The Gay & Lesbian Review

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Editor’s Note: This review is an edited transcript
of a video presentation that can be viewed on the
GLR blog at
THE PROJECT that finally became
this book began as a web trail
from the British Museum. It is a
pictorial sampling of items from
that museum across centuries and cultures
of mostly visual representations of same-sex desire and gender
ambiguity. Each depiction has a paragraph or two of explana-
tion, much as you would find on the plaques that accompany art
works in a museum exhibit. The items are arranged in roughly
chronological order.
The book starts with its only extended piece of prose: an in-
troduction that, in explaining the choice of the word “gay” for
the title, reviews the work that has been done on sexual identity
over the last 150 years. It cautions, as historians such as Fou-
cault have done for almost half a century now, against viewing
past cultures through the gender constructions of our own time.
In viewing these various artifacts, in other words, “it is impos-
sible to have an infallible ‘gaydar’ across other cultures and pe-
riods.” The introduction also reminds the reader, more generally,
that “art is never simply a reflection of social reality.” Artists,
whether great painters or simple potters, craft their work in ac-
cord with particular personal ideas. Their work can never be read
as a transparent window on or reflection of the culture in which
they were produced.
Still, Parkinson argues, specialized histories such as this “can
offer a valuable alternative to the official histories that nation
states have often produced—and still produce—for themselves.”
More specifically, he expresses the hope that this book “will not
only illustrate some aspects of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-
gender history, but will also show the diverse material forms that
such history takes.”
And with that we are off to the items on display. Parkinson
starts with a small sculpture found near Bethlehem that dates
back almost 11,000 years. It depicts two persons embracing.
“Nothing makes it absolutely certain that it is a man and a
woman,” Parkinson observes. “The genders of the figures are
unmarked.” “We need not assume that ‘heterosexuality’ or the
modern nuclear family as we know them are the default options
for any society, ancient or modern,” he concludes. So this col-
lection begins in ambiguity.
That remains one of its main themes. We see a clay relief of
the goddess Ishtar from Mesopotamia with the claws of a male
bird of prey and are told that in some instances she was even de-
picted with a beard—though we don’t get to see an example of
that. There is also a statue of the male god Shiva from 12th-cen-
tury India in which the figure wears one man’s earring and one
woman’s earring.
As Parkinson explains in the preface,
“desire and identity are not limited to sexual
activity, but inevitably depictions of sex are
the most unambiguous historical records
that we have of such desire.” As a result,
there are also plenty of examples of same-
sex activity in this exhibit, most of them in-
volving men. Some are mild, such as an
early 19th-century print by Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro of
one warrior tenderly holding the hand of his male page while
another warrior looks less tenderly at a woman.
One of the more remarkable of the depictions of same-sex
desire comes from the first century C.E., a silver drinking cup
supposedly found near Jerusalem, now known as the Warren
Cup, because it was once owned by gay American art collector
Edward Perry Warren. The book doesn’t offer us much in the
way of an analysis of such a striking item, however. Rather, it
gives us its history and a few generalizations about sexuality in
the Roman Empire, and then moves on to the next item. At such
times, this book gets a little frustrating. Unlike an exhibition cat-
alog, there are no essays to offer detailed scholarly discussions.
When we get to the 20th century in the last few pages, the ex-
amples are less striking for being more familiar. We see, for ex-
ample, three figurines sculpted by German ceramicist Hedwig
Marquardt in 1924, two of them women. But while Marquardt
herself may have been a lesbian, it’s hard to see what her sexu-
ality had to do with these works.
There is nothing in this book that is intended to change our
way of seeing sexuality and identity through the ages. Rather, it
provides us with several examples of how it has been depicted,
reminding us that no matter how natural our desires may seem
to us, depictions of it from other times and places need to be
viewed with an awareness of how variably even something as
“natural” as sexual desire has been perceived.
A Conjectural Romp across Art History
RICHARD M. BERRONG
A Little Gay History:
Desire and Diversity across the World
by R. B. Parkinson
Columbia. 128 pages, $19.95
Richard M. Berrong, professor of French lit at Kent State, is the author of
In Love with a Handsome Sailor, a gay reading of Pierre Loti’s novels.
42 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE
Detail of the Warren Cup. British Museum, London.