ERIKETA COST
Assistant Life & Arts Editor
How did queer artists express themselves in past generations, in times where it wasn’t accepted in dominant culture?
According to art historian Jonathan Katz, these artists expressed themselves in subtle, nuanced ways that now give us insight into what it was like being queer in times where it wasn’t welcomed.
Katz is an associate professor of global gender and sexuality studies at University at Buffalo, who practices his gay activism by studying and sharing the ways in which queer history and art history intersect.
Katz had also co-created a work called, “Hide and Seek: Difference and Desire in American Art,” an exhibition at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery that focused on LGBTQ ideas and issues.
He will be visiting Fredonia this Thursday as part of the Visiting Artist Program.
Katz will be discussing how a lot can be unpacked in older works of queer artists who couldn’t openly express their identities in obvious ways.
“Some audience will understand work one way, others will understand it another way. Because of that, queer artists could broadly decrease or hide their messages, and direct them to potential queer audience, while at the same time fly right past the nose of dominant culture, undetected,” he said.
Katz said that most of the time, people wrongly make the argument that if there are no bodies having sex in an artwork or other obvious sexual displays, then there is no way a piece can be an expression of sexuality.
“We [art historians] are trying to make clear that we don’t need bodies having sex, or familiar ideas of sexuality in order for it to be an expression of sexuality. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You can make a case for sexuality of abstraction,” he said. “Imaging can reference forms of sexuality, that pass muster in a social world when homosexuality was illegal and you would be arrested.”
Katz said that most of the time, queer history is explicitly observed in documented police blotters.
“You will find queer history reflected in police blotters, but that’s not where I want to go looking for it. That’s not the kind of history I’m interested in,” he said.
In his lecture, he will be focusing specifically on Andy Warhol and the sexual nuances in Warhol’s paintings.
Katz mentioned a famous interview Warhol had in the ‘60s, where Warhol was very frank about queerness being influenced in his work.
These particular comments in the interview were then edited out, upon being published.
He will be talking about the doctored version of what the interview has been known to be, versus what it truly was.
Members of the public, as well as students of all majors are welcome to attend the lecture.
Katz is looking forward to talking with those who are highly interested in queer history and art history.
“He’s an extremely prominent art historian in this area: western New York. The lectures are sponsored by the art department and the Visiting Artists Program here at Fredonia,” said Barbara Räcker, coordinator of the Visiting Artists Program.
The lecture will take place on April 25, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:50 p.m. in McEwen 209.