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Painting Against Nature: A Medieval Queer Theory of Art and the Artist.

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Painting Against Nature: A Medieval Queer Theory of Art and the Artist.
Authors: Richards, Christopher T (AUTHOR)
Source: Art History. Apr2025, Vol. 48 Issue 2, p264-297. 34p.
Subject Terms: *ART theory, *QUEER theory, *PAINTING, *FAILURE (Psychology), *EMBLEMS
Abstract: This essay argues that a group of fourteenth-century illuminators from Paris understood painting as an 'unnatural' or queer art form, adopting Narcissus as a reflexive emblem and a site of artistic self-fashioning. After excavating a medieval intellectual tradition that associated deceptive images with queerness, I demonstrate how medieval artists leveraged queerness as a strategy to articulate artistic freedom. Art-historical narratives have framed their miniatures as failures to reproduce texts accurately, and failures to reproduce the natural world stylistically. Queer methodologies offer a new framework in which to appreciate 'unnaturalistic' medieval artworks in the terms of the medieval queer theory that they espouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Database: Academic Search Index
Description
Abstract:This essay argues that a group of fourteenth-century illuminators from Paris understood painting as an 'unnatural' or queer art form, adopting Narcissus as a reflexive emblem and a site of artistic self-fashioning. After excavating a medieval intellectual tradition that associated deceptive images with queerness, I demonstrate how medieval artists leveraged queerness as a strategy to articulate artistic freedom. Art-historical narratives have framed their miniatures as failures to reproduce texts accurately, and failures to reproduce the natural world stylistically. Queer methodologies offer a new framework in which to appreciate 'unnaturalistic' medieval artworks in the terms of the medieval queer theory that they espouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:01416790
DOI:10.1093/arthis/ulaf022