Outlaw Representation: Censorship & Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Ideologies of Desire)

Rating:
Summary: Rather disappointing
Review: I must say that the reader from Cambridge, whose review appears below, seems to me to have it right. Certainly, the book is well-illustrated, well-researched, and readable. But analytically, whether understood as art history or cultural criticism, this book offers very little. Meyer does us a service by collecting these images and placing them next to each other, but his observations about the consequences of censorship struck me as quite banal, and predictable to such a degree that you must wonder whether he has any interest in complicating (let alone challenging) the theoretical paradigms he draws on. It is hardly news that right-wing zealots intent on suppressing representations of gay sexuality often display a questionable fascination with the very images they claim to despise. It hardly requires any advanced art historical training to see that Mapplethorpe's "Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter" photo plays on the conventional image of the Victorian heterosexual domestic couple. I had rather hoped, given the time and effort that Meyer put into this book, that he would have been able to present something more surprising and innovative than he delivers. For a good discussion of current perspectives on censorship in law and the humanities that goes far beyond Meyer's account, see the Getty publication, edited by Robert C. Post, titled "Censorship and Silencing: Practices of Cultural Representation."

Rating:
Summary: Expert Scholarship / Much Needed Topic
Review: Professor Meyer's work is a needed contribution to queer theory and indespensible for anyone interested in minority persecution. As an art historian would, Meyer threads through the work of gay liberationist artists to demonstrate how the visual arts portrayed resistence to oppression. Using Foucault's concept of "reverse discourse" as a methodology, and the case study as a guide, this book reveals how public attitudes can be challenged with art. I look forward to more writing by Meyer.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, ground-breaking work
Review: Richard Meyer has added a significant volume to the compendium of books on American art and its kinship to social mores. Using Censorship as a topic should arouse the interest of all who value freedom of expression and it is to that audience that I think this books plays to best. Yes, the art examined here is queer art, but it is art that is a significant part of the 20th Century, not just an isolated school. His chosen artists are Paul Cadmus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol and Gran Fury and in presenting these artists he is concomittanly investigating the influence of such highly important social issues as AIDS, consumerism, POP culture, the whole Jesse Helms/Jerry Farwell/Christian Coalition debacle in a way that makes the reader look into the motivational behavior of the past century that continues into this century. The book is well documented in images and footnotes, making it a must for school libraries and fellow scholars. Despite the confrontational topic of the book, Meyer writes so well that he maintains interest even when extending his examples a bit too far. He overall theme appears to be that there is some good to be found in censorship: media attention derived from such art brings heightened awareness and eventually more prestige and longevity to the art and involved artists. One major complaint about this book: the typeface point is so small that it makes reading the pages a visual strain. In an otherwise expensive layout, one wonders why the typeface couldn't have been changed to one more user friendly.

Rating:
Summary: A much-needed look at a much-neglected subject
Review: This book does for twentieth-century American art what Vito Russo's "The Celluloid Closet" does for twentieth-century cinema. The illustrations and reproductions are brilliantly choreographed with the text.

Rating:
Summary: A book for anyone interested in art, politics or freedom
Review: This book is genius and amazing. Read it right now.

Rating:
Summary: A book for anyone interested in art, politics or freedom
Review: This book is genius and amazing. Read it right now.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, ground-breaking work
Review: This is an amazing book, rich in detail and images, but also exploring with passion and intensity a border between queer studies, art history, and cultural studies. It demonstrates an astonishing command of the social and political history of the period it covers, along with theoretical depth and great sophistication in the reading and analysis of visual materials. I was mesmerized. Written beautifully, this book makes its erudition appear effortless, but in fact it is an extremely courageous and innovative text, bringing together disparate worlds of scholarship into a brilliant synthesis. It neither panders to popular tastes, nor remains trapped in disciplinary jargon; instead, it is an examination, full of intellectual integrity, of the intersection of the law and artistic production, showing how artists moved around and through what might have been devastating censorship by entrenched homophobia. It is to be expected that the book itself will encounter resistance, since it breaks new ground with such authority, unnerving those with vested interests in disciplinary boundaries or in policing representation.