Henrik Olesen, Some Gay-Lesbian Artists and/or Artists relevant to Homo-Social culture V/American Male Bodies/English Lads/Melancholy, 2007

Elisabeth Sherman: This large blackboard‑like collage by the artist Henrick Olesen is composed of various categories of subject matter. For example, in one section we see the heading "American Male Bodies," and under it sub‑sections categorized by examples like Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, and Henry Scott Tuke. Within each of these sections, Oleson has collaged various images from these moments of art history, depicting—as the title suggests—American male bodies.

Narrator: Please take a moment to examine the rest of this work. You’ll see that it’s a kind of multi-part investigation of a theme.

Elisabeth Sherman: The title of this series, Some Gay Lesbian Artists and/or Artists Relevant to Homo‑social Culture, is investigating the way images in popular culture—either contemporary images in advertising that we're very familiar with, or the images that have been presented to the world throughout art history—construct and force a kind of conformity on social order. Specifically, he's interested in how the depiction of gay, lesbian, and other queer identities have been represented throughout art history, either marginalized, or in other moments, celebrated.