William S. Burroughs

b. February 5, 1914 

d. August 2, 1997

Novelist, born as William Seward Burroughs in St. Louis, Missouri. Heir to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company fortune. As a teenager, Burroughs was sent off to military school at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he had his first same-sex encounters. He was educated at Harvard and Vienna universities.

Burroughs fell in love and became obsessed with Ginsberg, and they have remained lifelong friends. Following trouble with the law regarding his drug habits, Burroughs settled in Mexico City with his wife Joan. One night in 1951, after a few drinks, they were entertaining some friends with their "William Tell" routine. She put a whiskey glass on her head and he aimed a pistol at the glass. Although he was an expert marksman, the shot was low and Joan was killed instantly. Burroughs had to leave Mexico.

His sexual explicitness (he was an avowed and outspoken bisexual) and the frankness with which he dealt with his own experiences as a drug addict won him a following among writers of the Beat movement. With Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, he was one of the founding members of the Beat generation. He was known to be a lover of young boys and in his later years, he lived with his long-time companion James Grauerholtz.

 Books:


Junkie: Confessions of an Unreedemed Drug Addict (1953)
Letters to Allen Ginsburg 1953-1957
The Naked Lunch (1959)
Nova Express (1960)
The Soft Machine (1961)
The Ticket that Exploded (1962)
Dead Fingers Talk (1963)
The Wild Boys (1971)
The Place of Dead Roads (1983)
Queer (1986)
The Western Lands (1987)

Henry Scott Tuke, (U.K) . Painter

b. June 12, 1858
d. 13 March 1929

Henry Scott Tuke, RA RWS, was a British visual artist; primarily a painter, but also a photographer. His most notable work was in the Impressionist style, and he is probably best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men, some of which are featured below/

Henry Scott Tuke was born in York, England, of Quaker parents. In 1874 he moved with his family to London. Here he enrolled at the Slade School of Art and won a three-year scholsrship.

The Bathers

 In 1880 he traveled to Italy, and from 1881 to 1883 lived in Paris. In 1883 he moved to the fishing village of Newlyn in Cornwall, where he became a founder of the Newlyn School, but in 1885 he settled in another Cornish town, Falmouth, where he was to live for the rest of his life.

Ruby, Gold and Malachite

 Tuke was an accomplished portritist and mantained a studio in London. His sitters included the soldier and author T.E. Lawrence. He was also the grand master of romantic boy painting, and was almost obsessed with the painting of nude youths.

Two Boys and a Dog

Source: 

Matt & Andrej Komasky

Books:

The Life & Work of Henry Scott Tuke: 1858-1929

Catching the Light: Henry Scott Tuke: The Art and Life of Henry Scott Tuke

Wicked Angels (Southern Tier Editions) 

Henry Scott Tuke Paintings from Cornwall

August Blue

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti, Renaissance painter, sculptor and architect

b. March 6, 1475

d. February 18, 1564

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni is considered one of the greatest artists of all time. His art typified the High Renaissance style with use of naturalistic light, depiction of realistic figures and emphasis on the beauty of nature. One of the true "Renaissance men," his talent encompassed fine art, architecture and poetry. He was referred to as "Il Divino" ("The Divine One").

Michelangelo was born in the Tuscany region of Italy. At age 13, he started an apprenticeship in Florence with Domenic Ghirlandaio, from whom he learned fresco painting.

He moved to Rome and received a commission from the French ambassador to the Holy See, the central government of the Catholic Church. In 1497, he completed one of Christendom’s most significant artworks, the "Pietà." The lifelike marble sculpture depicts Mary cradling the body of Christ after the Crucifixion.

His colossal marble statue "David" is considered the masterpiece of High Renaissance sculpture. Completed in 1501, the sculpture is 17 feet tall and is exhibited in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Florence.

Michelangelo was a primary architect of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and the sole designer of its dome. From 1508 to 1512, he painted what would become his most famous work, the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. The frescoes include "The Creation of Adam," in which God’s finger stretches out to give Adam life. These murals are considered the most magnificent and spiritual art of the Roman Catholic Church.

A lover of male beauty, Michelangelo's lyrical poetry described his same sex-affection. He wrote: 

            The flesh now earth, and here my bones,

            Bereft of handsome eyes, and jaunty air,

            Still loyal are to him I joyed in bed,

            Whom I embraced, in whom my soul now lives



 Bibliography
“Accademia Gallery Collections.” Firenze Musei. July 1, 2008
http://www.firenzemusei.it/00_english/accademia/collezioni.html
Hood, William. “Michelangelo Buonarroti.” GLBTQ: an Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture. July 1, 2008
http://www.glbtq.com/arts/michelangelo_art.html
“Michelangelo.” Sculpture Thailand. July 1, 2008
http://www.sculpturethailand.com/Sculpture-Michelangelo.php
Articles
“Times Topics: Michelangelo Buonarroti.” The New York Times.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/michelangelo_buonarroti/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=michelangelo&st=cse
Artworks
Pietà (1499)
http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Altars/Pieta/Pieta.htm
David (1504)
http://www.firenzemusei.it/00_english/accademia/index.html
The Sistine Chapel (1512)
http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Volta.html
Other Resources
Saslow, James M. “Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society” (1988)
http://www.amazon.com/Ganymede-Renaissance-Homosexuality-Art-Society/dp/0300041993/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219333308&sr=1-1
Saslow, James M. “The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation” (1991)
http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Michelangelo-Annotated-Translation/dp/0300055099/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219333279&sr=8-3

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), French Composer

b. 7 January 1899
d. 30 January 1963

Composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music.
Some writers consider Poulenc one of the first openly gay composers.

Poulenc and harpsichordist Wanda Landowska.

Poulenc was born into an affluent Parisian family. His father directed the pharmaceutical company that became Rhône-Poulenc; his mother was a talented amateur pianist. At the death of his parents, Poulenc inherited the country estate "Noizay", which would be an important retreat for him as he gained fame.

From 1920, Poulenc became a member of a group of young composers dubbed "Les Six", in which the others were Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, and Louis Durey. His first great popular success was hia ballet score for Diaghilev's Bellet Russe, "Les biches" (1924). Later, there followed two commissions from the lesbian American expatriate Winnaretta Singer (known in France as Princesse Edmond de Polignac): the Concerto for Two Pianos (1932) and the Organ Concerto (1938).

Poulenc's growing recognition of his homoesexuality from the late 1920's, combined with the death in 1930 of the only woman he had ever considered marrying, contributed to a period of grave depression, and may have led also to return to the Roman Catholic Church for solace. Following a religious pilgrimage in 1936, he composed a substantial body of sacred works,including some of his most popular works: the Stabat Mater (1950) the Gloria (1959), and his operatic masterpiece, Les Dialogue de Carmelites. In the finale, one by one the nuns face the guillotine, which can be clearly heard:



This turn to religious however, did not result in any rejection of his interest in men. The surrealistic opera "Les mamelles de Tirésias" (1944) the World War II Resistance cantata "La figure humaine" (1943), and other works were dedicated to his second lover, the bisexual chauffeur Raymond Destouches. Earlier, his first lover had been the painter Richard Chanlaire, whom he met in the late twenties. Later, his lovers were Lucien Roubert, who died of pleurisy in 1955, and from 1957 his last significant lover, Louis Gautier.

Ber(e)nice Abbott, Photographer (July 17, 1898 - December 9, 1991) U.S.A

(July 17, 1898 - December 9, 1991) U.S.A
.

Born in Springford, Ohio, after graduating from Ohio State University, in 1918 she moved to New York to study journalism, but eventually decided on sculpture and painting. In 1921 she moved to Paris to study with sculptor Emile Bourdelle. In 1923 - 1925, she worked also with the surrealist photographer, Man Ray, before opening her own studio in Paris. She photographed the leading artists in France and had her first exhibition at the "Au Sacre du Printemps" Gallery in 1926.

Abbott returned to the United States in 1929 and embarked on a project to photograph New York. In 1935 she managed to obtain funding for this venture from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and its Federal Art Project. In 1936 Abbott joined with Paul Strand to establish the Photo League. Its initial purpose was to provide the radical press with photographs of trade union activities and political protests. Later the group decided to organize local projects where members concentrated on photographing working class communities.

Abbott's photographs of New York appeared in the exhibition, "Changing New York", at the Museum of the City in 1937. In the late 1950s Abbott began to take photographs that illustrated the laws of physics.

Longtime partner of essayist Elizabeth McCausland, Berenice Abbott died in Monson, Maine.

Source:
Steven Hogan and Lee Hudson, Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia, Henry Holt and Company, 1998,
 http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/bioa1/abbema01.html

Books:

Changing New York (1939)
Guide to Better Photography (1941)