Art and Queer Theory - 3.3

What is queer theory?

A conceptual framework emerging from feminism and post-structuralism that questions fixed notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. It is not exclusively about homosexuality — it concerns any sexuality or identity that falls outside the heteronormative binary.

What does "queer" mean as a term?

Originally a pejorative slur, reclaimed by activists in recent decades. A noun but "Queering" is also a method — a critical lens for examining culture and history.

Is all art made by queer artists "queer art"?

No. Many artists who identify as queer do not identify their work as belonging to a queer canon. Queer identity and queer art practice are not automatically the same thing.

What is Foucault's key argument in "History of Sexuality" (vols. 1–3, 1976–84)?

Examines interrelationships between sexuality and power. Sexuality as socially and culturally constructed not innate. ‘Confession’ a big theme, in relation to coming out. Argues against the idea that Victorian culture was simply repressive in terms of sex, suggesting instead we use that narrative to portray that we are more sexually liberated. He introduces the idea of the "invention" of homosexuality — a distinction between engaging in homosexual acts and being categorised by them.

What is "scientia sexualis" (Foucault)?

The growing scientific, medical, and psychoanalytic interest in classifying and analysing human sexuality from the 19th century. It pathologised anything that did not lead to reproduction as deviant or non-normative.

What is Foucault's argument about confession?

Psychoanalysis (like religious confession) compels individuals to verbalise their sexuality to an authority figure. Foucault sees this structure as a form of power — the "coming out" narrative can be read as a modern version of this confessional dynamic.

Who was Charcot and why is he relevant?

Jean-Martin Charcot was a 19th-century French neurologist famous for his work on hysteria at the Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris. He controversially argued that hysteria was not exclusively a female condition — challenging deeply gendered assumptions about rationality and irrationality. His lectures were spectacles attended by audiences and depicted in painting.

How did WWI challenge ideas about gender?

The trauma of shell shock (neurasthenia) produced images of men as shattered and impotent, dismantling ideals of heroic unbroken masculinity. This began to destabilise the binary of rational/masculine vs. irrational/feminine.

What is Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity ("Gender Trouble," 1990)?

Gender is not innate but is produced through the repetition of socially sanctioned behaviours and codes. Butler refutes Freud's claim that lesbians "perform as men," arguing instead that all gender is performed. Crucially, performativity is not artifice or inauthenticity — it is the process of repetition itself that creates and reinscribes gender norms.

What is the difference between "performance" and "performativity"?

Performance implies a deliberate, conscious act (dressing up, putting on a show). Performativity (Butler's term) refers to the repetitive citation of gender codes over time that constructs gender as seemingly natural. Performativity is not about dressing up; it is about how repetition makes gender norms feel real and fixed.

What did Joan Riviere argue in "Womanliness as Masquerade" (1929)?

That women who feared punishment for behaving in a masculine way would perform exaggerated femininity as a kind of camouflage or masquerade. Butler builds on this to argue all gender — for all people — is similarly a masquerade or performance.

What is "passing" and why does it matter?

Passing is the ability to be accepted as a member of a social or cultural group to which one does not belong. In drag ball culture, passing ("realness") meant convincingly performing a gender identity. The concept also applies to race, class, and other identities, underlining that marginalisation is intersectional, never reducible to a single identity.

What is "reading" in the context of drag ball culture?

In 1970s–80s ballroom culture, if a performer failed to pass convincingly, they were "read" by their peers — called out for not convincingly performing their chosen identity. It was a competitive insult. The opposite of reading is "realness."

What is intersectionality and why is it important to queer theory?

The recognition that individuals hold multiple overlapping identities (race, class, gender, sexuality) and that these combine to create distinct forms of marginalisation. Paris is Burning demonstrates this: the drag ball scene was shaped as much by race and class exclusion as by gender or sexuality.

What role did the AIDS crisis play in the development of queer theory?

The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s–90s galvanised queer activism and theory. Queer bodies (especially gay male bodies) were represented as sites of infection. The crisis prompted more confrontational, explicit art and activism as a way of demanding visibility and humanity from a society that largely ignored or marginalised queer people dying of the disease.

What is the significance of the pink triangle?

Originally used by the Nazis to mark gay prisoners, it was reclaimed by gay activists in 1987 as a symbol of resistance and solidarity during the AIDS crisis.

What is the "heteronormative binary" and why does queer theory challenge it?

The assumption that heterosexuality, and a clear male/female division, is natural and universal. Queer theory argues this binary is constructed, not innate, and that it marginalises anyone who falls outside it.

Marcel Duchamp & Man Ray, "Rrose Sélavy" | 1921. Photographs.

Duchamp's female alter ego, photographed by Man Ray. Duchamp dressed in women's clothing in a series of drag photographs. Raises questions about gender performance, the male gaze, fetishism, and the authorship of identity. Considered partly ironic/comic rather than a deep exploration of gender — both creators were men.

Claude Cahun, Self-portraits | 1920s–30s.

Series of manipulated self-portraits in which Cahun (born Lucy Schwab) adopted multiple personas — androgynous, feminine, masculine, skinhead, harlequin. The name "Claude" is gender-neutral in French. Cahun explored transformation, duality, and gender as unfixed and malleable — going further than Duchamp by genuinely destabilising gender boundaries rather than playing for comic effect.

Stephen Varble, "Chemical Bank Protest" | 1976.

Varble entered a bank branch wearing a costume of netting, fake money, condom breasts filled with cow's blood, and a toy plane codpiece — to protest after his account was forged. Punctured the condoms and signed a fake check for $0 million. His work (performed as alter ego Marie Debris) was about class and poverty as much as gender — an example of intersectional queer performance art.

Pierre-André Brouillet, "Un Leçon Clinique à la Salpêtrière" | 1887. Oil on canvas.

Depicts Charcot demonstrating a hysterical patient to an audience of male doctors. Visualises the medical spectacularisation of (female) bodies and deviant behaviour. Used in the lecture to illustrate the gendered power dynamics of 19th-century science and medicine.

Paris is Burning | 1990. Dir. Jennie Livingston.

Documentary film about the Black and Latino drag ball scene in 1980s New York. Shows how "realness" and passing were central to ball culture — and how the balls offered a space to inhabit identities (executive, model, soldier) otherwise denied by race and class. Critiqued for being voyeuristic but considered an important document of a marginalised subculture.

Pierre Molinier, Self Portrait | c. 1970.

Erotic boudoir self-portraits using props and mannequins. Molinier identified as a "sexual deviant" (his own term), not as gay or queer. Work was intended to shock and to subvert heteronormative conceptions of masculine sexuality. An example of subversive sexuality within a Surrealist framework.

Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose | Performance work, c. 1980s–90s.

Married couple who made explicit durational BDSM performance works. Flanagan (who had cystic fibrosis, the oldest US survivor at the time of his death in 1996) collaborated with Rose as the dominant partner. Their work explored illness, disability, sexuality, and the subversion of heteronormative marital ideals, destabilising norms of masculine strength and female passivity.

Martin O'Brien and Sheree Rose | Ongoing collaboration.

British performance artist O'Brien (who also has cystic fibrosis and identifies as queer) contacted Rose after encountering Flanagan's work. 45-year age gap. Together they complete works from Flanagan's unfinished "death trilogy" and explore a quasi-maternal, semi-erotic, cross-generational power dynamic — extending and queering the earlier Flanagan/Rose practice.

Robert Mapplethorpe, photographs | Active 1970s–80s.

Known for BDSM and queer subject matter in finely crafted black-and-white photographs. His 1989 Corcoran Gallery show was cancelled due to explicit content; he was attacked for receiving NEA funding. Died of AIDS in 1989. Introduced wider audiences to subcultures that had been hidden from mainstream view, provoking debates about censorship, public funding, and the representation of queer sexuality.

Keith Haring, "Silence = Death" | 1989.

Haring's iconic work adopting the pink triangle — reclaimed from Nazi use by ACT UP activists in 1987. An urgent statement against the silence and indifference surrounding the AIDS crisis. Shows how queer visual art became directly political in response to state and social neglect.

United Colors of Benetton AIDS advertisement | 1992.

Based on a photograph by Peter Kirby of a man dying of AIDS surrounded by his family. Originally published in Life magazine to bring the AIDS crisis into public view; later repurposed by Benetton as an advertisement. Controversial — seen as both raising awareness and commodifying suffering.

Ron Athey, "Four Scenes in a Harsh Life" | 1993–96. Performance.

Performance series by Ron Athey, an HIV-positive queer artist. Provoked public outrage and funding controversy. Dealt explicitly with illness, the HIV-positive body, ritual, and pain. Athey's work responded to the AIDS crisis by making visible what mainstream culture sought to hide.

Ron Athey, "Incorruptible Flesh" | 2014. Performance.

Later Athey performance in which his heavily tattooed body is displayed on a metal frame with objects pierced through it. Explores themes of the sacred, the wounded queer body, and endurance. Links Christian iconography of martyrdom with the lived experience of the HIV-positive queer body.

Yasumasa Morimura, "Portrait (Futago)" | 1988.

Morimura (a Japanese male artist) inserts his own face into Manet's Olympia (1863), taking on both the role of the reclining nude and the Black maid. A queer and postcolonial act of appropriation that exposes the racial and gendered assumptions embedded in Western canonical art. Discussed in relation to the intersection of race, gender, and representation.

Ma Liuming, performances | 1990s.

Chinese performance artist who created the androgynous alter ego "Fen-Ma Liuming" — performing naked in public, combining masculine and feminine signifiers. Arrested in Beijing in 1994 for "disturbing social order." An example of how queer performance operates in a non-Western context and can challenge both gender norms and state power.

Diane Torr (1948–2017), "Man for a Day" workshops.

Scottish-American performance artist who ran workshops in which women were taught to pass as men — exploring passing, masculinity, and gender as learned behaviour. Demonstrated Butler's performativity in action: gender as something that can be learned, rehearsed, and inhabited rather than something biologically fixed.

Del LaGrace Volcano, "The Three Graces" | 1992.

Photograph of three androgynous, shaved-headed figures in the pose of the classical Three Graces. Volcano (born intersex, identifies as a "gender abolitionist" and "part-time gender terrorist") restages a canonical Western art form with queer, intersex bodies — challenging both art history and normative ideals of gender and beauty.

Del LaGrace Volcano, "Jack's Back" | 1994.

Photograph of a figure from behind in a sailor hat and white trousers — deliberately ambiguous in gender. Shown at the opening of the lecture. Volcano's work amplifies rather than erases the "hermaphroditic traces" of their body, challenging the medical drive to "normalise" intersex bodies.

Zanele Muholi, portraits from "Faces and Phases" series | 2011.

Muholi (a South African visual activist) photographs Black LGBTQ+ individuals in South Africa, where corrective rape and anti-gay violence remain serious threats. The portraits are dignified, direct, and confrontational — insisting on the visibility and humanity of queer Black African lives. An important example of how queer theory intersects with race, postcolonialism, and human rights.

Cassils, "Becoming an Image" | 2012. Performance.

Cassils (a transgender performance artist) punches a 2,000 lb block of clay in total darkness; the only light is a single flash from a camera. Documents the trans body's capacity to leave a mark — to make an impression on the world — while questioning what counts as an image of gender. Links trans identity, visibility, and the photographic archive.