In this video, Richard Meyer talks to Daily Xtra about his new book, co-authored with Catherine Lord. From the illicit pencil drawings of Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen) to Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, Art and Queer Culture is a well-crafted examination of queer art.

Richard Meyer talks to Daily Xtra about his new book, co-authored with Catherine Lord. From the illicit pencil drawings of Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen), to Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, Art and Queer Culture is a well-crafted examination of queer art.

“We wanted to use the term queer that suggested an ongoing resistance to the norm, however the norm is defined — usually some heterosexual norm,” Meyer says.

The book is a 125-year retrospective, going back to 1880, with the time period deliberately chosen. Prior to this time, the words homosexual and heterosexual were not in either popular or clinical use.

“There was a certain kind of visibility to homosexuals and other kinds of sexual minorities that had not existed, we argue, before the 19th century,” Meyer says.

Art and Queer Culture

Catherine Lord & Richard Meyer

Phaidon Press Limited

$75