Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

While today it is thought of as but a preference, Weinberg throws open to question the
working definition of homosexuality, noting that in Hartley’s and Demuth’s time it was
listed first as an illness, then as a disorder, by a nascent psychiatric association. Clearly,
one who, in Wood’s era, knew himself to be homosexual would not have elected to have
either, especially one that presumably he could “cure.” The medical community’s
inability to get a grasp on people whose sex was so-called inverted or, alternatively, on
those who were of the so-called third sex 21 , made it the more exasperating for those
actually in these populations to know their own “condition.” Consequently, where sexual
orientation was concerned, mendacity, bewilderment and hypocrisy reigned for all of the
last century.
Then, according to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, assigned categories like “homosexual” and
“heterosexual,” not to mention “male” and “female,” don’t capture reality. Sexual desire
and sexual identity exist on a continuum, spilling over the neat labels we create to contain
them. What’s more, the failure to openly acknowledge these flawed definitions impairs
“an understanding of virtually any aspect of Western culture.” 22
For these and other reasons, I recognize that
“homosexuality” is a complex issue quite
outside the scope of this paper, which, after
all is said and done, is not a treatise on
gender studies: it is unimportant to me
whether Wood was exquisitely a member of
one or more of the classifications known by
the acronym LGBTQ. Consequently, I hope
readers will forgive me for reverting to a
system of classification acknowledged by
those in my peer group, permitting me on the
evidence presented here to label Wood a
Sultry Night, 1937, lithograph
homosexual and a misogynist, leaving
modern university students to break gender issues into as radiant a kaleidoscope of
nuances as they may feel it necessary to do.
That out of the way, it does seem odd, does it not, that even as recently as 1983-85,
Hartley’s, Demuth’s and Grant Wood’s biographers all seemed content to ignore or
excuse sexual orientation when, to skirt it during an otherwise thorough analysis of an
artist’s work, would seem to risk missing something pretty important.
21 “Willy” (Henri Gauthier-Villars?), Le Troisieme Sexe, privately printed, Paris ca. 1927, first translated
into English by Lawrence R. Schehr, (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007)
22 Patricia Cohen, “Lit Critics Who Peer Under the Covers” New York Times, April 19, 2009
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