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Alla Nazimova as Salomé (1923).
I wrote a while ago about Alla Nazimova’s luscious silent film production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, a suitably Decadent affair with an allegedly all-gay cast, and costume and stage design based on Aubrey Beardsley’s celebrated illustrations. The film is currently touring England and Wales with a new score for four musicians [...]

One of a series of stunning ads by Y&R of Chicago for the River North Chicago Dance Company which give the old “body as machine” a contemporary and rather erotic twist. (I would have credited the photographer but the ad agency site is the usual Flash interface which refuses to work in any of [...]

I wrote about Peter Shaffer’s fascinating play, Equus, in September last year, and in passing touched on the horse and Mari Lwyd-inspired paintings of Clive Hicks-Jenkins which seemed to complement the play’s themes of sexuality and passionate obsession. Callum James had been having similar thoughts about Clive’s art and urged his friends at The Old [...]

It’s taken me years but the recent obsession with UK psychedelia led me to finally watch Joe Massot’s piece of cinematic fluff from 1968, Wonderwall, a film distinguished primarily for its score by George Harrison (with Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton playing pseudonymously), and its title which was swiped years later by a bunch of [...]

American Martyr.
The Sebastian-esque piece above is a pyrograph by American artist Robert Sherer. Pyrographs—pictures burned onto wood—aren’t very common here but are a fixture of craft classes at US summer camps. Sherer adopts the medium to subvert the wholesome orthodoxies of American life, that side of America which persistently stigmatises minorities as “other”, and to [...]

Gays are being attacked – but we’re holding hands, heads held high

Untitled (1963).
One of a small number of pictures from a recent exhibition of work by American photographer Emil Cadoo (1926–2002) whose nude studies and often homoerotic themes were controversial in America of the Fifties and Sixties but welcomed in France, as was often the case at that time.
In April 1964, all 21,000 copies of the [...]

National Coming Out Day is a gay awareness day which has been observed in America since 1988, and is now something of an international event if “the world” can mean the USA and a handful of European countries. With typical contrariness, the UK’s Coming Out Day is a day later on October 12th. The Outer [...]

Taner photographed by Hedi Slimane.
No, I don’t go looking for these deliberately, they just keep turning up. This latest manifestation of the Flandrin pose is from a photo shoot by Hedi Slimane. I was going to write a bit more on this subject but haven’t had the opportunity today since the webhost has been having [...]

left: Sicilian boy by Wilhelm von Gloeden (no date); right: Jugend cover by Hans Christiansen (1896).
My current reading is The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003), a long and fascinating study by Neil McKenna which attempts to disentangle the true nature of Wilde’s sex life from the myths and evasions of his biography and biographers. [...]

A brace of elegant fencers posing for an Elle Italia spread by photographer Ruven Afanador whose Torero series was highlighted here in April. Afanador’s recent work is worth a look for the set showing a model posing in an antiquated schoolroom among bones and stuffed animals. Via Homotography.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with [...]

Mirror, mirror | Simon Callow on The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Sometimes petitions work. A few weeks ago one such was launched by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming on the UK government website requesting a public apology for the terrible treatment accorded mathematician and wartime codebreaker Alan Turing in 1952. Turing was prosecuted after admitting a gay affair to police investigating another matter and given the choice [...]

Photography by Steven Klein, styling by Nicola Formichetti.
Not a Tom Waits album, Bondage Machine is the title of a feature in Vogue Hommes Japan which plays with bondage and fetish imagery to striking effect. What’s not to love about a huge skeletal necklace and leather underwear? Fetish gear is the aesthetic dimension of erotica and [...]

Les Chansons de Bilitis (1922).

I’ve posted examples of George Barbier’s Art Deco drawings before but online examples of his work outside the world of fashion illustration have been difficult to find. The Bunka Women’s University Library corrects that with a collection of high-quality scans which include a book about the artist, George Barbier, Étude Critique [...]

David (c.1872).
I’d marked out this statue as a suitable addition to the burgeoning men with swords archive some time ago but it took the discovery of a piece of writing to prompt this post. Antonin Mercié’s statue of David resides today in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, but I managed to miss it on my [...]

Today is Outer Alliance Pride Day so let’s begin with a statement:
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
Various members of the Outer [...]

TS Eliot revealed as defender of lesbian fiction

The Ticket that Exploded. Cover design by Thomi Wroblowski for a John Calder edition, 1985.
William S Burroughs: A Man Within is a feature-length documentary by Yony Leyser, and is, so the makers say, the first posthumous documentary about the always essential writer. Howard Brookner’s 1983 film, Burroughs, is probably definitive where the biography is [...]

This is something you don’t generally see in swashbuckling films, a duellist being stabbed through the eye. To judge by the plates in Nicoletto Giganti’s sword-fighting manual it seems to have been a very common form of attack; duels with bare blades were a serious business. For some reason most of the combatants in these [...]