The young and evil : queer modernism in New York, 1930-1955 / edited by Jarrett Earnest.

"The Young and Evil tells the story of a group of artists and writers active during the first half of the twentieth century, when homosexuality was as problematic for American culture as figuration was for modernist painting. These artists--including Paul Cadmus, Fidelma Cadmus Kirstein, Charles Henri Ford, Jared French, Margaret Hoening French, George Platt Lynes, Bernard Perlin, Pavel Tchelitchew, George Tooker, Alexander Jensen Yow, and their circle--were new social creatures, playfully and boldly homosexual at a time when it was both criminalized and pathologized. They pursued a modernism of the body--driven by eroticism and bounded by intimacy, forming a hothouse world within a world that doesn't nicely fit any subsequent narrative of modern American art. In their work, they looked away from abstraction toward older sources and models--classical and archaic forms of figuration and Renaissance techniques. What might be seen as a reactionary aesthetic maneuver was made in the service of radical content--endeavoring to depict their own lives. Their little-known history is presented here through never- before-exhibited photographs, sculptures, drawings, ephemera, and rarely seen major paintings--offering the first view of its kind into their interwoven intellectual, artistic, and personal lives"-- Publisher's website.