PEER REVIEWED
https://doi.org/10.51897/interalia/BCBE2294
“Yo no sé si nos merecíamos a un puto como Klemm”. Destapes gais, historia del arte y televisión en Argentina
Lucía Álvarez
Abstract
This paper proposes an analysis of the critical reception of Czech-Argentine artist, collector, and television host Federico Klemm within art historiography and the local history of sex-gender dissidences, followed by a discussion of recent interpretations of his figure through a queer lens. To this end, it examines an article published in the Argentine newspaper Página/12 and a segment from the television program Intrusos en el espectáculo, focusing on how these media operated as technologies aimed at revealing Klemm’s “true” sexuality. The argument advanced here is that, around the ideological unveiling explicitly stated as the article’s purpose, other cultural, moral, and sexual anxieties were articulated, shaping perceptions of Klemm’s body, sexuality, artistic work, and role as a cultural agent. Furthermore, the analysis of the television program suggests that Klemm rejected both the rhetoric of pride and the strategy of publicly coming out—approaches that were beginning to gain traction at the time. In this sense, his refusal to be “outed,” far from foreclosing the possibility of a queer historiographical interpretation, compels us to interrogate how to engage with experiences and lives that resist the politics of gay liberation. From these considerations arises the proposal to revisit the operativity of certain definitional and temporal categories employed by queer theory and art history to interpret Klemm’s cultural and artistic production.
Keywords: queer historiography, sex-gender dissidences, Federico Klemm, backwardness, gay unveilings
