Artistic careers and homosexuality

by Painboss

The western world seems to have a cultural connection between homosexual men and careers such as acting, dancing, singing etc.. Has this always been the case? Also is there any historical accuracy to the claim?

zeroable

Whether homosexual people had, or have, a stronger tendency to take up artistic careers than their heterosexual counterparts is hard to determine and beyond my scope. But the perception that there is a link between creative professions and homosexuality has been around for quite a long time.

During the English Renaissance, same-sex activity was heavily associated with travelling actors. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Yokel's Preceptor, a guidebook for provincial visitors to London, warned tourists that many actors were 'pooffs'. The famous incident of Fanny and Stella, crossdressers and suspected homosexuals who were arrested at a London theatre in 1870, further confirmed public suspicion of theatrical types.

Oscar Wilde did a heck of a lot to further strengthen the perceived connection between art and homosexuality. Although Oscar certainly wasn't publicly 'out' in any way that we'd recognise today, many people did have suspicions before his trial that he had a sexual interest in men. Caricatures frequently insinuated that he was 'unmanly' and over-feminine, traits that were strongly associated with homosexuality at the time. Oscar, as a playwright, poet, lecturer on art, and advocate for the Aesthetic movement, was the epitome of the artistic persona at this time, as well. After his 1895 conviction for gross indecency, all those earlier suspicions about his artisticness and effeminacy were cast as symptoms (or causes) of his homosexuality.

Interestingly, Max Nordau had singled out Oscar Wilde in 1892 as an example of 'degeneration' in his book imaginatively titled Degeneration. Degeneration was an indictment of the perceived decay of the bodily health and civilisation of humanity. Nordau focussed largely on 'decadent' artistic works, and Wilde was one of those whose works he discussed. For Nordau, avant-garde and nontraditional art were the hallmarks of moral and spiritual rot, a rot that manifested itself in the 'disease' of homosexuality.

In a letter to the Home Secretary pleading for better treatment during his prison sentence, Oscar himself briefly embraced Nordau's diagnosis of degeneracy and mentioned the intertwining of his writing and his desire for men.

Writing, especially poetry, was one of the most important outlets in this period for men who loved men. Timothy d'Arch Smith has a really nice collection of these poets, who referred to themselves as 'Uranians'.

And another connection between artsiness and homosexuality was the use of the word 'musical' as a code word for 'homosexual', as Marc-André Raffalovich attested in 1896. In the early twentieth century, this musical connection was extended to dancers. Maud Allan was a German-trained Canadian-American exotic dancer who was accused of being a lesbian and potential spy during World War I. Part of the insinuation was that her knowledge about the body and willingness to use it artistically predisposed her to lesbianism. (There were also important implications for cosmopolitanism, and it's a complex and interesting case.)

So yes, there is a longstanding perception in the Western world of homosexual people, particularly men, as being especially artistic.


Sources: Cook, Matt, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

d'Arch Smith, Timothy, Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English 'Uranian' Poets from 1889 to 1930 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970)

McKenna, Neil, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (New York: Basic Books, 2005)

Walkowitz, Judith R., ‘The “Vision of Salome”: Cosmopolitanism and Erotic Dancing in Central London, 1908-1918’, The American Historical Review, 108 (April 2003), 337-76

Wilde, Oscar, letter to the Home Secretary, 2 July 1896, in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis (London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd, 1962)