Gay icons in art, Vincenzo Patanè: “This is how I lay bare the desire of the male body”

An ode to the history of art and homosexuality in the West without glorifying it but with the right amount of sensuality and eroticism. Vincenzo Patanewith his new book Gay icons in art published by De Luca Editori d’Arte, it offers an extraordinary tribute to the history of art and to homosexuality in the West.

The manual, which will be presented by Gigi Malaroda this evening at 6 pm at the Maurice club in Turin, is a selection of 100 works of art of notable interest – the result of a very strict selection, because hundreds of others would have deserved inclusion – ranging from Michelangelo Buonarottipresent with two jobs as a painter and sculptor, a Leonardo da Vincifrom Sandro Botticelli to Anthony Canovafrom Keith Haring to Jean Cocteau.
Patanè explores the theme of the body and the male nude in Western art from prehistoric Egypt to the present day sailors, angels and gods they are the protagonists of a journey centered on European and European visual traditions, with the inclusion of some North American artists from the 19th century to the present.

The work focuses on three different types of works, although the lines between them can be blurred as many works can fit into multiple categories. The most numerous includes works that openly exalt the body and the male nude, bringing with them an intrinsic erotic charge. There are additionally works that deliver homoerotic cues, explicitly or more subtly and covertly. Finally, there are some significant and often intriguing homosexual related works.

Vincenzo Patanè is a well-known and appreciated exponent of the Italian gay culture. Activist with vast experience in the field of cinema, he collaborated for over twenty years with the Cinema Office of the City of Venice and taught Art History in a State Artistic High School in the same city. Also, how journalist and film critichas contributed to the most important magazines of the LGBTQ+ movement such as Babylon And Prideand edited the Cinema section of Terrence, a pioneering gay site site. Among his wise men, Gay oasis. Myths and titans of homosexual and lesbian culture And 100 classics of gay cinema (both published by Cicero) e The other half of love (Drifts Landings). Patanè is also one of the leading Italian experts of Lord Byronto which he has dedicated several studies, including The summer of a dormouse (Cicero).

How did the desire to collect these works of art come about?
«This book is very original, there is nothing else like it, at most there are some English manuals on the history of LGBT art. Here, however, the magnifying glass is placed on 100 works, all of which are interesting and not a few of which are of an exceptional level. I think there was a lack of a book that says what textbooks dare not say about homosexuality.’

What do these gay icons show in art that we don’t imagine?
«Homoeroticism is sometimes explicit, other times hidden (and for this reason often more intriguing). The 100 cards help the reader to decode the message, in relation to the era in which it was created and the poetics of its often, but not always, homosexual author. When the artist is homosexual – like Cellini, Caravaggio, Bacon or Haring – his life is also widely remembered ».

What is your favorite work and why?
“Difficult to answer. The 100 works (to which we must add another 25 in the introduction, which traces the history of the male nude in Western art) are splendid and there are many works dear to the LGBT imagination, such as the Antinous, the Barberini Faun, Flandrin, Tom of Finland or Cadmus. There is everything because I have deliberately refused to choose a basic aesthetic to treat all types of works on the contrary, as long as they are functional to the discourse. So there are also some works that I don’t like but that I think are important for the book».

But what if he had to choose one?
«I love the works of the Greek Yannis Tsarouchis, in which one can re-read the poems of Cavafis. His is a magnificent painting, in which ancient and modern Greek culture are fused and in which we find a pungent homoeroticism, between sailors, angels and gods ».