Homoeroticism

Homoeroticism refers to same-sex love and desire, most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements (e.g.: the Wandervogel and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen). Homoeroticism thus differs from the interpersonal homoerotic; because homoeroticism is a set of artistic and performative traditions, in which such feelings can be embodied in culture and thus expressed into the wider society.

In Romanticism

Homoeroticism has been a strong undercurrent in much Romantic and Neo-Romantic visual art. The Romantic emphasis on beauty, perfect love and friendship, pastoral idylls, other-worldy transcendence, the truth & validity of one's inner life, the dynamic outsider hero, and romantic death, all made the Romantic mode especially attractive. There was the added attraction of being able to use a coded symbolism to reveal a work as homoerotic only to those "in the know" about the sort of codes being used.

Related Topics:
Romantic - Neo-Romantic - Symbolism

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Some historians have suggested that the suppression of Romanticism in the art world, after about 1920 (in favour of modernist, socialist realist art and abstract expressionism), was partly a homophobic act.

Related Topics:
1920 - Modernist - Socialist realist - Abstract expressionism - Homophobic

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