As a result of the forced privatization of homosexual lives, homosexuality, until fairly recently, had an oral history, but not a written one. This refusal by the dominant culture to allow homosexual history into public institutions continues even today, with art museums among the chief deniers of sexual differences among a large swath of their subjects. No wonder a number of homosexual artists turned their gaze towards history and sought to recast it in their own image. This is never more evident than in the many images here of the Elisarion, a temple/cult/social movement of the turn of the 20th century that not only embraced homosexuality, but sought to restore its rightful history. Its founder Elisàr von Kupffer, beginning in the late 19th century, built a large space dedicated to same sex love and decorated it with numerous idealized depictions of same sex relationships. It was sought out by men from all over Europe— especially as things grew tense following the widely publicized trial of Oscar Wilde—making it one of the very earliest “homosexual” rights activist groups in the world. In these photographs from the Elisarion archives, von Kupffer, his partner, and their friends range widely across the historical record, with particular attention to the Classical past and the Renaissance, both something of high watermarks in terms of the prominence of homosexuality. In the larger exhibition of The First Homosexuals in 2025, a selection of the actual paintings from the Elisarion will be shown, the first time they have travelled outside Switzerland.

     Extended Labels

Elisàr von Kupffer
Estonia, lived and worked in Germany
and Switzerland, 1873-1942
Untitled
Exhibition prints (15)
Getty Research Institute
LN200.173-LN200.188

The aesthetic and spiritual ideals of artist Elisàr von Kupffer melded with the theories of his partner, philosopher Eduard von Mayer (1873–1960) to yield a unique form of fin de siècle utopianism. They invented a new religion they called Clarism and built a temple to encourage its spread. Clarism is best understood in the context of other turn of the century utopian movements, such as theosophy, but it possessed a particularly Germanic flavor in its evident fascination with the classical past. Germany at this period understood itself as the new Greece, and von Kupffer and von Mayer found their ideal—and the kernel of their religion— in the easy bisexuality of the classical era, in which relationships with men and relationships with women operated seemingly on different planes and were not therefore seen as mutually exclusive. They materialized this bisexuality in elevating an androgynous gender ideal, modeled after a nonbinary figure of Adonis they saw painted in fresco in Pompeii.

While these images of von Kupfer and other models may strike us as fundamentally homosexual, it was precisely that category that these images were intent on opposing. Homosexual and heterosexual were defined, after all, through difference from their opposite term, but for Clarism, this opposition was to be replaced by a synthesis. Their new gender ideal was embodied by rounded male buttocks, wide hips, a voluptuous fleshiness, a lack of body hair and the elevation of the adolescent form—adolescent because they saw adolescents as possessing characteristics of both sexes. Perhaps not surprisingly, these were also physical traits von Kupfer himself possessed. Such a nonbinary archetype spurred the formation of a new painterly ideal, for von Kupfer trained as an artist, even studying for a short with Ludwig von Hofmann, also in this exhibition. The nonbinary form favored by von Kupfer was also not merely an aesthetic innovation, for Clarism believed in the leveling of all gender differences, in both embodied and political terms.

In their temple, erected in Minusio, Switzerland, a semi-tropical locale bordering Italy, von Kupfer placed more than 140 paintings, including one that was an immense cyclorama now on view at Monte Verità. In fact, he likely built what came to be called the Elisarion in Minusio because of the presence of Monte Verità, for it was a utopian vegan (later vegetarian) nudist commune, and thus indicative of the social tolerance of the locals.

Konstantin Somov
Russia, lived and worked in France, 1869-1939
Landscape with Rainbows
1915
Oil on canvas
Odesa Fine Arts Museum, Ukraine
LN200.115

Russian Symbolism focused on Eros, especially themes of unattainable love and forbidden desire. “For me, the art itself, the artworks, my  favorite paintings, and statues are, above all, closely related to sex and my sensuality,” Somov wrote. The theme of the biblical flood, in  which, Somov believed, God punished humans in response to their sexual aberrations, became central to his art for a curious reason:  rainbows. For Somov, rainbows represented absolution and acceptance, and he painted many of them. This was 63 years before Gilbert  Baker invoked the image of a rainbow on a flag for San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade.

Paul Avril (Édouard-Henri Avril)
France, 1849-1928
Hadrian and Antinous in Egypt
1906
Colored lithographs (four)
LN200.152

The Greco-Roman world was the iconographic foundation for same-sex eroticism in the West. It modeled a society in which a spectrum of sexual activities could co-exist. These lithographs oscillate between homo- and heterosexual scenes. The Roman Emperor Hadrian (b. 76  C.E. – d. 138 C.E.) favored his male lover, Antinous, and upon Antinous’s premature death, Hadrian deified him and founded a city,  Antinopolis, in his name. Here, the bearded Hadrian penetrates the youthful, hairless Antinous, a normative act under Roman standards,  which mandated that older men maintain a dominant erotic position over ephebes. It is coupled with scenes of lesbian cunnilingus.

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
France, 1767-1824
Illustrations for The Odes of Anacreon
1869 (originally published 1825)
Engravings in book
Private Collection
LN200.85

Anacreon, a Greek poet of the 6th century B.C.E., was known for erotic and romantic poems, many addressed to boys. His homoerotic  themes became extraordinarily influential during the Renaissance. Here, Anacreon appears voluptuous, analogous to Aphrodite in the  hanging painting. Prior to the term “homosexual,” Anacreon’s persona was one model for same-sex erotic liberation and cultural validation.  From Ode XXII, “Now from the sunny apple seek, / The velvet down that spreads his cheek, / And there let Beauty’s rosy ray /  In flying blushes richly play; / Blushes, of that celestial flame / Which lights the cheek of virgin shame.”

Gerda Wegener
Denmark, lived and worked in Denmark and France, 1885-1940
Venus and Amor
c. 1920
Oil on canvas
The Shin Collection, New York
LN200.143
Venus and Amor present a vision of a lesbian Arcadia. Five sinuous figures populate a garden, while Venus, goddess of love, helps Cupid  draw his bow. With his rosy cheeks, Cupid is genderqueer, like Wegener’s androgynous figures, that advanced an anti-binary view of  gender. Indeed, her husband, the founding trans figure Einar Wegener, preferred to be known as Lili Elbe. Although Wegener was likely bi- or pansexual, her art reflects a lesbian eros She was so popular in France that the government bought three of her works for the Louvre,  which are now in the Centre Pompidou collections.

Magnus Enckell
Finland, 1870-1925
Man and Swan
1918
Oil on canvas
Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, Mänttä
LN200.70

Enckell’s painting rewrites the celebrated classical story of Leda and the Swan. According to Ovid, Zeus spied the beautiful Leda bathing,  turned himself into a swan, and raped her. As a salacious subject that nonetheless escaped the depiction of explicit sex, the theme has been  prominent in art since at least the Italian Renaissance. Enckell’s painting re-genders the tale, and melds it with another avian classical  favorite, the story of Zeus turning himself into an eagle to rape the beautiful youth Ganymede. But here the rapacious Zeus meets his match, as a well built young man throttles the struggling swan.

French school, after Henri-Léopold Lévy
France
Sarpedon
late 19th century
Oil on canvas
Michael Sodomick Queer Art Collection
LN200.98

This period copy of a celebrated 1874 painting by French artist Henri-Léopold Lévy depicts a grieving Zeus receiving the body of his son  Sarpedon. According to the Iliad, Sarpedon, born to the mortal Europa, fought with the Trojans against the Greeks and was killed by  Patroclus, lover of Achilles. He was a king of Lycians, the Trojan allies. In death, Sarpedon’s idealized, aggressive masculinity turns soft and  feminized, with the result that Lévy, likely unwittingly, created an image of ephebic beauty that appealed to men interested in other  men. Zeus’s mourning completes the scene of all-male tenderness and intimacy.

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Germany, lived and worked in Italy, 1856-1931
Untitled
c. 1885-1905
Albumen silver prints (four)
Private Collection

Each of these prints traffics in the Classical, and draws a connection between contemporary Sicily and the classical past—something  literally materialized in the many Roman buildings and artifacts that litter the island. In each of these images, von Gloeden combines his  signature portraits of youth with a classical backdrop, self-consciously evoking a classical world in which same-sex desire was a recognized part of life. Images such as these served as an implicit seduction to come to Sicily and experience an earlier form of life no longer at odds  with one’s desires.