Is there a queer aesthic ?

I sure hope not.

I had the opportunity to tour the Roger Brown (RB=prominent gay chicago Imagist painter) study collection last week, and I came out of the thing with mouth hanging open. It was totally amazing. It was also campy, sensual, 'primitive,' ironic, macabre, hilarious, and theatrical all at once. Brown collected lots of weird shit; circus sideshow banners, outsider art, african artifacts, phalluses (whats the plural of phallus anyway?!?), etc. I guess brown's massive collection really influenced a generation of 'queer collectors' here in Chicago. Two gay friends of mine who moved to Santa Fe from chicago have a similar collection: lots of theatre, outsider art, wierd junk, camp, etc...

Anyway, 'gay aesthetic' would be impossible to define. There are many different aesthetics. Calvin Klein has a different aesthetic than Alexander McQueen, say.

An "impossible to define" aesthetic need not be a non-existent aesthetic. And just because an aesthetic exists need not mean it is temporally fixed, or that it can't be subverted.

tom, get back to work :):)

(returns sheepishly to report-writing)

define queer before i get to aesthetic...

possibly more possible for gay, but dubious as to whther there would be a purpose....of course there is a camp sensibility, but hwther that's a gay thing or not, and how it has come to rely on sexuality/identitity..well, this could go on 4 hrs.

Tom, maybe you can tell us what the plural of phallus is.

I think the Official Gay Aesthetic is all to do with a feeling of being somewhat apart from the mainstream, sympathy/identification with the downtrodden underdog, a sense of irony/detachment, a feeling of isolation, no real sense of belonging all wrapped up with a slightly hedonistic triviality.

I'm not sure how true this is but when people talk of Gay Sensibility, I think this is the sort of thing they mean. I also think this kind of aesthetic is one with which lots of people can identify and so maybe we need some new words.