BOOKS & ARTS
Robertson on Leighton’s remark: ‘Still, she
was a fine, upstanding slip of a boy.’
Fluidity of gender is, naturally, a hot topic
in queer studies — an academic discipline as
abstruse as particle physics, and discussed in
equally impenetrable jargon. It is presum-
ably because of complex equations worked
out by trained queer scholars that pictures
such as Cecile Walton’s ‘Romance’ (1920)
— a semi-nude self-portrait of the artist as a
young mother with her two children — are
included. It comes in a section headed, rath-
er broadly, ‘Defying Convention’.
There are moments, while walking
around, when you begin to wonder whether
there is any clear distinction between queer
British art and British art, tout court. Indeed
the non-British sculptor-painter Alberto
Giacometti had the same thought, according
to Lucian Freud. ‘He told me he had decided
to come and live in London, “...et je devien-
drai un pédéraste”. Almost all my friends at
that time were queer, and he had decided
that that was the life!’
Freud is not included in the exhibition,
but many of his circle from the Forties and
Fifties are — John Craxton, John Minton,
Francis Bacon. It is easy to imagine Bacon’s
response to being seen in this company, aes-
thetically. He was a famously savage critic
— one friend gave up painting in despair
after Bacon’s hilariously scathing reaction
to his work.
He would probably have been equally
entertaining if let loose on the audio guide
to Queer British Art— but perhaps unfair-ly so. There are some fine pictures here and
there — by the neglected Edward Burra,
for example, and the almost forgotten Ethel
Sands. The photographs, however, tend to
catch the eye more than the paintings —
whether camp and fantastic, such as Cecil
Beaton’s ‘Stephen Tennant as Prince Charm-
ing’ (1927), or poignant like John Deakin’s
frayed print of the two Roberts, Colquhounand MacBryde, asleep (or passed out) in
each other’s arms, c.1953.
Turning to the two stars of the show, there
is much better Hockney on display in his tri-
umphant retrospective and the Bacons are
also far from his best. It’s a shame that Tate
couldn’t get the latter’s ‘Two Figures’ (1953)
— based on Muybridge’s photographs of
naked wrestlers and informally known as
‘The Buggers’ — which is surely one of the
truly great post-war British paintings. It hung
for many years on Freud’s bedroom wall.
Francis, he recalled, liked to imagine that he
was the one underneath.
Those more interested in visual delight
than in social history — albeit touching and
amusing — might like the new installation
‘Forms in Space ...by Light (in Time)’ by
Cerith Wyn Evans in the grand Duveen
Galleries upstairs. It consists, in effect, of
illuminated neon tubes that draw in the
air above your head, producing an effect
a little like a skein of vapour trails in the
sky. It’s free, fresh, energising and altogeth-
er lovely.Dreadful items such as Walter
Crane’s silly ‘Renaissance of Venus’
get in for the sake of a good storyFrankly dreadful: ‘The Renaissance of Venus’, 1877, by Walter CraneTATE. PRESENTED BY MRS WATTS BY THE WISH OF THE LATE GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS 1913