Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948-1963

In the decades preceding the Stonewall riots-in the wake of the 1948 publication of Alfred Kinsey’s controversial report on male sexuality and in the midst of a cold war culture of suspicion and paranoia-discussions of homosexuality within the New York art world necessarily circulated via gossip and rumor. Between You and Me explores this informal, everyday talk and how it shaped artists’ lives, their work, and its reception. Revealing the “trivial” and “unserious” aspects of the postwar art scene as key to understanding queer subjectivity, Gavin Butt argues for a richer, more expansive concept of historical evidence, one that supplements the verifiable facts of traditional historical narrative with the gossipy fictions of sexual curiosity.Focusing on the period from 1948 to 1963, Butt draws on the accusations and denials of homosexuality that appeared in the popular press, on early homophile publications such as One and the Mattachine Review, and on biographies, autobiographies, and interviews. In a stunning exposition of Larry Rivers’s work, he shows how Rivers incorporated gossip into his paintings, just as his friend and lover Frank O’Hara worked it into his poetry. He describes how the stories about Andy Warhol being too “swish” to be taken seriously as an artist changed following his breakthrough success, reconstructing him as an asexual dandy. Butt also speculates on the meanings surrounding a MoMA curator’s refusal in 1958 to buy Jasper Johns’s Target with Plaster Casts on the grounds that it was too scandalous for the museum to acquire. Between You and Me sheds new light on a pivotal moment in American cultural production as it signals new directions for art history.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xii Introduction: Gossip: The Hardcore of Art History? 1 1. The American Artist in a World of Suspicion 23 2. Idol Gossip: Myths of Genius and the Making of Queer Worlds 51 3. The Gift of Gab: Camp Talk and the Art of Larry Rivers 74 4. Dishing on the Swish, or, the “Inning” of Andy Warhol 106 5. Bodies of Evidence: Queering Disclosure in the Art of Jasper Johns 136 Afterword: Flirting with an Ending 163 Notes 167 Bibliography 189 Index 201

About the Author :
Gavin Butt is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the editor of After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance.

Review :
"Between You and Me is boldly original and beautifully written. Gavin Butt renders a rich (which is to say dishy) description of a queer past that might enable us to imagine a queer futurity. His book will stand as a lasting contribution to queer theory and visual cultural studies, and, perhaps more importantly, serve as a political and methodological wake-up call to the discourse of art history."--Jose Esteban Munoz, co-editor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol "Between You and Me is a brilliant read that flirtatiously winks and kisses its way through the New York art world of the post-war period, turning our favourite icons inside out and back in again. It's all in the gossip. Larry Rivers painted a 'visual gossip column' and was described by Frank O'Hara as a 'demented telephone,' but it takes a smart flirt (the best kind) like Gavin Butt to see gossip's methodological promise. Taking gossip into his own mouthy hands, Butt slurs the studios of Rivers, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol with their own reckless talk: kisses turn into smacks and winks into home runs. (Between you and me, that's how I like it.)"--Carol Mavor, author of Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden "[A]n important and ambitious self-proclaimed challenge to the ways we do art history in the academy. It does so in a tone that is frequently witty, playful and irreverent, which is to say 'queer'. A book about the trivial, yet one that takes itself very seriously, presented entirely in parentheses (as if an inconsequential aside), yet claiming to be a weighty engagement with the dominant discourse of art history: in some ways this book is a brilliant and intriguing paradox."--Satish Padiyar, Oxford Art Journal "Butt readily acknowledges that his methodology might give pause, but convinces us that without this pillow talk, the real story behind the making of modern art might never be told."--Lewis Whittington, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly "Gossip, [Butt] notes, is conventionally thought to be slight because it is not serious... Butt shows how much you can learn about recent American art by looking at the gossip associated with it." --David Carrier, artUS