Queering Abstraction
According to most art historians, abstract art as a movement was first introduced in the early twentieth century by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint. Everyone has different interpretations and ideas of what constitutes abstraction, but it can represent something more for some. Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Marsden Hartley, who are today widely known to have been queer, recognized some element of themselves within abstract art and implemented it into their own practices. During the past 150 years, a time when being LGBTQ+ has been a punishable crime throughout the world, queer artists stuck one foot out the closet door and used abstraction as a tool for quietly expressing their queer identities.
Marsden Hartley was born in 1877 in Maine and began attending art school in 1893. He studied impressionist painting and still-life drawing, and throughout his life he frequently traveled, collaborating with artists such as Paul Cézanne and Alfred Stieglitz. He achieved success with his abstract and avant-garde works (nga.gov). In the early 1910s, Hartley met a German soldier named Karl von Freyburg and the two became lovers. They spent a great deal of time together in Berlin, where there was a thriving gay scene despite legislation outlawing homosexuality. In a postcard to Stieglitz, he wrote: “I have lived rather gaily in the Berlin fashion- with all that implies” (homohistory.com). Tragically, in 1914 at the very beginning of World War I, Hartley received news that Freyburg had been killed in action. Hartley was grief-stricken and created his famous War Motif series in his lover’s memory.
The centerpiece of the series is Portrait of a German Officer, a large canvas that today is on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The piece contains clear Cubist influences with solid planes of color and geometric, repeating, collage-like composition. Its main interest, however, is Hartley’s use of symbols and codes to dedicate the painting to his deceased lover. Many numbers and letters are visible across the canvas: “KvF”, Karl von Freyburg’s initials; “24”, his age at the time of his death; “4”, his regiment number; and an Iron Cross to represent that which Freyburg received posthumously (metmuseum.org). While this painting does not literally depict its subject, it is still an intimate portrait of him. Hartley included so many of Freyburg’s characteristics that it would be impossible to assign it any other meaning. At the time of this painting’s creation, homosexuality was considered a crime almost everywhere, and therefore Hartley was not upfront about his romantic relationship with the late officer. Because of this, he had to find a way to discreetly pay his respects, and abstraction became that outlet. On the surface, the piece has clear military symbolism, flags, and other references to the war, but unless one knew Hartley personally, there is no way of knowing the piece’s real meaning. Hartley has abstracted his lover so much that Freyburg’s memory lives on through this collection of meaningful symbols.
Another artist whose abstract work was influenced by his queerness was Robert Rauschenberg. He was born in 1925 in Texas and studied under former Bauhaus instructor Josef Albers. He is most well known for his Combines, an artistic series that includes ordinary household objects and walks the line between sculpture and painting.
Charlene is a piece from Rauschenberg’s Combines series currently on display in Amsterdam. It includes an electric light, visible on the far left; a flattened umbrella in the top right corner; a mirror panel beneath the umbrella, accented by a hole in the frame; newspaper and comic book clippings; and of course, dripping, running, and splattered paint. Rauschenberg’s use of so many different objects brings to mind decoration art and challenges what defines masculinity as an artist. In addition, it evokes a unique sense that all these items are strangely collaged and forced together. The idea of literally gathering together whatever is on hand and making something of it is one that is overwhelmingly queer, especially among communities involved in the practice of drag.
Rauschenberg’s use of symbolism is not quite as literal as in Marsden Hartley’s Portrait of a German Officer, but many art historians agree that an artwork’s meaning does not have to be widely agreed upon in order for it to exist. Jonathan David Katz, a long-time queer art historian, was quoted as saying, “An important part of my job is bringing… hidden queer intonations forward” (dailypublic.com). An article written by Katz and published in Art Journal in 2008 stated that it is “unwarranted [to assume] that because an audience cannot reconstruct an artist’s meanings, the artist therefore intended none… the author’s meanings do not have to be the audience’s, but that doesn’t entail that authors not have meanings of their own” (Katz, 2008). Rauschenberg is known to have been romantically involved with several other male artists including Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, but his artistic practice was only subtly queer, even when looking at his work through the lens of queer abstraction. In his Art Journal article, Katz goes on to comment on the idea that queer artists are used to pandering to multiple audiences because their own sense of self contains multiples. A central piece of existing as a queer person is having to adjust personalities and expressions on a situational basis to protect themselves. Katz notes that “there are multiple audiences for the work of Johns and Rauschenberg — a general audience, an audience among a circle of friends. and audiences of each other” (Katz, 2008). Naturally, work like Charlene means something different to each person who views it.
Jasper Johns worked and was romantically involved with Rauschenberg throughout the 1950s, but his approach to art was distinct. Johns was born in 1930 in Georgia and knew from a very young age that he wanted to be an artist (jasper-johns.org). Throughout his career, he experimented with implementing household objects into his work in similar ways to Rauschenberg’s Combines.
Johns’s Painting With Two Balls is, at first glance, a similar style to any other abstract expressionist painting. However, Johns included his own personal twist. He split open the canvas about a third of the way from the top and inserted two small balls in between the panels. The balls are centered on the canvas, close together but not quite touching each other.
Johns took the use of objects in paintings to another level with this piece. As with any coupling in art, the idea of partnership or companionship comes to the surface. The balls are squeezed in between the panels and the canvas frames appear to be putting a lot of pressure on them. Johns may have intended to quietly represent his relationship with Rauschenberg with this. Also, more literally, the two balls have an inherent phallic connotation, and this is perhaps a nod to Johns’s queerness. The absence of a phallus combined with the clear strain of the canvas’s frames may also comment upon masculinity and pressure placed upon men to uphold certain standards, standards that Johns himself disavowed (beachpackagingdesign.com). On the other hand, though, perhaps there are simply two little balls in the middle of the painting. Abstraction is unique in that it can be assigned an infinite number of meanings and interpretations, and there is never one that is one-hundred percent correct. As a gay man, Johns knew how this felt, and his artwork reflects it.
In the twenty-first century, it is far easier to come out as gay than during the times that Hartley, Rauschenberg, and Johns established their careers. One working artist whose abstract work reflects his queerness is JP Calabro. He is a visual artist based in Philadelphia who, similarly to Rauschenberg, has a sculptural approach to painting. He experiments with texture and draws inspiration from camp and queer aesthetics. In a 2020 series, he drew inspiration from iron railings that he saw around the city. Calabro was quoted as saying that these railing designs “have unexpected beautiful moments of ornate and decorative art embedded in [such] everyday objects” (Jedidiah Gallery).
Calabro’s use of glass and glitter provides his work with a tactile and almost uncomfortable viewing experience. In Eros, he focuses on several forms which equally resemble the iron fencing he references and a phallic shape entering an enclosed central area. The symmetry offers multiple perspectives on this event and allows the two central shapes to nearly meet in the middle, providing a point of visual and also emotional tension. In addition, his title Eros provides some context: Eros was the ancient Greek god of love and sex. The size of the piece, at a modest eleven by fourteen inches, crowds the shapes together and forces an intimacy between them and the viewer which is made more personal by its bumpy and rough texture.
In Ecstasy Machine, Calabro maintains his use of symmetry and instead experiments with different uses of color and tone to separate the two sides of the canvas. Similarly to Johns’s coupling in Painting With Two Balls, Calabro hints at the idea of two distinct organic forms or bodies. The curvilinear shapes come incredibly close together without quite touching each other, even within themselves. They also do not bleed off the edge of the canvas; each shape is constrained within the rectangle and this tension is felt throughout the piece. In a similar vein as Eros, the title of Ecstasy Machine conjures the idea of something erotic within these abstract shapes.
Living as a queer person in an overwhelmingly cisheteronormative society requires the development of, quite plainly, survival tactics. Art has always been about self-expression and depicting what is important to the artist, so it is no surprise that so many queer individuals find themselves within artmaking. Marsden Hartley, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and JP Calabro have all lived at very different times in terms of society’s attitudes towards queerness, yet so much of their work resonates with the same underlying meanings. Each of their bodies of work has proved abstraction to be a versatile tool for queer self-expression and quiet, yet no less powerful, resistance.
Works Cited
Barcio, Phillip. “How Queer Artists Used Abstraction to Express Themselves.” IdeelArt, 12 June 2019, Link.
Calabro, JP. Ecstasy Machine. Glass, glitter, oil, airbrush on canvas. 2020. Link.
Calabro, JP. Eros. Glass, glitter, oil, airbrush on canvas. 2020. Link.
“Charlene.” Robert Rauschenberg, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Link. This is the webpage for the museum where Robert Rauschenberg’s Charlene is on display. It contains information about the piece’s mediums and Rauschenberg’s artistic choices.
Cirigliano, Michael. “Marsden Hartley and Wilfred Owen: Queer Voices of Memorial in Wartime.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20 Dec. 2017, Link. This is an article about Marsden Hartley and talks in depth about Portrait of a German Officer.
Gent, Jeffrey. “Marsden Hartley (1877–1943).” Homo History, 3 Sept. 2014. Link.
Hartley, Marsden. Portrait of a German Officer. Oil on canvas. 1914.
“Jasper Johns and His Paintings.” Jasper Johns — Paintings, Biography, Quotes of Jasper Johns. Link.
“Jasper Johns: Painting With Two Balls.” BEACH, 14 Aug. 2013. Link.
Johns, Jasper. Painting With Two Balls. Encaustic and collage on canvas with objects. 1960.
“JP Calabro.” Jedidiah Gallery & Design Store, Link. This gallery site contains biographical information about JP Calabro as well as insight into his 2020 series inspired by iron handrails.
Katz, Jonathan David. “Committing the Perfect Crime: Sexuality, Assemblage and the Postmodern Turn in American Art.” Art and Queer Culture, edited by Richard Meyer and Catherine Lord, Phaidon Press Limited, 2013. This excerpt from Jonathan David Katz’s essay (originally published in Art Journal, Vol. 67) discusses Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns’ art and how it embodies queerness, especially in relation to an audience.
Marcus, Daniel. “Daniel Marcus on Jasper Johns.” Artforum International Magazine, 2018, Link. This is an article about Jasper Johns and his impact on queer art.
“‘Queer Abstraction’ Exhibition, Commended for the Sotheby’s Prize 2018, Breaks New Ground in Iowa.” Sotheby’s, 3 June 2019, Link. This article highlights a queer abstract art exhibition that took place in 2018 in Des Moines, Iowa. It discusses how abstraction and queerness can go hand in hand.
Rauschenberg, Robert. Charlene. Combine: oil, charcoal, paper, fabric, newsprint, wood, plastic, mirror, and metal on four Homasote panels, mounted on wood with electric light. 1954.
Treacy, Christopher John. “Jonathan Katz: The Queer Code.” The Public, 3 June 2015. Link.
Torchia, Robert. “Marsden Hartley.” National Gallery of Art, 29 Sept. 2016. Link.
“What Can Be Considered Abstract in Robert Rauschenberg’s Artwork.” IdeelArt.com, 13 Jan. 2017, Link. This article is about Robert Rauschenberg’s work and its intersection with abstraction.
