Male Desire:
The Homoerotic in American Art
by Jonathan Weinberg,
Abrams 2004

The Beautiful Boy
by Germaine Greer
Rizzoli 2003

Chacun Son Goût/
To Each His Own Taste
By Douglas Blair Turnbaugh

Seeing the word "homoerotic" on a book from the great art publisher Abrams reminded me of my encounter with the company. In 1986, I decided to try to publish my collection of erotica by the great British artist Duncan Grant (1885-1978). This work, a criminal offense when he created it, he called “private” and had only shared it with his most intimate friends. In a style reminiscent of Rodin and Maillol, these exquisite pictures had males copulating in a great variety of positions, with some contortions worthy of Martha Graham. Unlike most porn, they were fetish-free, consensual, with no phallic exaggerations, with no violence/submission scenarios. They illustrated the voluptuous pleasure of bodies entwined, of sexual sharing. If anyone ever asked, “What do they [gay males] do?” here were some answers. With my agent, the formidable Ruth Nathan, I met art editors at the major publishing houses. They all were enchanted and lingered over the drawings, before saying “Sorry, not for us.” I asked the art book editor at Abrams if this was because they were homoerotic. “No, no,” he replied, “but I couldn’t ask our salesmen to try to sell books showing black and white men having sex together.”

Seeing that the author of Male Desire was Jonathan Weinberg, I also recalled my non-encounter with him, shortly after the death of the great American painter Patrick Angus in 1992. Angus was utterly unknown and ignored by the art establishment, partly because his goal was to capture the sexual loneliness and yearning of gay men of the demimonde. Trying to find venues to exhibit his work, I learned the up-and-coming Jonathan Weinberg was curating a show of gay art. I wrote him to let him know about Angus’ work and said I would be able to loan major paintings. No reply.

So—I approached Abrams’ Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art wondering how much had changed since they wouldn’t publish Grant’s erotica in 1986 (Male Desire has no pictures of black and white men making love together) and how Dr. Weinberg had, so far as I know, taken fourteen years to acknowledge Patrick Angus by including his painting Hanky Panky in this handsome book.

Of course, the question here is: “What is homoerotica?” and “To each his own” is an easy answer. Asked how he recognized a work of art, Jean Cocteau replied, “It gives me a mental erection.” Surely, then, to call work “homoerotic” must mean it gives “homos” an “erotic” erection, triggered by the mind, of course. A concern with this book is Dr. Weinberg's oh-so-socially-safe presentation. His academic credentials give him shelter from the “smut-peddler” accusation (something art writer Thomas Waugh is not afraid of; see his Out/Lines and Lust Unearthed), and he reinforces this with art establishment figures (Cadmus, Demuth, Hockney, etc.). But I strongly suspect that he does so for “respectability” rather than to show the true range of “male desire.” He includes some high-market art which has zero reading on the peter-meter. Other than over-intellectualizing “scholars” I seriously doubt that anyone looking at Vito Acconci's Seedbed—basically an empty room—Jasper Johns' Painting With Two Balls or Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon perceives these works as “erotic,” let alone “homo-erotic.” Does anyone really believe that gay teenagers keep postcards of these works hidden in their math books to get a quick visual thrill?

As usual, the subject that terrorizes the American gay world is homoerotic desire for youth, which is lobotomized out of this book. Therefore, to flesh out (so to speak) the subject, we must turn to Germaine Greer's The Beautiful Boy. While Dr. Weinberg's cover illustration is a dreamy close-up of a young man's face, his hand covering his eyes, a few significant dark hairs on his forearm, Ms. Greer's is an in-your-face boy, lips parted, with a knowing, provocative, come-to-me look. It is a photo of Bjorn Andresen, the man-killing boy Tadzio in Visconti's Death In Venice.

Both books have fabulous illustrations. Dr. Weinberg, also a painter (with work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art), rather touchingly uses one of his own paintings as the last in the book, as evidence of his sincere interest in the socially delicate subject of gay desire. But his painting tends to confirm the impression that his career/life desire is to be part of the mainstream establishment. This picture, titled Two Surfers Dressing, is more accurately two men showering, and they are showering, as American boys do—terrified that some fag may see their privates—wearing baggy knee-length shorts! They are totally disconnected from one another; each facing the wall away from one another. Rather than homoerotic, this seems either an example of anti-erotic prudery or a comment on it. With his painterly skills Dr. Weinberg could produce some beautiful and genuinely erotic homoerotica. I certainly hope he has a private stash.

Germaine Greer's selection of pictures bounces up and down on the erotic scale, and she is trying for shock value as hard as Dr. Weinberg is trying to avoid it. She does not mince words. “Any woman of taste would have a boy for a lover rather than a man. He's easier to manage and his sperm flows like tap water.”

Do you love the “of taste” qualification? If only chacun son goût could be true.