Jonathan D. Katz on 'The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869–1939'
Art historian Jonathan D. Katz traces how the coining of 'homosexual' in 1869 catalyzed a global wave of queer artistic expression across visual art.
Why we picked this
Before there was a word for it, there was art about it. Katz's exhibition and book recover 300+ works — many shown in queer context for the first time — spanning 70 years of identity formation across painting, photography, and film.
When the word “homosexual” was coined in 1869, it didn’t just name an existing identity — it helped create one. Art historian Jonathan D. Katz traces the seven decades that followed, assembling an archive of more than 300 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and film stills from around the world that document this transformation.
Many of these works are presented in a queer, global, and colonial context for the first time. The accompanying book includes twenty-two original essays by leading experts, each focusing on a different geographical region. Together they reveal how the emergence of a named identity catalyzed an extraordinary burst of creative expression across cultures and continents.
Katz speaks at the New York Studio School — itself a space devoted to the relationship between identity and artistic practice.