Religious Art, Queer Possibility

Interesting online discussion from Fitzwilliam Museum to mark on LBGTQ+ history month looking at how queer and female artists in the 19th and 20th centuries addressed and reacted to the Christian religion.

Rebecca Burrell, co-curator of the “Women: Makers and Muses” at the museum was interviewed by Emma Torrens also from the museum. They started by discussing how St Sebastian became a queer icon both due to the muscled images of him but also as they were images of suffering and linked to plague at a time when homosexuality was seen by many an illness. The saint survived the act of being show by arrows which is usually depicted so he is seen as a someone who survived and flourished, despite being martyred later. The philosophy of this was discussed but I would have been interested to see more 19th century images of the subject to illustrate the point.

They then went on to discuss women artists use of religious imagery in their work concentrating on Gwen John. I had never realised before that her seated figures of women reading reference the Virgin in Annunciation images showing her as unprepared and virtuous but positioning her as a woman who might have said no to the angel. They then talked about her sketching in churches following her conversion to Catholicism.