Keith Vaughan

Against abstract greens and grays, Keith Vaughan depicts a faceless nude male figure using a towel. The checkered towel complements Vaughan’s geometric treatment of the figure, allowing his brush and our eye to dwell on the subject’s forms and shapes. 

Living in a time of significant homophobic persecution, Vaughan detailed his experiences as a gay man in his diaries, which he partially published in 1966—before homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK. He wrote in 1953:

I ask myself which of my pictures would I be willing to stand beside in public, say Piccadilly Circus, for all to see. The least personal ones, I suppose, abstract landscapes. The continual use of the male figure . . . retains always the stain of a homosexual conception . . . “K.V. [Keith Vaughan] paints nude young men.” Perfectly true, but I feel I must hide my head in shame. Inescapable, I suppose—social guilt of the invert.

–Conor Moynihan, associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs

Sexual inversion, a theory dating to the late 1800s, relied on binary understandings of gender to label same-sex desire as an inborn reversal (or inversion) of gender. While ultimately inaccurate, this theory offered a medical explanation for the complexities of sexuality during a time when homosexuality was often prosecuted as a criminal offense.

“I ask myself which of my pictures would I be willing to stand beside in public, say Piccadilly Circus, for all to see. The least personal ones, I suppose, abstract landscapes. The continual use of the male figure... retains always the stain of a homosexual conception...‘K.V. paints nude young men.’ Perfectly true, but I feel I must hide my head in shame. Inescapable, I suppose-social guilt of the invert.”

-Keith Vaughan, 1953

Keith Vaughan painted the male nude-one of his favorite subjects-in a uniquely abstracted style. His figure studies reflect a sense of intimacy and desire in relationship to his subjects.

Vaughan is also noted for his diaries, written from 1939 to the time of his death. Over 61 notebooks, he chronicled his struggles as a gay man living in a postwar Britain characterized by acute hostility toward and criminalization of homosexuality.