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

by Richard Meyer (Author) "The enclosed red envelope contains graphic descriptions of homosexual erotic photographs that were funded by your tax dollars..." (more)
Key Phrases: shoe collages, golden slippers, art space, New York, Andy Warhol, Christian Coalition (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Beautifully written and illustrated, Meyer's study combines significant historical research and reflection with richly insightful interpretations of queer art." -- George Chauncey, author of Gay New York

"In Richard Meyer's subtle and informative book, nothing is quite so simple as the heroic story his title suggests" -- Artforum

Review

"A smartly written, intensively researched and vigilantly argued new book.... Whether analyzing a painting or the words of a political speech, Mr. Meyer comes across as a cool but engaged observer. Most important, he's a good storyteller, and he has fascinating stories to tell."--Holland Cotter, The New York Times
"In Richard Meyer's subtle and informative book, nothing is quite so simple as the heroic story his title suggests....[Meyer] wants us to think about the way the possibility of art, at least when same-sex desire enters the picture, is always entangled with its own censorship."--Artforum
"This genuinely groundbreaking book charts the unexpectedly productive as well as restrictive effects of queers' multiple encounters with censorship over the course of the last century. Beautifully written and illustrated, Meyer's study combines significant historical research and reflection with richly insightful interpretations of queer art to illuminate the history of twentieth-century American art and culture as a whole as well as the distinctive and little-known history of gay artists."--George Chauncey, Professor of History, University of Chicago
"In Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art, Richard Meyer crafts a brilliant and persuasive argument about the interdependence of representations of homosexuality and acts of censorship. Throughout the book, Meyer excels at close, detailed visual interpretations of images. Rigorous analyses of color, of actual paint application, of sitters' postures and their costumes all yield nuanced readings of the terms by which homosexuality is represented and censored. Meyer's text provides a sophisticated, nuanced, theoretically informed reading that is nonetheless jargon-free. To my mind, the book sets a new standard for contemporary art-historical scholarship: clear writing and persuasive and original thinking about the ways in which images function as historical agents and not mere reflections of either history or theory."--Cecile Whiting, Professor of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
"It seems fitting that the best book on the policing of sexual imagery in the twentieth century should be written by an art historian. Meyer deftly uncloaks not just the invidious ways censorship seeks to rub out the work of gay artists, but also the equally powerful ways censorship is itself creatively thematized, analyzed, and satirized by the very artists targeted for suppression. This terrifically smart and intellectually savvy book should be required bedside reading for every public official boorish enough to wage war on the resourceful and imaginative world of contemporary American art."--Diana Fuss, Professor of English, Princeton University


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Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195107608
• ISBN-13: 978-0195107609
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,208,914 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Rather disappointing, April 7, 2003

By A Customer

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."

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Well Written Research on an Interesting Topic, June 7, 2002

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

13 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sexy without substance, April 13, 2002

By A Customer

To judge from the glowing reviews by high-powered academics on the dustjacket, one might think that Richard Meyer's book would reshape the entire field of twentieth-century American art history. To his credit, Meyer has done extensive archival research, and gives elegant, concise descriptions of the visual material he presents. But when one ceases to be awed by the glossy, provocative photos, it becomes apparent that his book is 90% description and summary of paintings and events--really, a coffee-table book rather than academic scholarship--and that his "central claim," clearly outlined in the first few pages, isn't really a argument at all, but an observation about cause and effect, _Outlaw Representations_ argues that censorship has produced a set of unintended "representations and counter-representations." What exactly needs to be proven here?
A much more interesting argument, in my view, would have been to say that representations of homosexuality in art and visual culture provide a paradigm for thinking about the relationship between censorship, desire, and the law. Apart from a few references to Freud and Jung (Lacan is conspicuously absent), Meyer does not venture in this direction. One cannot hold Meyer accountable for the title of his book, "Outlaw Representations,"--perhaps it was imposed upon him for marketing reasons, or chosen for its clever play on the word "out"--but it wrongly implies that these censored representations he is examining somehow seek to be "outside" of the law, when the artists are clearly eroticizing the very law that imposes censorial limits on their expression.
The book is a disappointment, because Meyer is a very intelligent person, and could have done more theorizing to make his book truly exceptional.