Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art

By Richard Meyer

Book Overview

From the U.S. Navy's 1934 confiscation of a painting of sailors on shore leave to contemporary culture wars over funding for the arts, conflicts surrounding homosexuality and creative freedom have shaped the history of modern art in America. Richard Meyer's Outlaw Representation tells the charged story of this strife through pioneering analysis of the works of gay artists and the circumstances under which these works have been attacked, suppressed, or censored outright. Focusing on the careers of Paul Cadmus, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Gran Fury, and Holly Hughes, Outlaw Representation explores how gay artists responded to the threat of censorship by producing their own "outlaw representations" of homosexuality. Instead of acquiescing to attacks on their work as indecent or obscene, these artists used the outlaw status of homosexuality to propose new forms of social, sexual, and creative life.

Richly illustrated, Outlaw Representation includes close to 200 striking images, ranging from the art of celebrated figures such as Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe to physique-magazine photographs and gay liberation posters. Throughout, images that once provoked censorship now elicit close visual analysis and careful historical investigation. Engagingly written and sweepingly researched, Outlaw Representation promises to be a landmark in the study of twentieth-century American art, politics, and sexuality.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195107608
• ISBN13: 9780195107609
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 2.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.2" x 10.4"

Customer Reviews

A book for anyone interested in art, politics or freedom

This book is genius and amazing. Read it right now.

Brilliant, ground-breaking work

This is an amazing book, rich in detail and images, but also exploring with passion and intensity a border between queer studies, art history, and cultural studies. It demonstrates an astonishing command of the social and political history of the period it covers, along with theoretical depth and great sophistication in the reading and analysis of visual materials. I was mesmerized. Written beautifully, this book makes its erudition appear effortless, but in fact it is an extremely courageous and innovative text, bringing together disparate worlds of scholarship into a brilliant synthesis. It neither panders to popular tastes, nor remains trapped in disciplinary jargon; instead, it is an examination, full of intellectual integrity, of the intersection of the law and artistic production, showing how artists moved around and through what might have been devastating censorship by entrenched homophobia. It is to be expected that the book itself will encounter resistance, since it breaks new ground with such authority, unnerving those with vested interests in disciplinary boundaries or in policing representation.

Expert Scholarship / Much Needed Topic

Professor Meyer's work is a needed contribution to queer theory and indespensible for anyone interested in minority persecution. As an art historian would, Meyer threads through the work of gay liberationist artists to demonstrate how the visual arts portrayed resistence to oppression. Using Foucault's concept of "reverse discourse" as a methodology, and the case study as a guide, this book reveals how public attitudes can be challenged with art. I look forward to more writing by Meyer.

WOW! FANTASTIC BOOK ON GAY ART & CENSORSHIP!!!!!

WOW! Sexy and impressive! Richard Meyer's Outlaw Representation proves to be a triumphant exploration of how conflicts over censorship and homosexuality have transformed the history of modern art in America. From Mapplethorpe to Warhol, the author masterfully charts the complex crosshairs of sexuality and politics as we witness again and again the collision between gay sensibility and the long arm of the law. I was blown away by Meyer's grasp of his subject and the light he shines onto this sad litany of censorship in America.

A Smart And Sexy Must-Have

This book is a smart and sexy must-have for anyone interested in censorship and homosexuality in American art and popular culture. First, the book is an incredible archive of important American 20th century gay images - from famous (infamous) Cadmus paintings, George Platt Lynes photos, Warhol silkscreens, and Mapplethorpe photos, to less well-known but no less provocative and significant images like David Wojnarowicz's explicit and controversial "Sex Series" and Gran Fury's protest posters and bill boards. The book would be worth buying for the images alone. But it is Richard Meyer's careful research, sharp observations and lucid writing that transform the book from simply a collection of key queer images in to a compelling argument regarding the historical relationship between censorship and public perceptions of homosexuality. The book is a pleasure to read, managing to be at the same time densely packed with original ideas and utterly clear and accessible.