SLEEK GREEKS

by

Leon Stevens

One Sunday I met a friend emerging from the Cleveland Museum of Art who revealed that he frequented the Museum in the same way that others attended church. And no wonder! The Cleveland Museum possesses some of the finest accomplishments of world civilization -most of which make profound statements about mortality and the fabric of the universe itself!

By virtue of form and texture, art is necessarily sensual, whether subtly sensual or outright sensuous. Because art can be highly expressive without being specific, homoaffinity emerges relentlessly, though disguised in visual representation.

Straight apologists for the homosexual domination of Greek art have a poor case indeed as our museum's purloined treasures demonstrate. One glance at any major museum's collection of classical art reminds one immediately of the Club Baths.

Roman copy of Greek nude, 1st century B.C.

Ancient Greek artists, mostly male, advertise their sexual predilections in all of their various media. The male form is universally depicted in the nude in Greek art, except when infrequently shown in family situations or with females. When males are portrayed with females, the women are exhibited fully, even heavily, clothed. What few Greek female nudes exist, (mostly goddesses) are executed in freestanding works or by themselves.

This convention can be clearly witnessed in the Cleveland Museum's collection of classical antiquity. Of the Museum's 25 major ceramic

Greek satyr, 3rd century B.C. pieces, 14 are decorated with some form of male-to-male interaction! 2 pieces show woman-to-woman interaction, 2 feature no human figures, 1, an Italian, work depicts male-tofemale interlocution, 1, another Italian work, displays a group of children, 4 include women by themselves (2 of them are goddesses plus a mortal on an Etruscan work). Of males by themselves, there are two articles of pottery.

Attic artists proclaimed their special preference in vivid, lucid symbols. A group of battling warriors decorates an amphora of the Sixth Century B.C., each of the warriors carrying a large shield. The designs on all of the shields are largely concealed except a central one in full frontal view covered with three swirling male thighs and buttocks!

The Romans seem to have been somewhat confused by Greek homoeroticism. Those accomplishments which reflect strictly Roman tastes, (not copies of Hellenic originals), integrate semi-nude females and males (note the Roman sarcophagus at the Museum). The Romans draped male statues in massive swaths of clothing.

However, the Etruscans, northern neighbors of the Romans, apparently shared the Greek aesthetic vision. A marvelous bronze Etruscan handle in the

HIGH GEAR/APRIL 1978

tuous

Minoan acrobats, suggesting the direction of later Greek murals which are now unfortunately lost.

Sadly, Cleveland curators, as others, employ rather ritualized methods of camouflaging classical homosexuality. For example, nude male statues are routinely identified as "athletes" in spite of the fact that ceramics are regularly illustrated with nude males in various nonathletic "everyday" situations. A splendid Fifth-Century krater (stylized cup-bowl) is embellished on one side with a group of clothed, celebrating women and on the other side with a reveling mob of nude males. The caption reads, "The precise interpretation of the scene is uncertain."

Museum's collection is comGreek "athlete," 3rd century posed of the male deities of B.C. Sleep and Death carrying the naked body of a slain warrior. The wide-eyed.gods gaze, transfixed, at the midsection of their handsomte burden.

Homoeroticism is not a recent development in Greek art history. While neighboring peoples still painted vases with typical Neolithic stripes and volutes (spirals), the Greeks accompanied the volutes with silhouettes of nude warriors. An example of this can be seen on example of this can be seen on our Museum's Eighth Century B.C. Athenian dipylon vase. Early wall murals on the Isle of Crete are lavished with volup-

Thanks to Greek artistic modes, an immense trove of ancient homoeroticism has survived to this day. Greek artists avoided graphic displays of sexual behavior, both gay and straight. Not so much as a passionate embrace or kiss is indulged. Also, as the famous German antiquary. Winckelmann, observed, they circumvented discharges of strong emotion including: laughing. weeping, agony etc. Such weeping, agony etc. Such routine subtlety is perhaps disappointing to us, but actually quite fortunate because it facilitated the survival of our

Western gay heritage, which might otherwise have been extinguished by succeeding generations of Christian homophobes. (Much Greek religious art was defaced or destroyed by Byzantine zealots and iconoclasts.)

Clearly much could be said about homoaffinal Aegean masterpieces but it is much more fun to let them explain

OFF BASE

By John Montini

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themselves. Contemporary gaypride slogans seem humble in the context of Hellenic culture. Greek achievements bespeak far more than gay pride. They radiate gay glory! If you've cruised through the antiquities at the Cleveland Museum of Art without realizing they were a magnificent declaration of ancient homophilia, CHECK THEM OUT!

viewpoint. Hence one shrewd Vatican designate, when asked The reasons inspiring the if Father Hans Kung's catechism Vatican's silencing of Jesuit would be put on The Index of Father John McNeill have recenForbidden Books replied: The tly been revealed. They are, insale of his book is considerable deed, unconvincing. And for already; we won't add to it." Inthose few gays who still guide' deed, indeed!

their moral affairs by Vatican Vatican officials have not dictates, sufficient reason has followed that sage advice. now been provided to reject But more importantly and to their counsel in matters sexual. the point, the issue points up In the prologue to his book, some of the major advances the Fr. McNeill recounts the scanissue of homosexuality has dalous attempts of papal already made even in the most surrogates to suppress his restrictive circles and gives us manuscript. The persistent some glimpse of things to come. priest refused to allow those unThe world's 500,000,000 derlings the manner of their Catholics are victims of a way. Through repeated efforts, shepherd whose own sexual he forced high-ranking officials proclivities has been the subject in Rome to review and critique his revolutionary ideas. And reviewed they were and revised and reviewed again, and after final changes -which in NcNeill's words "did not change or in any way alter my insights or convictions in order to receive official permission to publish" --his volume was granted the "Imprimi Potest", i.e., permission to publish.

The permission to publish endorsement has been withdrawn and all future copies of the book will be printed without this dubious advantage. Gratefully. I've got one of the "official" books.

This drama, official permission to publish from the Vatican and its subsequent withdrawal with the pitiful and pathetic reason that the book "clearly and openly advocates a moral position regarding homosexuality which is contrary to in theory as well as in practice the traditional and actual teaching of the Church" calls for some explanation or at any rate, some conjecture.

of some speculation. The present occupant of the papal throne was widely reported to have had an affair with a young French actor. The source? The actor himself! Roger Peyrefitte..

The Vatican denies the allegation as "ignoble and slanderous" but the reserach statistics which indicate that of all professions, the celibate ministry has the greatest percentage of homosexuals, does not inspire confidence in their denials.

Times change and enfeebled pontiffs advance in age beyond statistical parameters and to insurance companies' delight, alas, passon, pass away.

Pope Paul is undoubtedly disturbed by the measurable decline of fervent Catholic piety under his reign. Statistics reveal that fewer Catholics are going to church regularly, financial squeezes ensue, and now this... At 82, and to be embroiled in a controversy on homosexual love!

The relics in the consistory of cardinals will probably not While the Catholic Church's follow Paul with another Pope official approach to sexual matJohn, but the younger, more ters appeared for many years to liberal, more educated, more be monolithic, such is not the sensitive, more compassionate, case today. Serious thinkers in more human clergy does adthe Church now differ materially vance with time to positions on many sexual subjects from where they can and will make birth control to masturbation. material changes in the "ofThe cacophony of their ficial" uninterpreted Catholic sometimes strident voices canbiblical not be stifled by Vatican homosexuality. declaration. There is just too much difference of opinion in the Church, and some officials recognize that they, by their intractable opposition, actually advance the opposing

viewpoint

on

"There comes a time in the events of men which if taken at the floods, leads on soe fortune."

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