Visual Arts through a Queer Lens (1800-2000). Introduction to the special issue

The contributions collected in this special issue of Whatever shed light on modes and forms of visual representation within twentieth-century Mediterranean artistic practices for the construction of expanded subjectivities in constant metamorphosis. The essays participate in the construction of an alternative historiography of Italian and Southern European art that acts as a narrative “against the grain” to foster a new area of art historical studies inflected by queer perspectives, complementary to the Anglo-American and North European theoretical and historiographical canons. The studies published here focus on theories and experiences capable of expressing resilient and inventive forms of subjective identities that are hybrid or dissident from social norms. Authors in this special issue have addressed topics of the body, desire, and eroticism in areas traditionally considered particularly heteronormative and whose narrative strategies of subjectivity outside the norm have been less explored.