Description:
It is a commonplace among gay men that much religious art is, well, sexy: think of paintings of St. Sebastian dressed only in loincloth, torso pierced with arrows, and other (mostly naked) martyrs awaiting their salvation. Occasionally, even Jesus upon the cross would look more at home in a Mapplethorpe print than above an altar. From the metaphysical poets Richard Crashaw and John Donne to Bernini's famous sculpture of St. Theresa to Andres Serrano's controversial photograph Piss Christ, Richard Rambuss examines how sexual desire is often intertwined with religious iconography. While many art historians have argued that what we consider highly sexualized imagery resulted simply from artistic conventions of a more "innocent" time, Closet Devotions postulates that religious art was the only "safe" medium through which many forms of sexual desire could be expressed. Rambuss is wide-ranging in his references, which include such "profane" texts as 18th-century manuals of piety, the erotic novels of Georges Bataille, Stephen King's Carrie, contemporary slasher movies, and ACT UP posters. He brings them all together to make a convincing, fascinating, illuminating, and at times brilliant argument about sex, desire, religion, and rapture. --Michael Bronski
|
