Queer British Art 1861-1967

Fabulous exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the connections between art and sexuality and gender identity from 1861, the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy, to 1967, the partial decimalisation of sex between men.

There was so much fantastic work in this show I feel I could write pages on it but I’ll resist! My only criticism was that it was a bit unsure at times if it was about LBGT art or the history of LBGT life in this period. Don’t get me wrong either would be fascinating but to do the latter fully would have needed a much bigger exhibition. For example I loved seeing Noel Coward’s dressing gown but wasn’t quite sure how it fitted a show on art. Similarly one section got a bit focused on the changing role of women and how female artists broke barriers by starting to do life studies but again this seemed to belong to a different show, much as I am happy for any excuse to see the wonderful Laura Knight self-portrait, I felt this might be a subject for another great show if told more fully.

Anyway back to the fantastic-ness off it! Reading the commentaries you discovered lots of amazing stories and I came away with lots of names I want to look up and research. From the first room I hadn’t come across the work of Henry Scott Tuke who did wonderful pictures of boys on the beach which were shown alongside some of his photographs. These were shown in a room called “Coded Desires” which looked at sensibilities in art and also included Lord Leighton’s “The Sluggard” and wonderful delicate pictures by Simeon Solomon.

Of course my favourite roomed was called “Bloomsbury and Beyond” and was full of old friends! It was lovely to see Duncan Grant’s Bathers and I was struck by how he used geometric patterns to show the water alongside naked bathers which had real resonance with some of the pictures in the Hockney show. There was lots of Glynn Phillpotts work which I love and nice to see the Gluck work by Gluck, including a fierce self-portrait having seen a show about her recently at the Fine Art Society.

A room called “Public/Private Lives” told some touching stories of the lives of same sex couples in the 1950s and 1960s. I was particularly moved by the touching letters between Ralph Hall and Montague Glover. It also talked about couples hiding their true relationship such as Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell having separate beds in their flat to maintain the pretence of not being a couple. I also loved the irony that they were jailed for defacing library books and yet the covers that were on show had been lent by Islington Local History department!

Finally it was a nice touch that the last room was devoted to Francis Bacon and David Hockney. It left you with the feeling that if you wanted more about art and change post 1967 you just had to go upstairs to another exhibition! 

Closes on 1 October 2017

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