{"id":3659,"date":"2008-11-06T01:39:53","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T01:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/11\/06\/lets-get-physical-bruce-of-los-angeles-and-tom-of-finland\/"},"modified":"2008-11-06T01:39:53","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T01:39:53","slug":"lets-get-physical-bruce-of-los-angeles-and-tom-of-finland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/11\/06\/lets-get-physical-bruce-of-los-angeles-and-tom-of-finland\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s get physical: Bruce of Los Angeles and Tom of Finland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wesseloconnor.com\/exhibits\/Bruce\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/bruce.jpg\" alt=\"bruce.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Edgar Hayes (Beach) (1957). <\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wesseloconnor.com\/exhibits\/Bruce\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Bruce of Los Angeles<\/a> is a new exhibition of beefcake photos from the Fifties and Sixties at Wessel + O&#8217;Connor, NYC, which opens today and runs until December 20, 2008. Bruce&#8217;s name is a very familiar one to aficionados of physique photography and I imagine some of these prints will be pretty familiar too. There&#8217;s a couple of guys with swords among the selection but as a break from that particular obsession I picked out cutie Edgar Hayes instead.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Born Bruce Bellas in 1909, he was a chemistry professor from Nebraska who would wind up in Los Angeles as the top &#8220;Beefcake&#8221; photographer of the 1950&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>He started out there in the 1940&#8217;s, shooting bodybuilding contests and met many of his models while working for Joe Weider&#8217;s muscle magazine empire, which chronicled the physical culture movement sweeping across America following WWII. Bellas photographed some of the most important figures of this era; bodybuilders Steve Reeves, Ed Fury, and George Eiferman, as well as models such as Joe Dallesandro, Mark Nixon, and Brian Idol.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.homotopia.net\/tom\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/tom.jpg\" alt=\"tom.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Physique Pictorial cover by Tom of Finland (1961). <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, and a bit closer to home for me, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.homotopia.net\/tom\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Contemporary Urban Centre<\/a> in Liverpool has been running an exhibition of drawings by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tom of Finland<\/a>, another very familiar name in the world of gay art and erotica. Twenty-five works are on display there until November 30th.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/entertainment.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/arts_and_entertainment\/visual_arts\/article5056723.ece\" target=\"_blank\">From Finland with lust<\/a> | Mark Simpson looks at the artist&#8217;s legacy<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/the-gay-artists-archive\/\">The gay artists archive<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2007\/04\/21\/philip-core-and-george-quaintance\/\">Philip Core and George Quaintance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edgar Hayes (Beach) (1957). Bruce of Los Angeles is a new exhibition of beefcake photos from the Fifties and Sixties at Wessel + O&#8217;Connor, NYC, which opens today and runs until December 20, 2008. Bruce&#8217;s name is a very familiar one to aficionados of physique photography and I imagine some of these prints will be &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/11\/06\/lets-get-physical-bruce-of-los-angeles-and-tom-of-finland\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Let&#8217;s get physical: Bruce of Los Angeles and Tom of Finland&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,36,5,48,12],"tags":[64,1324,843,63,2194],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-eye-candy","category-gay","category-illustrators","category-photography","tag-beefcake","tag-george-quaintance","tag-philip-core","tag-swords","tag-tom-of-finland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-X1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}