ROBERT FRANK AND THE NEW PHOTOGRAPHIC VOCABULARY After Robert Frank, contemporary photography was never the same. In the middle of the twentieth century, photography was redefined by one book, The Americans, published in 1958 in France as Les Américains, and in...
Finding White Art There is an interesting painting by the (white male) artist, Mark Tansey, White on White (1986), featuring an unexpected encounter between a Bedouin tribe and a band of Eskimos. At the edges of a sandstorm and a snowstorm is a white out, a reference...
WHITE, WHITER, AND ”WHITENESS” The study of “whiteness” is a newly emerged field of scholarship, only about ten to fifteen years old. One if its leading scholars, Richard Dyer, expressed concern about even embarking upon such an enterprise for, after all, isn’t the...
WHAT IS “HOMOSEXUAL ART?” Part One Once again, the question arises. Like the questions of what is “Black Art?” What is “Chicano Art” What is Women’s Art?’ the query demands a neat definition that is impossible to give. Is...
LESBIANS IN CULTURE In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation. Simone de Beauvoir There is a historical coincidence...
OUT OF THE CLOSET From the end of the nineteenth century on, homosexuals were put firmly “in the closet.” The “Closet” is a metaphor for “silence” about one’s forbidden sexual identity and one’s forbidden sexual longings. Fear of social disapproval and, perhaps even...
