Outlas Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art

From the U.S. Navy's 1934 confiscation of a painting of sailors on shore leave to contemporary culture wars over funding for the arts, conflicts surrounding homosexuality and creative freedom have shaped the history of modern art in America. Richard Meyer's Outlaw Representation tells the charged story of this strife through pioneering analysis of the works of gay artists and the circumstances under which these works have been attacked, suppressed, or censored outright. Focusing on the careers of Paul Cadmus, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Gran Fury, and Holly Hughes, Outlaw Representation explores how gay artists responded to the threat of censorship by producing their own "outlaw representations" of homosexuality. Instead of acquiescing to attacks on their work as indecent or obscene, these artists used the outlaw status of homosexuality to propose new forms of social, sexual, and creative life.

Richly illustrated, Outlaw Representation includes close to 200 striking images, ranging from the art of celebrated figures such as Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe to physique-magazine photographs and gay liberation posters. Throughout, images that once provoked censorship now elicit close visual analysis and careful historical investigation. Engagingly written and sweepingly researched, Outlaw Representation promises to be a landmark in the study of twentieth-century American art, politics, and sexuality.