The Short Story of Queer Art: A Pocket Guide to Key Movements, Works, Themes & Breakthroughs

by Dawn Hoskin

The Short Story of Queer Art offers a fuller picture of the history of art - from the barriers broken and breakthroughs that queer artists have made, to the important contributions to key artistic movements, and the forgotten and obscured artists who are now being rediscovered and reassessed.

Simply constructed, the book explores over 40 key works and artists, from across the world and throughout art history, and links them to the most important movements, themes and breakthroughs. An eclectic range of art is featured, including Aubrey Beardsley's The Peacock Skirt, Frida Kahlo's Self-portrait with Cropped Hair, Cecil Beaton's Stephen Tennant in Costume as Prince Charming and Tamara de Lempicka's Autoportrait.

Accessible, concise and richly illustrated, the book reveals the connections between different periods, artists and styles, giving readers a thorough understanding and broad enjoyment of the full achievements that queer artists have made with genres that include Classical art, Art Nouveau, Pop art, Street art and Video installations.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 2025

Reviews

[Ryan Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good starting point and picked out a few favourites.

*

Simeon Solomon, Bacchus, 1867

Bacchus, is also known as Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, festivity and fertility. His sexual availability is often tinged with ambiguity making his appeal highly fluid. […]

With his deeply androgynous figures and stories of same-sex love from the ancient world, Solomon's paintings seemed infused with innate queerness throughout his career.
This did not go unnoticed in the Victorian age. An 1870 Illustrated London News article declared his work as finely imaginative and a 'triumph', while at the same time mocking his 'effeminate inanity’.

I get my entire body waxed. Armpits, chest, stomach, legs.

No different to a swimmer, a cyclist, a wrestler. But that’s not why I did it.

It feels more me. I feel more in touch with myself. Quite literally. I love the smoothness. I prefer how it looks. I can see my freckles and I like them too. I like wearing a singlet at the gym even more now.

Bitch to maintain but I already I don’t want it to grow back. Hopefully it gets easier on my inner thighs.

*

George Barbier, La Bague Symbolique, 1922

George Barbier (1882-1932) was hugely successful and well-connected in his day, but much of his life remains shrouded in mystery. […]

His male figures are usually depicted as dainty wallflowers, with nipped waists and tiny feet, while his 'New Women' are assertive and appear to only have eyes for each other.

Smooth and soft. Gentle muscle. Clear strength. Neither delicate or bulky. Sculptural.

*

Gerda Wegener, A Summer Day, 1927

Gerda Wegener (1886-1940) is rated as one of the finest proponents of Danish Art Deco, standing out for her gay gaze and embrace of flirtatious female beauty rarely attempted as boldly by other women during her lifetime. […]

This is one of Wegener's most accomplished works. It has been proposed that the sensuous supine nude in the centre is the artist's partner Lili Elbe (1882-1931), with Elbe in her pre-transition form as Einar Wegener wearing a floppy sunhat at the easel, painting the scene from the other side. Their relationship was the subject of widespread scrutiny as they were open about Elbe's transition, together giving many of the world's first media interviews on the subject while seeking pioneering surgical and hormonal interventions through leading German sexologists including Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935).

The others seated on the ground are the painter Elna Tegner (1889-1976), a recurring sitter for Wegener who is shown gaily playing the accordion, and a Madame Guyot, married to a publisher who co-created a 1924 book with Elbe on ancient Scandinavian sagas. Wegener was entirely supportive of Elbe's identity, and in picturing their wider social circle in this scene of tranquil reverie, advances notions of acceptance and allyship.

A reverie of the beloved in summer. Belonging in friendship.

*

Patricia Cronin, Memorial to a Marriage, 2002

The 'dream piece' by Patricia Cronin (1963-) is a 3-tonne, over life-size, marble mortuary sculpture of herself and her partner, the artist Deborah Kass (1952-). Created for their burial plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, it was the first Marriage Equality monument in the world. Completed when same-sex marriage was still illegal across the United States, it marries political protest with visual poetry to convey broader issues including status, love, loss, lesbian invisibility and the paucity of real women represented in public sculpture. […]

Researching the history of sculpture in preparation for this work, Cronin discovered the work of American-born Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908), who had been a highly regarded, self-supporting sculptor with international clients and a notorious lesbian. She reflected, 'While I was thinking about my own death ... I found someone else's life’. The discovery inspired her to compile a catalogue raisonné of Hosmer's work which served as a broader corrective comment on the omission of women, feminists and lesbians from art-historical records.

Nestled intimacy.

Hosmer, Oenone, 1854–55, the pose I meant:



Salman Toor, The Latecomer, 2021

The Latecomer captures that disconcerting moment of arrival in a space before you feel welcomed or 'at home’. Appearing spotlit the figure makes his nervous exploratory passage across what appears to be a queer-friendly club, visually separate from those around him who possess intriguing ambiguities. […]

It makes bold use of what has become Toor's signature sea-green palette, which he described as evoking the ‘nocturnal allure and fantasy of a freely queer life'.
A contemporary jolt is provided by another of Toor's tropes – faces lit by the glow of a mobile phone, a pervasive technology that both connects and alienates.

[Heaps Gay street party, 17:00 29 Nov]

Walking through Heaps Gay I feel like the figure in the Latecomer. I don’t really fit into any community. Except my neighbourhood.

I think one day I’ll have someone to dance with.

ISAbella will be great but so little time for a set and so long away.

I am an outsider and that’s OK.

I don’t think festivals are my vibe. I need to be present with one artist in the dark for an extended period of time. Not in the sun with artists I do not know for 30-minutes surrounded by everyone with friends.

X meets me, he’s so friendly and accommodating. I give him some and he is grateful. I know I’ll warm up to dancing later.

I don’t feel at home in such a dense crowd, it doesn’t matter if it’s queer or not although if it were dude bros and lads I’d be terrified.

I am a deeply solo individual made for partnership, not groups.

This energy has no where to go. It needs Daria to activate. What I said about her art being a context was so true. It’s true of people. Of places. They bring you out.

I feel a lot of people have a general dance to everything vibe where I am insanely selective and hard to move. But when it’s the right person, I’m all in.

I don’t exist in any culture except neighbourhood culture.

I think I need intensity and this doesn’t come close.

That’s the thing about sexual energy. Life is incredibly bland without it.

I haven’t jumped once. :(

Bumped into Daniel! Long hug. Bitch session.

I don’t see myself in this community but that’s because someone like me is hard to see. The closest has been some trans women YouTubers. Not the girly girls but the soft femme ones. But that’s not me, I’m not going to transition. But they’re so sweet and brave and supportive and encouraging.

Heaps cold.

There’s no sweat. This isn’t a workout.

ISAbella.

That’s. More. Like. It.

Festival crowds are awful. Too much moving in and out and not dancing.

Finally dancing! Fuck should have gone straight to Chinese Laundry and rolled there.



Night over.

It wasn’t Daria.

I’m glad I saw my friends. X and his friend were really happy with what I gave them. lol, hand on my shoulder, ‘thank you so much’.

I end the night more aware that what I want is exceptionally rare.

But here’s the thing: you can just go see them again.

No one at the gym the next day.

What a contrast to the last time.

X says it was messy and the performers weren’t as good as last time. But I say it was insightful and I thank him for the invite which I valued.

*

Elizaveta Sergeevna Kruglikova, In the Studio, 1910

Studios are potent places of intense creativity. From the sequestered inner sanctums of some, to the nonstop party atmosphere of others, they frequently appear as a backdrop in the visual arts as nascent spaces of possibility. Beyond this potential as a place for sexual and social connections, studios are also revealing of a wider vulnerability. To show the process of creating, the artist feeling their way and perhaps failing, adds to the complexity and intrigue around spaces of invention. [...]

Elizaveta Sergeevna Kruglikova (1865-1941) was a Russian painter, silhouettist and printmaker who lived in Paris from 1895, with her own studio from 1900 until the outbreak of war in 1914. […]

Here in her studio, she pictures herself wearing large gloves, inking a plate à la poupée beside her own press. These tools are symbolic of her skills and independence.

Cooking up something good.

*

Artist unknown, Apollo Belvedere, 2nd century CE

For centuries Classical Antiquity and its myths provided an acceptable guise under which to depict same-sex couplings and for men to celebrate male physiques. Interpreted by many as possessing an Arcadian attitude towards homosexuality, it provided a screen on which later artists could project their own desires and became a recurring reference point for queer artists across time and art movements. […]

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) was a key influence on the reception to ancient Greek art that drove Neoclassicism and beyond. His open homoeroticism when discussing beauty enabled others to intellectualize their own similar or associated feelings. […] His aestheticized homosexual desire also influenced definition of visual ideals in the early development of European art history. Winckelmann exalted the Apollo Belvedere as the 'highest ideal of art'.

I like my male body and there is a certain kind I find beautiful.

The trans experience I don’t have is dysphoria. I just want to be healthy. Maybe feminise myself a bit but nothing major, nothing medical.

This reminds me of a statue I saw in Berlin: Stehender junger Mann (Standing Young Man) by Adolf von Hildebrand. Its calm form. Its unstated eroticism.




*

What do I see in my selections.

A man with social and emotional feminine traits. A masculine body that wishes for a more feminine expression and sexuality. Physical strength and emotional calm.

Contextual bisexual desire. Deep attraction to women including trans women in whom I feel some recognition.

A loving and sexual partner. Erasure of roles. Safety, comfort, play.

An outsider who doesn’t know how to ‘be’. But in the right context you don’t need a ‘how’.

No word, no label. Just an openness, an awareness, of what’s already there.

[Lola · Rating 5 out of 5]

short, informative, intersectional.
wished there would've been more visual media in there instead of the same pictures in different sections, but ultimately that lead to more connections between the different sections.
amazing to get into different themes/artists more.
laurence king publisher is lowkey so based.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this perspective on art and art movements and discovered some cool (new to me) artists including:
• Zanele Muholi
• Marie Laurecin
• Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Great starting point for a queer lens on art history! I particularly liked the section on art movements and on individual art works.