Private: Queer Relations and Politics in Duncan Grant's Hidden Erotic Drawings

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The project will investigate a collection of 422 erotic drawings by Duncan Grant made during the 1940s and 1950s and depicting scenes of multiple sexual encounters between men, interracial couplings, love between men, women and mythic creatures. Originally given to his friends as a 'private' folder, the collection has recently been donated to Charleston which has decided to make it public. Part of the project involves cataloguing and studying the drawings by using collections and archives between Charleston and Sussex. The project will seek to re-evaluate Grant's work and politics against the background of queer visual culture in postwar Britain. The candidate will consider the complexities of interpreting queer representations of sex for diverse audiences today as well as contribute to the organization of an exhibition and a digital publication.Created during the 1940s and 1950s, the drawings were produced in tandem with Grant's public work, but remained hidden creative acts. As a gay man in Britain, Grant spent the first 82 years of his life living as a criminal until 1967 when the Sexual Offences Act was passed. In his 90s Grant attended a Gay Liberation Front meeting with his young, openly gay friends, before he died in 1978. An important part of Grant's collection are the numerous depictions of interracial queer couples which began examination of the relationship between queerness and racialized bodies in erotic art. Some important work to 'decolonise' the history of the Bloomsbury group has already been carried out in the past decade, paving the way for this doctoral project (Romain, 2017; Mercer, 2017; Reed, 2011). The project offers a student the opportunity to make a real contribution to Charleston's growing engagement with BAME and LGBTQI+ histories and communities.This doctoral project builds on the firm partnership base between the Department of Art History, University of Sussex, and Charleston Trust.