There is something queer about Symbolism. Art historians have long acknowledged the links between Symbolist aesthetics and contemporaneous ideas about human sexuality, and even a cursory examination of artworks by male Symbolist artists working across the continent reveals an eyebrow-raising number of muscled nudes, lithe ephebes, and intimate male couplings. The sensual male body could register the artist’s erotic desire, even as he put it forth as an idealized emblem of transcendental truth. But perhaps Symbolism’s queerness extended beyond subject matter. Scholars have argued that Symbolism was in part defined by a subversive approach to visual semiotics: a severing—we might say a queering—of the ties binding a sign to its established cultural meaning. Similarly, male homosexual subcultures were sustained by endowing established signs and pictures with a uniquely queer significance. This paper seeks to tease out the relationship between Symbolist aesthetics and male homosexuality in terms of a shared sensibility towards pictorial interpretation. Taking as a case study the work of the Swedish Symbolist artist Eugène Jansson, I argue that Symbolism held appeal for homosexual artists precisely because queer subcultures were primed to read subversive meaning into normative pictures. Offering a new reading of Symbolism’s sexual valences, I contextualize the movement’s attendant artworks within the broader cultural landscape of homosexual signs and symbols and articulate the parallels between Symbolist approaches to the image and queer modes of seeing in the late nineteenth century.

中文翻译：

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性、符号、颠覆：19世纪欧洲的象征主义艺术与男性同性恋


象征主义有一些奇怪的地方。艺术史学家早已承认象征主义美学与同时代人类性观念之间的联系，甚至粗略地审视一下非洲大陆男性象征主义艺术家的艺术作品，也会发现数量惊人的肌肉裸体、轻盈的袈裟和亲密的男性情侣。性感的男性身体可以记录艺术家的情欲，即使他将其作为先验真理的理想化象征。但象征主义的怪异也许超越了主题。学者们认为，象征主义在一定程度上是由视觉符号学的颠覆性方法来定义的：切断——我们可以说是酷儿——将符号与其既定文化意义联系起来的纽带。同样，男性同性恋亚文化通过赋予既定的标志和图片独特的酷儿意义而得以维持。本文试图通过对图像解释的共同敏感性来梳理象征主义美学与男性同性恋之间的关系。以瑞典象征主义艺术家尤金·杨松（Eugène Jansson）的作品为例，我认为象征主义对同性恋艺术家的吸引力正是因为酷儿亚文化已经准备好将颠覆性的意义解读到规范的图片中。我对象征主义的性效价进行了新的解读，将这一运动的伴随艺术作品置于更广泛的同性恋符号和符号文化景观中，并阐明了象征主义图像方法与十九世纪末酷儿观看模式之间的相似之处。