At the heart of Mapplethorpe's photography there is a paradoxical tension between outrageous content and intensely controlled presentation. Mapplethorpe's images are often sufficiently obscene to be considered pornography (even by the artist himself), while his overall aesthetic is chaste, classical,

Classical, Homoerotic, In-your-face, Political, Portrait, Queer art, Repetition, Sexy, Slick

In 1962 an accountant named Bhupen Khakhar decided to make a career change at the ripe age of 28. He enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barota and quickly became an emerging voice in Indian art. However, his work didn't truly reach maturity until the death of his mother and an eye-opening trip t

Bright, Homoerotic, Pioneering, Queer art, Quirky, Urban

If Postmodernism raises low art to the level of high art, it also allows folks who control the media to cash in on subcultural trends: Rap, grunge, vogueing, whatever. Andy Warhol made a joke of it, but Keith Haring turned the tables. When this Graffiti artist lifted his brush to the walls of subways

Cartoonish, Graffitists and cartoonists, Homoerotic, In-your-face, Kinetic, Playful, Political, Pop, Profane, Queer art

Buddhist, male-to-female transsexual Performance artist, gender educator, and author of the iconoclastic book "Gender Outlaw," Kate Bornstein brushes aside the confinements of gender categorization. At age 37, after three marriages and many years as a Scientology spokesman, Al Bornstein decided to be

Intimate, Mythic, Queer art, Queer literature, Quirky