their home for trying on his mother’s underwear. He gravitated to London, where he began his visceral exploration of the human figure. Hockney arrived in London in 1959 to study at the Royal College of Art. He was deeply impressed by Bacon’s 1960 exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery, commenting ‘you can smell the balls’, but his own style was more playful, experimenting with abstraction and graffiti.

Hockney and Bacon both drew heavily on the visual culture that surrounded them, from well-established artistic sources such as Eadweard Muybridge’s innovative photographs of wrestlers to cheap bodybuilding magazines. They were not alone in spotting the homoerotic potential of this material – artists such as Christopher Wood had already used the trope of wrestlers to hint at queer intimacy. Yet Hockney and Bacon went further, fearlessly stripping away ambiguities.

Their work was controversial. Bacon’s 1955 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts was investigated by the police for obscenity while Hockney once described his early paintings as ‘homosexual propaganda’. They both continued to push the boundaries of what could be depicted in art, breaking new ground.

Francis Bacon (British, 1909-1992) 'Two Figures in a Landscape' 1956 (installation view)

Francis Bacon (British, 1909-1992)
Two Figures in a Landscape (installation view)
1956
Oil paint on canvas
Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Two Figures in a Landscape combines the homoerotic themes of the ‘crouching nude’ and ‘figures in the grass’ that Francis Bacon explored in multiple paintings throughout the 1950s. He was inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of wrestlers and athletes, along with Michelangelo’s drawings and sculpture. Bacon adapted these to explore his homosexuality with varying degrees of ambiguity. He later explained ‘Michelangelo and Muybridge are mixed up in my mind together’ and ‘I manipulate the Muybridge bodies into the form of the bodies I have known’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Francis Bacon (British, 1909-1992)
Seated Figure
1961
Tate. Presented by J. Sainsbury Ltd 1961
© Estate of Francis Bacon

This image probably depicts Francis Bacon’s former lover Peter Lacy. Bacon was a masochist and Lacy once told him ‘you could live in a corner of my cottage on straw. You could sleep and shit there’. Lacy’s suit and the inclusion of domestic details such as the exotic rug and chair contrast with the tempestuous abstract backdrop, giving the image an air of suppressed violence. Bacon spoke of his treatment of sitters in his portraits as an ‘injury’ and once said ‘I hate a homely atmosphere… I want to isolate the image and take it away from the interior and the home’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of David Hockney’s Life Painting for a Diploma 1962 from Room 8 of the exhibition Queer British Art at Tate Britain
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

David Hockney (British, b. 1937)
Life Painting for a Diploma
1962
Oil paint, charcoal and collage on canvas
Yageo Foundation Collection, Taiwan

Life Painting for a Diploma formed part of David Hockney’s final submission at the Royal College of Art. The hanging skeleton displays Hockney’s skills as a draftsman but it is the well-toned bodybuilder who catches the viewer’s attention. Hockney’s gay American friend Mark Berger introduced him to ‘beefcake’ magazines such as Physique Pictorial. Here, the stereotypical model and inscription PHYSIQUE references this material. Hockney claimed he painted this image to satisfy the RCA’s requirement that students produce a number of life-drawings. The work’s title and its contrast between the arid skeleton and lively model (clearly not painted from life) subtly mocks his instructors.

Wall text from the exhibition

David Hockney (British, b. 1937)
Going to be a Queen for Tonight
1960
Oil paint on canvas
Royal College of Art

The words ‘queer’ and ‘queen’, both terms for gay men at this time, are scrawled across the surface of this image. Hockney was fascinated with the graffiti in the public toilets at Earls Court Underground station. Here, messages about opportunities for casual sex were mixed with other slogans. The title playfully hints at these possibilities – ‘queen’ but only for the night. It was one of a number of paintings made by Hockney at the Royal College Of Art which reference queer urban life. Hockney described his early works as ‘a kind of mixture of Alan Davie cum Jackson Pollock cum Roger Hilton’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977) 'Wrestlers' 1965 (installation view)

Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Wrestlers (installation view)
1965
Watercolour and ink on paper
York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery)
Gifted through the Contemporary Art Society, as a bequest from Dr Ronald Lande, in memory of his life partner Walter Urech, 2012
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Physique Photography In Britain

British Physique photography flourished after the Second World War. Body-building magazines such as Health and Strength or Man’s World could be purchased quite innocently in newsagents. For many gay men, however, these publications were an important first step towards finding a community.

Bodybuilding shots, wrestlers and ‘art studies’ offered a pretext for gay photographers such as Vince, Basil Clavery (alias ‘Royale’ and ‘Hussar’), Lon of London and John Barrington to produce homoerotic imagery. Their work often included references to classical civilisation, an established shorthand for queer culture. Some dropped the pretence of bodybuilding altogether and sold more explicit material directly to a burgeoning private market.

This was a risky business: selling or sending such images through the post could land both photographer and purchaser in jail. Yet for many gay men, the easy availability of physique imagery gave reassurance that they were not alone. Somebody out there understood and shared their desires.