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Zahrtmann’s symposium : ethics, history, desire
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Hatt, Michael (2019) Zahrtmann’s symposium : ethics, history, desire. Perspective . pp. 1-42. ISSN 2446-1806.
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Official URL: http://perspective.smk.dk/en/zahrtmanns-symposium-...
Abstract
Kristian Zahrtmann’s Sokrates and Alkibiades, painted in 1911,has long been recognised as a painting about homosexual desire and a representation of Zahrtmann’s own homosexuality.1 The scene is taken from Plato’s Symposium, which was, after all, one of the most widely used references for homosexual men through latter part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. What has not been fully acknowledged, however, is the distinctiveness of Zahrtmann’s use of this source. This, I want to argue, is unlike other uses of Greek antiquity as an apologia for or a symbol of male homosexual love, both in its particular resonance in early-twentieth century Denmark, and in relation to Zahrtmann’s broader aesthetic and philosphical concerns.
My argument will be that Zahrtmann does not conceive homosexuality in terms of compliance with or resistance to codified moral and legal norms, but, at a moment of systematic state suppression of homosexuality and the opening of debate about sexuality in Copenhagen, he considers the ethical work needed to accommodate desire in his life and practice. As the irony of the painting suggests, Plato’s Socrates is not simply a symbol of a certain desire and its legitimacy, but much more a figure to be emulated in using desire to form the relationship to self and to others; those structures that Michel Foucault termed ‘the uses of pleasure’ and ‘the care of the self’
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | N Fine Arts > ND Painting | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History of Art | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Zahrtmann, Kristian, 1843-1917 -- Sokrates and Alkibiades -- Criticism and interpretation, Painting -- Denmark -- 19th centruy, Painting -- Denmark -- 18th century, Male homosexuality in art | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Perspective | ||||||||
| Publisher: | National Gallery of Denmark | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 2446-1806 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 8 July 2019 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Number of Pages: | 42 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 1-42 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 15 April 2019 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 15 April 2019 | ||||||||
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