A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Gay
The Flandrin pose returns via this deviantART shot entitled Flandrin’s Skateboarder. Probably not what Flandrin himself had in mind but we’ve seen by now that this pose can manifest in numerous guises.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
I’ll be Your Mirror (2005).
Not quite finished with the Moon since it’s visible in the background of Juliet Jacobson’s beautiful drawing, together with some other items of recurrent {feuilleton} concern: masturbating males, peacock feathers and human skulls. Pam at Phantasmaphile has a larger copy of this work while Ms Jacobson’s site has a number of equally luscious pencil drawings.
The Fountain of Youth.
Another artist I ought to have mentioned earlier. Benoit Prévot is a French illustrator and comic artist with a sideline in stylish homoerotics. He’s witty too, wit being a rare quality in art of this nature, as is the Twenties’ atmosphere he so obviously enjoys. His official site has originals for sale.
Wine-Fuelled Imaginings.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Phallic worship
• The art of ejaculation
Standing boy pulling ropes (1962).
The chiaroscuro above looks like a photo print but is actually a painting. I’ve seen Bliss’s name mentioned a few times before but he remains rather difficult to track down online, most of the visible works being on auction sites. What there is consists mostly of young men in swim suits, to a degree which seems like an idée fixe given the lack of nudes or variation in the poses.
left: Standing boy with red trunks (1961); right: Boy with oar (no date).
In a career outline on the Leslie-Lohman site there’s this curious paragraph:
Bliss…after 20 years of alcoholism, discovered LSD. After that he completely stopped drinking. His work then completely shifted to colorful landscapes as well as psychedelic visionary paintings.
I’ve not been able to find any of this psychedelic work at all. If anyone knows of any, please leave a comment.
Update: Added a few more examples of his male studies.
Seated Boy (1950).
Swinging Boy (1959).
Yellow Shirt (1963).
Kneeling Male Athlete (1964).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
It’s inevitable when writing about gay art and artists that Oliver Frey’s name will turn up eventually, so here’s the requisite post. Frey is often better known in gay circles under the nom de plume he used in the 1980s, “Zack”, when he was a very prolific illustrator and comic artist for the few gay mags being published in Britain. As Oliver Frey he was already well-known as an accomplished professional illustrator, who was for a time an artist on Look and Learn’s long-running science-fiction adventure strip The Trigan Empire. His professional work makes him probably the most widely-seen of all gay-porn artists as a result of the comic-strip pages he drew for the beginning of the 1978 Superman film.
His career as a comic artist honed his skill at dealing with figures and telling a story which is one of the reasons his gay strips are still highly valued today. Those strips tend to be completely pornographic right from the start so I’ll spare the delicate sensibilities of some of the readers here and link you to some collections of his Zack work instead. In the meantime, I’d love to know where the picture of the boy with the sword (above) comes from originally. It’s a lot more finished than his Zack drawings and is paired on this page with a similar picture of serpent-twined tribal youths which hints at some kind of Burroughs-esque Wild Boys scenario. If anyone knows the answer, please leave a comment. As it is, it makes a good addition to the Men with swords archive, as does the piece of fluff below.
Update: As noted in the comments, original art by Oliver Frey/Zack is now available for purchase here.
Oliver Frey links:
• Zack Art | official site.
• Arrumako’s Gay Blog | A substantial collection of complete strips and sundry illustrations.
• Daddy’s Here | More single illustrations and some magazine scans including an interview with the artist.
• Gay Erotic Art Links | Another page with further links elsewhere.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
• The men with swords archive