Demuth Foundation updates provide fuller portrait of artist’s life, sexuality
Deciphering the meanings of works or intentions of a long-dead artist can occasionally resemble a code-breaking game.
Much of Charles Demuth's work is fairly straightforward: his still-life watercolor images of flowers and fruit only need to be looked at to be appreciated. His cubist-influenced, abstract-infused depictions of architecture are stunning works of a modern master. But other pieces — images of bathers in a bathhouse, beachgoers, sailors in a dancehall or vaudeville performers — seem to hint at a deeper meaning below the surface.
As noted in "Charles Demuth: The Demuth Museum Film," which is available to watch on the museum's website or on YouTube, Demuth was reluctant to talk about the deeper meanings of his paintings but rather urged people to simply look at the paintings. But, as Abby Baer, executive director of the Demuth Foundation, points out, having a bit of context can enhance a viewer's appreciation of the work.
"Understanding the characteristics and experiences of the artist helps to make them and their work more relatable," Baer says.
Take for instance Demuth's 1918 watercolor titled "Dancing Sailors," which depicts three sailors in the foreground with their backs to the viewer. Each sailor is dancing with a partner. The two sailors on each end are dancing with women, but the sailor in the middle seems to be dancing with a male figure. Another example of Demuth's fascination with sailors is a more overt and explicit drawing from 1930, the self-explanatory titled "Two Sailors Urinating."
"Some of the themes that he used in his artwork are a little bit more coded," Baer says. "Like sailors. There was definitely an association between sailors in the early 20th century and the gay community."
READ: Renovated Demuth Museum reopens with new exhibits, galleries
In the past two years, the Demuth Museum has undergone some changes in order to present a more fully contextualized portrait of the life and times of the Red Rose City's most famous painter.
After a several-month hiatus, the museum reopened in April with renovated galleries and reinterpreted exhibits that focus on not just Demuth's work but also his life and legacy.
The foundation set out to research how two aspects of Demuth's life — his diabetes diagnosis and his sexuality — may have impacted his work. The project was made possible with funding from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Telling the Full History Preservation Fund and support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Acts of Generosity, the High Foundation, the Lancaster Community Foundation LGTBQ+ Giving Circle and the Richard C. von Hess Foundation.
"We wanted to incorporate and include underrepresented themes about (Demuth) in his artwork that we have maybe touched on in the past, but not really formally elaborated or explored in any kind of in-depth way," Baer says.
One of the topics the museum hadn't previously touched on was Demuth's sexuality. But Baer says it's been widely understood throughout the art world that Demuth was a gay man.
"Art scholars or historians have concurred about that for years, if not decades," Baer says. "But there is no surviving written evidence of a same-sex relationship or anything that's really concrete. And that's part of the reason why we've never, up until this point, discussed it thoroughly because we didn't have a lot to go on."
READ: Lancaster author featured in New York Times about coming out as a lesbian later in life
New essays
The Demuth Foundation invited nearly a dozen historians, art scholars and curators from across the country to provide research and craft and contribute essays on Demuth's work and life, including his experience with diabetes — the disease that ultimately contributed to his death in 1935 at age 51 — and his sexual orientation.
The essays — PDFs of which are available to read for free on the museum's website — are illuminating and insightful and feature some of the leading scholars relevant to Demuth's work, life and times, including Barbara Haskell, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Jonathan D. Katz, a leading figure in queer art history who has written in that context about a diverse range of artists such including Jasper Johns, John Cage, Agnes Martin, Robert Rauschenberg and one of Demuth's closest friends, Georgia O'Keeffe; and Alison Kibler, a professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Franklin & Marshall College and facilitator of the Lancaster Vice History tour.
The essayists take readers on a trip back to the turn of the 20th century dropping in on such locations as the Demuth family home and tobacco shop on King Street and the vice-fueled nightlife on Queen Street to the cafes and salons of Paris; Greenwich Village bath houses and jazz clubs in New York City and the bohemian-populated beaches of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The scholars explore the effects of social mores of the time on Demuth's life and art, the range of influence of Demuth's relationships on his life, his sexuality and involvement with the blossoming LGBTQ+ culture — long before it was known by the acronym — and the toll that diabetes took on his life and work.
"We definitely wanted to put more of the focus on Charles Demuth because it's his home and studio," Baer says. "We wanted to make sure that when people visited they would come away with — not only seeing his work — but having a greater understanding and appreciation of him and what he created. And we wanted to make sure that we were telling the full story of him and his work. And so part of that would include his disability and the LGBTQ community that he was part of."
Inviting scholars and art historians into the Demuth Museum's research process brought new light, not only on some of Demuth's more coded imagery but on some of the artist's correspondence too, Baer says.
"Having historians involved with this project helped us understand some of the phrases and tones," Baer says. "In a letter written in the 1920s to his friend and art critic, Henry McBride, (Demuth) used the term 'cousin' in such a way that it's interpreted as a potential partner because that was one of the code words that was used at the time."
READ: 'Tulle Queer' celebrates local LGBTQ+ community in one-night exhibition at West Art
Vaudeville's influence
Demuth's cosmopolitan tastes, effeminate mannerisms, immaculate style and charming wit, as well as his choice of artistic subject matter and some of his correspondence all fit the stereotypical portrayal of a gay man in the early 20th century.
"The term that was used for him in his lifetime was the word 'dandy,' which described an effeminate man who took great care in his appearance," Baer says. "And in terms of codes, we know that certain colors were sort of an indication to other members of the LGBTQ community that they were part of a community. We know he wore those colors and he had friends, colleagues and peers that also were wearing similar clothes. Reds, pinks and a lot of lavender, which, you know, thinking about today, a lot of those colors still have that association."
His social circle included Marsden Hartley — another visual artist who incorporated gay-coded images and themes into his work — as well as the queer-identifying Lancaster painter and interior decorator Robert Locher, whom many historians speculate could have been one of Demuth's partners.
Professor Alison Kibler, along with F&M student Jayden Lacoe, wrote in their essay "Demuth and Lancaster Vice," that Locher introduced Demuth to Bert Savoy, a vaudeville performer who used feminine pronouns and was known for a female impersonation routine.
Vaudeville was a favorite entertainment for Demuth — and one that had gay connotations as well. Demuth was known to frequent many Lancaster theaters that offered vaudeville, including the Colonial Theater at 134 N. Queen St. — and later, Demuth would paint vaudeville scenes.
"Vaudeville performers have kind of a gay subculture," says Kibler, who runs the Lancaster Vice walking tours. "There's a genre of performance called crossdressing, and the famous crossdressers use a lot of doublespeak to address gay men in the audience. Not always overtly, it's you know, like double entendre, and if you're in the know, you'd get it and think it was funny."
According to Kibler, Demuth was known to frequent the Hotel Brunswick and the Wheatland Hotel, both of which were known places to find males — including bellboys working at the hotels — willing to provide commercial sex.
During the late part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, Kibler says, homosexuality emerged as an identity with a distinct subculture, which overlapped with entertainment and nightlife scenes, and was often adjacent to the world of vice. Lancaster was no exception. In fact, Kibler says, Lancaster was considered an "open city," where officials not only looked the other way but even participated in the world of vice. At the time, sodomy and other forms of male sexual intercourse were crimes punishable with prison terms or institutionalization.
In his travels, Demuth frequented Greenwich Village gay-friendly bathhouses and jazz clubs. In other locations, such as Provincetown, Massachusetts, Demuth's presence and attitude seems to have contributed to a welcoming atmosphere for queer-identifying people.
Susan Ferentinos — a public history researcher, writer, and consultant, specializing in project management for historical organizations and LGBTQ and women's history — cites Provincetown historian Karen Krahulik in her essay "The Queer Life of Charles Demuth."
"Indeed, by dressing as he pleased and refusing to abide by contemporary gender conventions, Demuth helped make Provincetown safe for and even accepting of affected bachelors," Krahulik writes. "Rather than serving as a barrier, his effeminacy signaled to others that he had a different sexual and gender orientation and alerted men who might be interested in a homoerotic engagement that he was game."
Over the course of his life, and especially toward the end of his life, Demuth returned to Lancaster. According to Kibler, on one of his return trips, he heard there was a group of people trying to fight against vice.
Kibler says Demuth, with his characteristic mischievous wit, chimed in: "I'm back in town because I'm going to speak on behalf of vice."
