First homosexuals
Rejected by Museums Around the World, This New Art Exhibition Explores the Historical Roots of the Term ‘Homosexual’
“The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a Novel Identity, 1869-1939” is a sprawling collection of more than 300 works at Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 gallery
In 1868, the Hungarian writer and activist Karl Maria Kertbeny coined the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” in a letter to his friend, the pioneering sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.
Kertbeny was arguing against a German anti-sodomy law that made sexual contact between members of the same gender punishable by up to four years in prison. He reasoned that humans had innate desires—some homosexual, some heterosexual—that could not be regulated by the state.
Although Kertbeny had just used the terms for what scholars believe is the first noun, the language was already charged with the same imprecision that exists today. An expansive label like “homosexual” could describe actions; desires; and, crucially, an entire identity.
The artistic and social “sea change” that accompanied the bir
The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity
The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a Fresh Identity, 1869-1939 explores a sea transform in how society regarded homosexuality in the wake of the coining of the term “homosexual” in 1869. Before this watershed moment, same-sex desire marked something you did, not necessarily something you were. The First Homosexuals examines how, for the first time, homosexuals were cleaved from the rest of the population and given an identity which turned on their sexuality. Since the invention of the “homosexual,” sexuality has become totalizing, determining who you are at your core. A adj over two years ago while still in the midst of the global pandemic, Wrightwood 659 offered a taste of this upcoming exhibition’s approach and scope in a small preview entitled The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1930.
The forthcoming exhibition is unprecedented with more than 300 works by more than 125 artists from 40 countries, on loan from over 100 museums and private collections across the world, including the Musée d’ Orsay
10 Key Works in “The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939”
For much of human history, queerness wasn’t thought of as something one was, but rather as something one did. “The First Homosexuals,” an ambitious exhibition at Wrightwood 659, a three-story gallery occupying a former Chicago apartment building, tracks the shift from that fluid definition to a more concrete identity. Most of its 350-plus rarely exhibited artworks were created between the 1860s, when the terms homosexuality and heterosexuality were coined by Hungarian journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny, and the 1930s, when ascendant fascism persecuted LGBTQ citizens more ferociously than ever before.
Forty countries are represented in the exhibition, which attempts to decenter Western conceptions of queerness. In his introduction to the exhibition catalog, lead curator and University of Pennsylvania art historian Jonathan Katz notes that some participating scholars even took issue with using the term homosexual in the exhibition title.
“[B]yno means is the development and deployment of the lab
The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869-1939Jonathan D. Katz
A groundbreaking, global survey of queer art, featuring more than 300 artworks made following the introduction of the term ‘homosexual’ in 1869
An unprecedented and historic brand-new book, The First Homosexuals traces the evolution of the homosexual identity through an archive of more than 300 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and film stills from around the world – many presented in a queer, global, and colonial context for the first time. Accompanying the works are twenty-two original, insightful essays by leading experts in art and queer history, each focusing on one geographical region – from Japan to Australia to the Indigenous populations of South America. Ranging from well-known masterpieces to works by unknown artists and pieces rarely considered in the context of sexuality, The First Homosexuals offers a stunning and illuminating see at the first self-consciously queer art. The book accompanies a groundbreaking exhibition of the equal name presented at Wrightwood 659 in C