Laura Hutson Hunter

Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe, or Luncheon on the Grass, is often called the first modern painting, and the paintings compiled in Luncheons on the Grass: Reimagining Manet’s Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe are like a time machine connecting modern and contemporary art. The 1863 painting, which is in the collection of Musée d’Orsay in Paris, shows a nude woman sitting with two clothed gentlemen in a wooded glade. In the foreground is an overturned picnic basket. In the background, another woman bathes in a stream. In 2021, art dealer and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch asked around 30 leading contemporary artists to respond to Manet’s masterpiece, and the resulting works—as well as several pieces that weren’t commissioned specifically for the show but refer to Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe—are collected in this volume. Deitch’s own essay about Manet’s painting includes insight into its history, from its nude model Victorine Meurent to the inspiration the artist drew from Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Diego Velázquez. The inclusion of interviews with artists about their works and Manet’s influence is particularly illuminating. In an interview with Nina Chanel Abney, for example, the artist says, “I pulled from Manet’s beautiful landscapes, scenes, and epic compositions to make a painting that centers Black queer people, creating a new narrative in which I feel seen.” Some artists did away with Manet’s references almost entirely, focusing instead on more obscure ones. It’s here that the interviews become particularly insightful, as in one with artist Ariana Papademetropoulos: She explains that by focusing on the bather in the background of Manet’s painting, she’s able to think about what it means to have a picnic and bring domesticity to the natural world. Some other pieces discussed include work made prior to the project, most famously Robert Colescott’s 1979 painting of the same name, but also a 1965 photograph of a family of nudists by Diane Arbus, which takes on new life here.

Ostensibly organized around the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 2019, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and New Queer Art was an art exhibition before it became a book. Its curator, Jonathan D. Katz, is arguably the leading scholar on queer art history, and here he proves that he’s also an adept editor. About Face catalogs 350 artworks from a diverse array of artists from the past 50 years: portraits by Peter Hujar, largely recognized as one of the leading photographers of the 20th century, are positioned alongside work by Zanele Muholi, the South African photographer and activist whose art-world rise was comparatively recent. The essays in this volume skew academic, which provides a grandiosity to its subject matter. Katz cautions readers that to divide art along a line of queer and not-queer is to ignore not only nuance but the thousands of years of art history that existed before such classifications were foregrounded. Katz suggests we remove the binary and “return to a more expansive sense of sexuality.” The scholarship is deep and rewards multiple slow readings, while the artworks are sumptuous, thrilling and demand immediate appreciation. About Face is highly recommended for students of art history and queer studies, but also for anyone interested in how language transforms alongside identity.