here’s no mistaking what’s going on in this

portrait of a naked man; the vintage physique

photo has been censored by a slash across the
model’s pelvis. “The white band both arouses and
frustrates our desire to see what lies beneath it, to see
‘the best bit’ of Ben Montgomery’s portrait. As view-
ers of thisphotograph, we may try to imagine it prior
to the imposition of the diagonal white band. Yet the
partially blocked picture is all that survives,” reads
the text. I

t In this analysis of a censored photo — and in
thousands of other examples — Richard Meyer’s
Outlaw Representation proves to be a triumphant
exploration of how conflicts over censorship and
homosexuality have transformed the history of mod-
ern art in America. From Mapplethorpe to Warhol,
the author masterfully charts the complex confluence
of sexuality and politics as we witness again and
again the collision between gay sensibility and the
long arm of the law.

Okay, I’m no stranger to these battles, since
as one of the so—called NEA Four, I learned first
hand what it’s like to have your creative work in the
crosshairs of people like Jesse Helms. Nonetheless, I
was blown away by Meyer’s grasp of his subject and
the light he shines onto this sad litany of censorship
in America.

I found the book intensely reassuring about
the courage of gay artists in the face of such attacks
on freedom of expression. As I read Outlaw
Representation, I wasstruck by how skillfully Meyer
locates the ways both artists and subjects managed to
get around censorship, claim power over their cre-
ativity, and sometimes even challenge the unjust
authority that was messing with them. He shares
with the reader an amazing analysis of the famous
Weegee photo from the late l930’s of the drag queen‘
being arrested but still finding the feistiness and
agency to mug a huge smile for the camera.

, “What I love about that picture, in addition
to its title, ‘The Gay Deceiver,’” Meyer explained in
an interview, “is the way the drag queen turns the
circumstances of her arrest into an extension of her
camp persona. Rather than hiding her face in shame,
as did most of the other people Weegee pho-
tographed in the midst of being arrested, The Gay
Deceiver makes the most of her appearance before
the camera — she lifts her skirt and smiles while step-
ping daintily out of the paddy wagon". It’s as though
the police station has become her stage set and
Weegee her own personal glamour photographer. The
Gay Deceiver embraces her role as an outlaw even as
she re-imagines that role from her perspective as a
drag queen.” '

It’s this kind of deep empathy for the artists
who created the images as well as the subjects and
viewers that makes Outlaw Representation as mov-
ing as it is smart. The impressive historical reach of
the book really invites the reader to realize that the
censoring of queer arthas always been as American
as apple pie. I recently talked with Richard Meyer
about art,'queemess and outlaws.

Tim Miller: What led you to write a book on cen-
sorship and homosexuality in American art?

Richard Meyer: During the controversies over fed-
eral funding and homoerotic art in the late 1980s, I
was working toward a Ph.D. in art history at U.C.
Berkeley. I increasingly began to think about how I
might use my scholarly training to situate the censor-
ship of gay art as something that began long before

‘Jesse Helms denounced Mapplethorpe on the floor

the U.S. Senate.

As part of this effort, I researched and even-
tually interviewed Paul Cadmus, an artist whose
painting of sailors on shore leave, “The F leet’s Inl,”
was confiscated by the Navy in 1,934 and denounced
as a “disgraceful orgy.”

The painting featured" a group of sailors
carousing on Riverside Drive along with several
women and a single male civilian who embodied
period stereotypes ofvthe homosexual — red tie, dyed
blond hair, rouged cheeks. One of the things that
interested me about the censorship of “The Fleet’s
In!” was that its portrayal _of homosexuality was
never acknowledged in the 193 Os, even though that
portrayal was surely a part of the reason why the
work was censored. Even as military officials were
troubled enough by “The Fleet’s In!” to seize it from
a museum under cover of night, they could not fully
describe or explain the problem the work presented.

As it happened, “The Fleet’s In!” was confis-
cated from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in
Washington D.C. More than fifty years later, that

same museum would cancel Robert Mapplethorpe’s
retrospective exhibition “The Perfect Moment” under
pressure from conservative politicians and religious
groups. From Cadmus to Mapplethorpe and beyond,
my book traces the conflicts surrounding art, homo-
sexuality, and politics in America.

TM: Why did you call the book Outlaw
Representation? Is gay artistic production inevitably
in some way “criminalized?”

RM: Throughout the last century, homoerotic art has
often been attacked as obscene, immoral, or other-

I wise illegitimate. Yet, as I argue in my book, gay

artists have found creative ways to use the outlaw
status of homosexuality as a means of responding to
the attackson their work. Andy Warhol, for example,
drew upon the gritty allure of police mug-shots in his
mural for the 1964 World’s.Fair, a painting com-
prised entirely of silkscreened blow-ups of the police
department’s “most wanted men.” Just before the

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