Hortense Belhôte discovers the secrets of painting masterpieces. Queer and camp footprints as a means of a new manifestation and categorization of works in arte.tv

Abstract

Hortense Belhôte, a French art historian, asks questions about the possibilities and limits of queering masterpieces of world painting. Her series of film essays entitled Please do not touch! (Merci de ne pas toucher!) is an attempt to read works, often sanctified by the Christian tradition, by tracing sexual artifacts and allusions, often hidden, in the paintings of heterosexual and homosexual artists. Queering art, according to Belhôte, is a game of hidden/uncovered with elements of camp aesthetics: irony, humor, theatricality and aestheticism. The author of the series plays with the film convention and brings the authors of works from Parnassus to contemporary reality: a laundry, a mechanical workshop, a beauty salon, in order to create a living museum played by non-normative people (they theatrically reproduce the compositions of images).