BREAKING THE GAY CODE IN ART LOVING LIKE THE GODS LECTURE BY IGNACIO DARNAUDE

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT – BREAKING THE GAY CODE IN ART is a three-lecture series that reveals with stunning imagery how, throughout history, gay artists faced the dilemma of staying in the closet or being out with their art and lives and, in doing so, risking rejection and prosecution. Unable to express their same-sex desires openly, many iconic gay artists used secret gay codes or they created homoerotic images hiding in plain sight. In doing so, their extraordinary work transformed mainstream culture every step of the way. ART LECTURE #1 : LOVING LIKE THE GODS: Gay artists all over the world and from all eras have used classical, religious and mythological images as a perfect cover-up to show beautiful male bodies. The male nudes that society deems sinful can be gazed with desire by romanticizing them in a classical, faraway past, or within a mythological scene. During centuries of Christianity’s repression, thousands of images of Saint Sebastian were the only accepted ways to express homoerotic desire. Some of the artists included in this lecture are: Michelangelo and Botticelli.