The advent of the homosexual in Europe coincided with another significant social shift: the inauguration of colonialism, a European expansionist ideology. Deeply hierarchical, colonialism utilized Darwinism to justify racism, military expansion, the exploitation of human and natural resources and occasionally genocide. Queer artists, some even born into these European colonies, embraced the prevalent expansionism of the era. Other artists followed the familiar colonial trajectory from Europe to other lands, hoping to take advantage of more lax policing of same-sex eroticism in colonial properties or the greater tolerance for same-sex relationships among indigenous populations, especially when at least one of the parties was a colonizer. But alongside this literal colonialism, a more subtle and pernicious form of ideological colonialism advanced. While a number of indigenous cultures carved out what was often a respected place for same-sex sexuality, “homosexuality” came to be imposed on these cultures, investing them in Western ideologies that literally rewrote their relationship to their own histories and social practices. This ideological colonialism was so successful that some countries that once accepted same-sex relations now harshly punish them according to the dictates of colonial-era law, despite being long-liberated from European colonizers.

     Extended Labels

David Paynter
Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1900-1975
L’après-midi
c. 1935
Oil on canvas
Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove
LN200.88

Son of a British missionary and a Sinhalese mother, David Paynter grew up in what was then Ceylon, but studied painting in London from  1918 to 1922. This vivid canvas evokes Gauguin’s Tahitian scenes. Two young men exchange gazes, while one holds a flower with a  pronounced stamen, analogous to the phallus. British colonial rule criminalized homosexuality in South Asia in 1861, effectively toppling its  acceptance among indigenous populations. As both an indigenous and European artist, Paynter occupies an in-between subject position, shedding light on the colonial interactions that defined the development of sexual politics in modern South Asia.

Galerie Goupil & Cie after Jean-Léon Gérôme
France
The Serpent Charmer
Photogravure
c. 1894
LN200.151

This print, after a famous painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, is an example of Orientalism, a largely European construct that displaced sexual  license onto the “decadent” East to achieve two ends: First, it encouraged the West to be scandalized by the weak morals of the “Orient,”  while offering titillating erotic scenarios. Second, it helped justify burgeoning Western Colonialism, revealing those valuable lands to be so  dissolute that conquest would be in the best interest of their denizens. The Serpent Charmer was later famously used on the cover of  Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism, which defined the term and used Gérôme’s image to exemplify the Western gaze.

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Germany, lived and worked in Italy, 1856-1931
Untitled [Sicilian boys]
c. 1885-1905
Exhibition print
J. Paul Getty Museum
LN200.95

Although Sicily was technically in Europe, northern Europeans associated the area with North Africa and the Middle East. Thus, Sicily was  viewed through the lens of “Orientalism” which cast Sicilian subjects as a racialized, hyper-sexualized “other.” This photograph evokes a  male harem and combines “exotic” Sicilian boys with a classical setting and costume, which were also associated with homosexuality at the  time.

Fred Holland Day
United States, 1864-1933
Untitled [Nude youth by cave, with hands behind neck, and face of youth (double exposure)]
1907
Exhibition print
The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
LN200.157

Day, an important American photographer, was a wealthy Bostonian with no interest in commercial photography. He developed a pictorial  vocabulary rooted in the classics. Here he evokes the myth of Orpheus, who upon losing his wife Eurydice to Hades, god of the underworld,  could retrieve her if he did not look back. When he did, and she was pulled away, Orpheus forswore the love of women for that of male  youths. Day positions a nude youth at a cave entrance and with double exposure, adds a looming face, that of a teenage Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American poet, author, and visual artist.