Out In CT - Robert Diamond

He is both a student of Art History and an artist, as well as a published author (juvenile fiction).  His most current artwork, treating gay themes, is included in “Revealed”  and includes the video diptych "Affection/Aggression," a floor piece called "Drawings for Destruction," and photographs by Tiffany Nevers.

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

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I’m from Connecticut.  I grew up in Rocky Hill so I’ve lived in central Connecticut for most of my life.  I live in Hartford now.  I graduated from Central.  I’d like to continue and get a PhD in Art History.

“Revealed: The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art” presents over a century of artwork by homosexual artists.  There are about a hundred and twenty pieces and the show.  There are, I want to say, maybe thirty artists.  We have included some reproductions before the nineteenth century to frame the tradition for people, the tradition that we are trying to discuss, so there are reproductions of Michelangelo and Pontore and Sargent, and after that you have a full good hundred and ten years of artwork that is homoerotic and shows a homosexual presence in art from the Renaissance, if you're looking back at the reproductions to the present day.

Originally what I wanted to do is just bring this type of show to CCSU and that's all I really wanted to do.  And then after that when I started to encounter resistance I realized how important it was, so in other words there were two steps.  The first step was when I thought OK this should just happen naturally and it shouldn’t be a big deal and this is just something we'd like to do and I thought it was important but I didn't realize the full significance of it.  When I started getting the resistance and doing my research and learning the history about the exhibition, then I knew how important it was to really fight and make sure that this show happened.

I think art history is a wonderful way to trace the development of an GLBT community and certainly when you look at the art you start to understand the way that community developed and you can almost trace know how out people were, at what times people are talking about it a little more.  In the late nineteenth century the term homosexual is first coined and at that time people were able to developed a true identity around that word.  It's interesting to contemplate how people felt about their sexuality before they really had a word for it besides something other than sodomite or something like that.

I talk to young kids, students just coming in here under the age of twenty and I asked them, you know, about their experiences and you find out that they suffer the same things that people did even fifty years ago, forty years ago, ten years ago and I want to know, if we're supposed to be having all this progress and enlightenment, it's still starting in the same place, so basically what's happening is that all the kids have to learn again how not to be prejudiced and how not to discriminate against gay people. If it's still happening in school then a the huge piece of that is missing, because ultimately it's still part of their consciousness on some level.

So again it’s a whole other generation that has to be trained out of that instead of just, oh, you know, my generation or a generation before was able to teach their children we don't do that anymore, so I don't really understand why that continues.  I don't understand why in 2010 this exhibition can’t just go to any number of campuses throughout the country.  I don't understand why these issues aren’t being talked about in Art History classes.  I don't understand why gay marriage is so controversial.  I mean, I really don't understand it based on all this alleged progress that we've experienced in the past twenty years.  So I guess what I'm saying is be careful about complacency and be careful about assuming that we have all these privileges when the reality is that there are still a lot of obstacles.

People need to accept the sexual part of homosexuality in order to really accept homosexuals.  That's an important part of our identity ---- that's actually what separates us from heterosexuals.  It doesn’t have to be a personal defining factor for everybody, but it is precisely what makes you different from another person is who you sleep with. That’s what the identity is formed around, so at some point people have to deal with that. And again, fear of sexuality promotes fear of the people themselves and it promotes all kind things, violence at the very worst.

I would like to see a gay community continue especially because I think that we didn’t really have our chance to be fully be out there in the way that we wanted to be. I mean the seventies came close to that and it was a wonderful time, but even then, like I said, it probably still wasn't reaching the little corners and secluded pockets of the country, and I think it's important that more people have access to it but at the same time they understand what makes it, what separates it a little bit and to celebrate those differences, as I said, instead of worrying about fitting in so much.  Because I think essentially there are important differences between gay people and straight people.  There are very important differences and so trying to superimpose all of those traditions onto the gay community ---- I don't think that's appropriate.  It doesn't fit and it’s not really fair either.

People need to know that they also need to make an effort, they also need to fight, they need to spread the word and make sure that there's feedback and that there's interest and that they extend the work that I started here in some way.  That's become really important for me because it was hard for me.  I’m not a political person, I’m not an activist, I’m not used to this at all, and so it really changed me a lot and I just feel like it's important for me to send out that message, whereas when I started that’s not a message I would have anticipated wanting to send about the show in an interview.