Queering Art Before, After and During the Sexual Revolution (1960-1980): A Study of Aesthetics and Subversion

Works produced by the queer artists in 1970s America is oftentimes not considered to be an integral part of the sexual revolution’s narrative. Not only is this problematic in that it demonstrates the heteronormative discourse that permeated liberatory pro-sex rhetoric of the time, but this exclusion also makes the LGBTQ struggle for visibility ahistorical. In this paper, I argue that notable artists who self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer created art that fostered gradual acceptance of the queer community before, during and after the sexual revolution, explaining that resistance to dominant paradigms were rendered unseen due to the intertwined nature of various social movements of the time, such as second-wave feminism, a reaction that would eventually lead to LGBTQ artists being marginalized again until the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.