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Your Tour of LGBTQ+ Artists at the National Gallery

6 min read May 24, 2024

This painting depicts three women gathered closely together. The woman on the left appears to kneel on the ground, her face pointed towards us. She has long black hair that is partially tied up, and she wears a pale pink dress. A small white dog sits by her knees, next to another animal that may be a small white bird. Behind her and to the right is a woman who may be sitting or standing, with short gray hair, a pale blue hat with a pink plume, and a white dress with a pale blue sash and mesh sleeves. She is reaching toward the face of the woman on the right, who stands with her body turned and her hand on the central woman's blue hat. This woman on the right has wavy yellow hair and wears a pale yellow dress and a pale pink hat with a black bow and a pink ribbon. The women all have pale white skin with minimalist facial features consisting of simple black eyes and small, rose-colored lips. The background is made of overlapping patches of different shades of cool-toned green, some of which are shaped like leafy branches. — Marie Laurencin, In the Park, 1924, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.158

East Building

1. Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall

Three rows of six horizontal, rectangular canvases, each painted a single, saturated color, hang in a widely spaced grid against a three-story gray stone wall in this photograph. Moving from our left to right, the canvases in the top row are carrot orange, pine green, royal blue, canary yellow, marigold orange, and azure blue. The middle row has panels in marine blue, amethyst purple, shamrock green, soot black, vivid red, and rust brown. The bottom row canvases are banana yellow, black, coral red, midnight blue, emerald green, and orchid purple. The smaller, rectangular stones in the wall behind the panels are also laid horizontally, and they vary from silvery white to smoke gray. — Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall, 1978, oil on canvas, Purchased with funds provided by The Glenstone Foundation, Mitchell P. Rales, Founder, 2005.87.1

“I wanted to give people joy.”

American painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly made this spectrum of paintings in 1978—for a bank of all places. He had only recently returned to working in color after a period of using only black and white. The artist attributed his love for color in part to birdwatching. Seeing the creatures fly inspired him to consider the relationship between color and space.

Kelly considered these 18 canvases a single work. He made a new arrangement of the panels for this wall when the work entered our collection in 2005. This tour also includes a work by one of Kelly’s partners, American artist Robert Indiana—see his work below.

Ground Floor, Atrium

2. Gwen John, The Convalescent

This painting shows a woman sitting in a chair with her legs covered by her dress. She faces slightly left of us, looking down at something in her hands that could be a light gray sheet of paper. She has pale skin and long, dark, straight hair, and she is wearing a long, dark blue dress. A teacup and teapot are on the table beside her, in the bottom right corner of the painting. She appears to sit in a wooden chair with a cloth or blanket on the back, but the details are hard to determine. The background is textured beige with some spots of light orange. The brushstrokes in the painting are thick and textured, with the paint applied in short strokes or dots. In some places, the beige color of the canvas is visible. — Gwen John, The Convalescent, c. 1915-1925, oil on canvas, Paul Mellon Collection, 1994.59.15

“I cannot imagine why my vision will have some value in the world. And yet I know it will.”

Welsh artist Gwen John is known for her paintings and drawings of quiet interiors, often featuring women. Her depictions of friends, fellow artists, and models seated alone in quiet spaces led many to assume she was solitary and introverted. But her striking self-portraits show a self-assured, confident artist.

John worked in London and Paris. She moved in artistic circles with painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler and sculptor Auguste Rodin. (John famously had a 10-year relationship with Rodin. From her letters, we know that she was also involved or infatuated with a number of women.)

During her lifetime, these better-known male artists, as well as her younger brother Augustus, also an artist, overshadowed her. Nevertheless, John was dedicated to her practice and vision.

Ground Floor, Gallery 103

3. Marie Laurencin, In the Park

“Why should I paint dead fish, onions, and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.”

French artist Marie Laurencin is known for her ethereal paintings of a world that centered women (and animals). Her pastel-hued odes to feminine beauty established her place in Paris’s avant-garde art scene in the early 20th century. Once famous, Laurencin also made fantastical ballet costumes and sets as well as decorative arts.

Laurencin was part of a circle of creative women in Paris, many of whom were also queer. She regularly attended salons held by American author Natalie Clifford Barney. Author Getrude Stein was one of her first patrons.

Ground Floor, Gallery 103

4. Roni Horn, Opposite of White, v. 2 (Large) (A)

The sculpture is a cylindrical gray form placed on the floor within an interior space. The surface is textured with a white pattern resembling weathered or worn paint, with the gray material showing through in some patches. The top is smooth and dark gray. It sits against a backdrop of a wall with large, light-colored rectangular tiles, and on top of a light brown, marbled floor. — Roni Horn, Opposite of White, v. 2 (Large) (A), 2006-2007, solid cast black glass with fire-polished top, Gift of the Collectors Committee, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, John and Mary Pappajohn, Denise and Andrew Saul, Constance R. Caplan, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund, Kyle J. and Sharon Krause, and Mitchell and Emily Rales, 2015.63.1

“When I was young, I decided that my sex, my gender, was nobody’s business.”

American conceptual artist Roni Horn plays with the properties of glass. She began her Opposite of White sculptures by gradually pouring liquid glass into a mold. She then allowed them to cool and solidify for months. While the sides remain rough to show the texture of the molds, Horn polishes the top to a smooth, slightly sunken curve, imitating the surface tension of liquid.

Horn’s nonbinary identity informs this work. Standing over the sculpture, you might think you’re looking at a still pool of water—or is it peering deep into a well? You question whether something that appears one way might really be another, or both at once. Just when you think you’ve grasped its nature (solid or liquid), it slips away from you.

Mezzanine, Terrace

5. Marsden Hartley, The Aero

Layered circles and dots, crosses, checkered patterns, curved and wavy lines, and other geometric shapes in tomato red, shamrock green, buttercup yellow, royal blue, black, and bright white float against a field of unpainted canvas in this vertical, abstract painting. The shapes are most densely packed at the center of the composition. The eye is drawn to a red circle with flame-like forms at the sides and top, about three-quarters of the way up the canvas. Immediately underneath it and arcing out to our left is navy-blue band with three white, wavy lines. Other patterns to either side of the central red shape include two flag-like squares of alternating green and white stripes near two other patches containing a red and green checkered pattern. Other areas are patterned in black and yellow stripes, and blue and white stripes. Dots, lines, and lollipop-like shapes are scattered sparsely through the rest of the composition. Three shapes float near three of the corners, not touching anything in the layered, central portion: a red circle within a yellow ring at the upper right; a red dot at the lower left; and a red cross at the lower right. The frame was painted by the artist in the same colors as the canvas, with bands of color separating dots, crosses, and the lollipop-like form. — Marsden Hartley, The Aero, c. 1914, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1970.31.1

“My work embodies little visions of the great intangible.”

In his early career, artist Marsden Hartley was a groundbreaking American modernist with an innovative painting style. Hartley lived in Berlin, Germany, from 1913 to 1915. There, he befriended painters such as Wassily Kandinsky.

In Germany, Hartley also caught “zeppelin fever,” an international mania for the huge new airships. He wrote to his art dealer Alfred Stieglitz in 1913, “I have one canvas ‘Extase d’Aéroplane’ if it must have a title—it is my notion of the possible ecstasy or soul state of an aéroplane if it could have one.” Hartley may be referring to The Aero, his joyful abstract interpretation of the thrill of going airborne. The layered imagery of the cross and stripes may allude to Karl von Freyburg, his friend and probable lover. A German officer, Von Freyburg was killed early in World War I. Hartley kept one of the shoulder pieces from his military uniform for the rest of his life.

Upper Level, Gallery 415

6. Jasper Johns, Perilous Night

Three casts of human hands and forearms hang from the top edge of the right half of this horizontal abstract painting, which is divided vertically in two equal parts. The rectangular field to the left is mottled with steel and charcoal gray streaked with white and amethyst purple. The panel to the right is divided again so the top half is slightly larger than the bottom half. The bottom portion is painted with a pattern to resemble abstracted wood grain in nickel and slate gray. A stylized white cloth, perhaps a handkerchief, is painted to look as if hanging from a nail hammered into the wood paneling, to our left. The top portion seems to be layered with paintings and prints below and beneath the three arms. The three-dimensional arms hang from looped metal wires on metal hooks spaced along the top edge, coming about a quarter of the way down the overall composition. The peach-colored arms and hands are painted all over with irregular gray patches, creating a camouflage effect. They hang down so the open palms are flat against the canvas, the thumbs extended to our left. The top of the arm to our left is painted cherry red, the middle is painted canary yellow, and the right arm royal blue. The paint drips down the arms and splatters on the hands and on the faux wood panel below. Behind the hands, it appears that one of the artist’s prints hangs from two nails on the canvas, but this is also part of the painting. The illusionistic print has three horizontal bands of pine green, pumpkin orange, and violet purple crisscrossed with black lines. Seeming to hang behind it and under the right-most arm is a sheet of music overlapping another piece of paper printed with the letters “OHN C” and “THE PERILOUS.” Below, and filling the space between the illusionistic print and the wood panel, is a rectangular field of abstract gray and black swirling forms. The entire canvas is surrounded by a thin, amber-colored wood frame. A narrow wooden slat is attached with a hinge on the inner surface of the frame at the bottom right corner, so the slat runs up along and rests against the canvas near the rightmost edge of the frame. The artist signed the work with stenciled letters in pale gray in the lower right corner: “J. JOHNS ‘8.” — Jasper Johns, Perilous Night, 1982, encaustic and silkscreen on canvas with objects, Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, 1995.79.1

“It’s not about what you see, but what you see when you’re looking at it.”

American artist Jasper Johns wanted us to spend time with his works. He hoped viewers would consider the many objects, materials, and textures in his mixed media paintings.

Perilous Night is filled with details. On the right, three casts of arms hang from hooks. A maulstick, a tool painters use to steady their hands, is attached to the right edge. Under it are parts of The Perilous Night, a score by composer John Cage.

Below, a painted handkerchief hanging from a nail. This references Pablo Picasso’s series of paintings of a weeping woman. The wood grain painted behind it depicts Johns’s own front door. The mysterious square of pattern above is not entirely abstract—it is the tracing of a detail of the fallen soldier in Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece from the 16th century. That same pattern, only enlarged and rotated, takes up the left side of the painting. Together, these elements may refer to the act of artmaking—tracing, copying, and replicating.

Upper Level, Gallery 403-B

Sculpture Garden

1. Robert Indiana, AMOR

Four deep, three-dimensional letters spell out the word AMOR in this free-standing sculpture, with the A and M stacked on top of the O and R to create a square on a low black platform. The letters are coral red with butter-yellow undersides. The elongated, oval-shaped opening within the circular letter O is angled 45 degrees, toward the M at the upper right. We stand slightly to the left in this photograph so we can see the deep sides of the letters. The sculpture is displayed out-of-doors with trees and a tall black fence in the background and plantings around the base. — Robert Indiana, AMOR, conceived 1998, fabricated 2006, polychrome aluminum, Gift of Simon and Gillian Salama-Caro in memory of Ruth Klausner, 2012.27.1

“My goal is that LOVE should cover the world.”

American artist Robert Indiana achieved his mission—his image of the stacked four-letter word is now well known. Its success can be credited to Indiana’s skill at mixing advertising graphic design with blocky geometries of abstraction. He began the design as drawings, paintings, and sculptures between 1964 and 1966. Around this time, Indiana’s decade-long relationship with artist Ellsworth Kelly was coming apart. Some versions of LOVE seem to reflect that turmoil. But the design reached a new level of fame when it appeared on an 8-cent stamp in 1973. The image became an emblem for the 1970s.

Since then, the design has been translated into multiple languages, materials, and colors. AMOR, the Spanish or Latin translation, was first made for a plaza in Madrid, Spain, in 2006.

Northeast Quadrant

Your Tour of LGBTQ+ Artists at the National Gallery

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